Mom Road Trip 2.0, The Technology Behind The Scenes

After the idea of the Silicon Valley Moms Group - Mom Road Trip was first thrown around then finalized, the details needed to be planned before the moms hit the road. My part was to arm the mom road trippers with the technology they would need to share their experiences along the way. Mommy Bloggers are tech savvy early adopters when it comes to social media - so this adventure would be a great chance to "road test" some of the latest and greatest applications and gadgets.

Our mom road trippers were sponsored with the "Green Car of The Year" that came equipped with road technology and they had video cams and MP3 players but there were many other issues that needed to be worked on:

1. Internet access on the road - I quickly ruled out asking the moms to steal Wi-Fi in cheap hotel parking lots, so I set out to find other alternatives.   One of our road trippers hooked us up with Wi-Fi hot spot coverage, but I also wanted to provide them with broadband internet access that could plug into the USB port of their laptops. I had spent a month using a Compass™ 597 by Sierra Wireless USB broadband Card with a mobile broadband service plan to liveblog, so I decided to find something similar for our mom road trippers.  Because the timing was tight, we could not get any loaners in time. So I did what any self respecting, modern social media techie would do - I went to a brick and mortar store and begged the sales manager (thanks Ernesto!) to help me find a budget friendly way to buy them, then drove over to the express mail store for overnight shipping because the road trip started the NEXT DAY.

That was the last technical issue holding us up, but many others were solved before that.