By the time you read this I will probably be on the road to the Rock the Blog conference, part of the programme at the huge CeBIT technology event in Hanover, Germany.

I’ll be speaking at Rock the Blog to promote our journalist enquiry service in Germany (we’re in France too).

For some crazy reason I decided to drive there from my home in East Sussex and thought I might as well make the most of it – so transformed my little Mini Cooper S with new ResponseSource orange livery.

It’s going to be a long drive – my guess is well over 10 hours including stops – through four countries.

I have a tracker installed in the car so you can follow my progress here. I’ll also be tweeting (when I stop for fuel or breaks).

I’ll have a lot of tech in the car (Garmin 2595 sat nav, Mio Mivue 658 Wifi dashcam, Alpine CDE-196DAB head unit with Bluetooth). The tracking device is actually quite low-tech, using APRS (automatic packet reporting system – the same technology that is used by shipping to broadcast their position) through a simple GPS device called a TinyTrak3 attached to a ‘ham’ radio (in this case an Icom IC-E2820). This sends position data every two minutes over an amateur radio frequency. This is picked up by amateur radio enthusiasts along the route and either re-transmitted or transferred onto the aprs.fi website where you can see it.