This hotel is going to be great!

By -

I’ve saved the best for last in this little series on getting internet access in the hotel. In the post titled Hunker Down, I talked about how you might have to just live with a situation where you don’t have any alternatives. Following that, Mix it Up was about having to make the decision to go somewhere else if the hotel just doesn’t want to work with you. In this post, I want to talk about the happy circumstance you will sometimes find yourself in where everything you need is already in place.

It does happen. Especially in areas that have State or Federal Courts close by, there are likely to be hotels that have already invented the wheel. Maybe someone like me has been there before and laid the groundwork to get extra bandwidth in and all you have to do is pay to get it turned on. Maybe they have a lot of bandwidth already there and an IT group that can VLAN a portion of it off for you. When I talk with a hotel and they are very matter-of-fact about it and indicate that they do this all the time, I am happy.

The hotel says you can use their wiring closet as long as you promise not to mess up their stuff. Yes, they have plenty of power in the conference room. Yes, they have a couple of dedicated plugs for the copiers to plug into there as well. Yes, they have some information about local resources that rent equipment like copiers and printers. Bandwidth, segregated and synchronous? No problem!

Maybe you’ve already done a trial or two out of this very location and they love you guys. They’re happy to see you when you get there. Really, it does happen. One less war room to worry about getting connected to the outside world!

Not a whole lot more to say about this situation. It’s your lucky day, so enjoy. You’ll still have plenty of work to do, but at least you don’t have to worry about internet access. That is a big deal.

This has been a pretty good overview of some of the issues related to getting internet access in hotels. Still a lot to write about so many other subjects. Maybe you find out the war room will be in empty office space. Maybe you’ll be working out of co-counsel space. Networking problems to figure out, etc.


Stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Make do

By -
Over the years, I’ve done so many trials. I would like to say I’ve done hundreds because sometimes it feels like it, but that wouldn’t be true! I’ll guess that I have supported some 50 to 70 trials in one capacity or another over the last several years. Of course those trials run the gamut from settling or being continued, to going the full length in court. With the trials that get settled, or even continued, the whole war room space still gets planned out and built. You have to build it because you can’t count on anything other than the fact that you have a court date and must plan to be ready to go. I can post about the prospect of “pencils down” in a subsequent post. What I’m writing about in this post are some quick thoughts about war rooms in general and what they turn out to be in real life. There seems to be a prevalent feeling with those that don’t go to trial that it is a vacation. People see that you leave the office and travel to (sometimes) interesting locals. Their thi
Read more

The Eastern District of Texas

By -
As most of you who are reading my blog already know, the Eastern District of Texas is generally very busy, although it is likely that patent trials here are going to drop off quite a bit due to a recent SCOTUS  ruling. If you are scheduled for a trial in the Eastern District, work with someone who is based there and can provide resources for your trial team. Contact me and I can point you in a direction of a company that knows the area, can deliver equipment and has a lot of experience supporting trials. You might be working with local counsel, but they probably won’t have the equipment you need. Perhaps you will be working alone, but are coming to trial here from out of state. Even much larger firms can use a helping hand sometimes. Not every firm has the trial support staff to dedicate for the duration of a trial because their employees might be working on projects in the home office or unable to travel for an extended time frame. It could be your firm has simultaneous trials taki
Read more

Inventing the wheel

By -
In my last post here , I was listing some of the ways that things can go if you have to build your war room in a hotel. I want to take some time and talk about the first two in that list. Specifically, I am going to write about how to work through some of the issues you’ll face when you are tasked with getting things set up in a place that has never done this before, or not on the scale you need. Now is the time you’re going to have to be like a certain cat and open your bag of tricks. This is especially the time to put your soft skills to work because the next period of time will be about making connections with people and negotiating to create a win/win situation. It isn’t as daunting as it may seem, you just have to work through your list of things that have to get done and make those connections. Better start now! What kind of problems do you have to solve? If the hotel doesn’t have the bandwidth for your team, you have to come to some type of agreement on how you can bri
Read more