[Google Cloud Next '26 Recap #5] How I Prepared for the Trip — and How It Actually Played Out

This is the fifth and final post in my Google Cloud Next '26 (Las Vegas) recap series.

You can find the previous posts here 👇

• Part 1: [Google Cloud Next '26 Recap #1] Hands-On with the Agentic Hack Zone
• Part 2: [Google Cloud Next '26 Recap #2] Three Unique Booths I Tried at the EXPO
• Part 3: [Google Cloud Next '26 Recap #3] Anthropic's Vision for "After Software"
• Part 4: [Google Cloud Next '26 Recap #4] Live Report from the Two Keynotes

So far, I've spent four posts walking through my Next '26 on-site experience. To wrap up the series, I'd like to look back on what I prepared before the trip — and how those preparations actually played out once I was on the ground.

Attending Next '26 in person turned out to be a 5-night international trip. I hope this post can serve as a useful reference for anyone planning to attend a tech conference in Las Vegas in the future.

Where I was coming from

This was my overseas tech conference since I attended Next in San Francisco three years ago, and my very first time in Las Vegas.

While I had attended Next once before, this was my first visit to Vegas itself, so I was very deliberate about gathering information during the prep phase.

Since Google Cloud Next was held at the same Las Vegas venue twice — in '24 and '25 — I was able to learn a lot from past attendees by watching their YouTube videos and blog posts, and attending lightning talks at pre-events organized by communities back home.

The resources I leaned on the most are below — many thanks to the authors 🙏

• Jesse Nowlin: https://youtu.be/pqNG4FgLHYo
• Kazumasa Iwao: https://zenn.dev/hogeticlab/articles/0e8aa36b179930
• Jagu'e'r: https://jaguer.connpass.com/event/384137/

Things I felt I needed to prepare for

Once I started organizing all that information, I realized there were a surprising number of things to think about before leaving:

• Dryness from Las Vegas's desert climate
• Sunburn during the day
• The convention center and airplane cabin being freezing cold
• The convention center being huge — lots of walking
• Next having so much content that I might run out of time
• Possible crowds at badge pickup
• SWAG filling up my luggage
• Possible battery drain
• Hydration (whether to bring a water bottle)
• Bag size restrictions at the convention center
• Clear bag requirements for stadium entry
• General travel logistics: getting around the city, airport security, connecting flights, immigration

Topics like meals, casinos and other entertainment, hotel amenities, medications, travel insurance, and ESTA are out of scope for this post.

From here on, I'll share what I actually packed/prepared and how it went on the ground, based on my own personal experience.

Coping with Las Vegas dryness

What I brought:

• Lip balm
• Hand cream
• Eye drops
• Toner / lotion
• Skincare cream
• Throat lozenges

Result: Extremely useful. The dryness on the ground was more intense than I expected, and every single one of these earned its place. Skin, throat, and eye care turned out to matter way more than I'd anticipated — definitely glad I brought them all.

Sunburn protection during the day

What I brought:

• Sunscreen
• A cap
• A thin, lightweight hooded jacket made for trail running

Result: Glad I brought all of these. The Vegas sun was stronger than I imagined — even a short walk outside left a clear "I'm getting cooked" feeling on my skin.

Cold convention centers and airplane cabins

This was solved with the same hooded jacket I mentioned above.

Since it doubled as both sun protection and warmth, it ended up being one of the most useful items of the entire trip. It handled the over-air-conditioned convention center and long-haul flights equally well.

Walking the huge venue, and my final outfit setup

Because the dryness, heat, and cold all turned out to be more intense than expected, I made prioritizing my health and stamina my top concern, and decided to go as light as possible.

In my case, I went all in on the choice to leave my laptop at the hotel. My final on-site setup looked like this:

• The hooded jacket on top
• Thick-soled sneakers
• Stretchy pants
• Badge hanging from my neck
• Passport stayed in the hotel safe — not on me
• In my pockets: phone, hotel key card, one credit card — that's it

In short, I walked in empty-handed. The downside was that my only computing device on me was my phone, but in exchange I could move around the venue extremely lightly — and for me, this style turned out to be the right call.

Too much content at Next

Next is the kind of event where, if you're not careful, you blink and suddenly there's no time left for the things you actually wanted to do.

To deal with this, I picked and reserved sessions early on. My booking rules were:

• Only sessions I'd want to keep on my schedule even if I had to cut other plans (i.e., true must-sees)
• A hard cap of 2–3 sessions per day

There were tons of sessions available, but by deliberately narrowing things down, I made sure I had plenty of buffer time for exploring the venue and trying out booths. This is advice many people give, and it's also a direct reflection on having packed my schedule too tightly the last time I went to Next.

Result: This worked out really well. I came away with both rich session content and plenty of booth experiences.

Failure story: I got locked out of a workshop

That said, I did mess one thing up.

I had reserved a 3-hour workshop right after the Opening Keynote, but I got hungry and decided to grab a snack at the partner lounge first — by the time I made it to the workshop room, it had already filled up to capacity, and I couldn't get in 😭

Apparently, after a session has been running for a while, they start letting standby attendees take vacant seats. Grabbing food to-go and eating it while attending the workshop would probably have been the right move.

After that, even for sessions I had already reserved, I started lining up early whenever I knew the session had reached its booking cap.

Crowds at badge pickup

I handled this by picking up my badge as soon as I landed at the airport, which made the whole process pretty smooth.

SWAG filling up your luggage

SWAG is one of those things where you keep wanting just one more thing, and your bag fills up fast on the way home.

This time I exercised some restraint and stuck mostly to pins, stickers, and other small, low-volume items.

Battery situation

I packed a portable battery just in case, but as mentioned above, all I was carrying was my phone, and I wasn't using it heavily for long stretches, so I was fine.

Things I brought that I never used

A few "just in case" items that ended up never coming out of my bag:

・Water bottle

I brought one from home for hydration — but water bottles were being given out for free at the venue. On top of that, there were plenty of spots to drink water from paper cups, so I ended up bringing the freebie bottle home, completely unused…

・A bag for the venue

I brought a separate bag sized to fit the official policy (roughly 12" × 18") in addition to my travel bag — but since I went empty-handed, it never got used.

・Clear bag for stadium entry

Policy stated that a clear bag is required for Next at Night, so I prepared one in advance — but again, I went in empty-handed, so this also went unused.

Getting around, the airport, connections, and immigration

Apps made this side of things significantly more comfortable:

• Uber app: handled all my airport ↔ hotel rides
• MPC app: gave me access to a dedicated lane at immigration during my connection — big time saver
• MyTSA app: about a month before the trip, there was news about major airport security backlogs caused by TSA pay disruptions and staffing shortages tied to a federal funding lapse — I used this to check current wait times
• Airline app: kept me on top of delays, schedule changes, and gate changes

A side note on CLEAR+

On the way home, I had to re-enter security at LAX during my connection, and a CLEAR+ Ambassador caught me near the security entrance and pitched the service. I went along with it and signed up on the spot.

It did genuinely shortcut my path through security, but I later discovered that after the 2-week trial period, it costs roughly $200/year as a subscription. Since I have no plans to be back in the US anytime soon, I cancelled before the charge hit. Lesson learned: be careful about signing up for things on impulse abroad.

Wrap-up: what I learned from this trip

The takeaways I'd hand my future self:

• Dryness, sunburn, and cold protection are non-negotiables. A lightweight hooded jacket is a multi-purpose powerhouse.
• Going empty-handed is more comfortable than expected. Committing to leaving the laptop behind paid off.
• Cap your sessions. 2–3 a day, with the gaps reserved for venue exploration, ends up being more satisfying.
• Line up early for popular sessions and workshops. "I have a reservation" doesn't always mean you'll get in.
• Water bottles and secondary bags can easily go unused depending on your style.
• Use apps to streamline immigration and connections.

And with that, this wraps up my series of posts on Next '26.

I wanted to share the most memorable lessons from everything I learned on this trip. I hope this proves to be useful to anyone reading.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. See you somewhere next time!

See you in the Next. 👋