Keep Your Dongles Close

I took a trip out to Kansas City with a couple professors from RIT last week to attend SIGCSE for the first time. I had an awesome time presenting at the NSF Showcase, attending the exhibits, a quick workshop on programming in Swift, meeting some truly awesome people (shout out to David at GitHub!), and getting some free textbooks from the publishers.

SIGCSE provided a goodie bag to all attendees which contained a lot of swag from the different companies that had exhibits going on. There were a few pens, a notebook from Oracle, a brochure that explained how GitHub branching worked, a cheat sheet on using Git, and much more. One item that I found to be interesting was a dongle that ACM had provided: it had six different chargers connected to a USB output so you could connect many different phone devices to a computer. Since I already had a phone charger in my hotel room, I shuffled everything, including the dongle, into the goodie bag and left it in my hotel room.

Charging the devices that I bring along with me to conferences is crucial in order for these sorts of events to be successful for me. A dead phone or laptop means I can’t jot down notes, contact info, or check email. Usually when I go on a short trip like this, I bring along all the necessary chargers for my devices (usually just a phone and laptop charger). On Friday, I was told there was going to be a workshop on programming in Swift, and so I attended. At some point, I realized that my phone had gone through an entire day of battery usage and had died. I had left my phone charger at my hotel room, too. Fortunately for me, my professor was kind enough to let me borrow a charger: the ACM dongle that she got from her goodie bag.

It’s a good idea to keep your dongles on you at all times. You never know when you’re going to be in a situation similar to mine.