1. Know Who Your Tech Contact There's likely someone at the meeting space that takes care of that building/office/restaurant's wifi/Internet. Find out who that person is, and talk to them about your event. Make sure that the space will have a stable enough Internet connection for the number of participants expected. If you have to set up your own wifi and/or power, see this awesome checklist from David Wolever.
    
2. Providing Hardware  Have laptops or PCs available for participants or teams of  participants. If you don't have the means to provide hardware, make sure  participants know to bring their own! If you do have a space with computers, install the most up-to-date version of Firefox, Chrome or Safari on the computers.
    
3. Install Bookmarklets If you're using Hackasaurus curriculum, check that the Goggles bookmarklet can be installed and works in your setup. If possible, pre-install the bookmarklet on all the computers to save time during the event.
    
4. Projector Set up a projector to a computer so that you can demo things  on a screen that everyone can see and participants can share their work.
    
5. USB Backups (to deal with firewalls) You can run Firefox and the Hackasaurus Goggles off of a USB stick too: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable Check that this works on the computers though, as some places have firewalls that restrict the use of external devices.

We know you were frustrated at least once during this IT check. Did you throw anything or did you just rant? Tell your peers what made this hard, and comment on two of their posts with a sympathetic tone.