Bring Your Own Device and MobileCon

Sitting… waiting…a South African choir plays over my car stereo.  Human voices with no musical accompaniment blend together, amazingly, beautifully simple.  Earthy harmonies pull me to thoughts on an event one month and 2500 miles away.  MobileCon convenes in San Diego, CA.  Lots of preparation, I need this time.

I plan to arrive at MobileCon in time for the preconference on October 8 as part of the RFID in Healthcare Consortium.  MobileCon, where an international community comes together for a common goal: to support the global mobile information technology community.   A technical problem honors no boundaries, honors no borders, honors no religion.  We may use competing or emerging technologies and still share the same problem. For example, when an employee uses their personal device to conduct business or perform work-related tasks, regardless of the hardware or application or location, businesses must address the risks.  The accidental or purposeful release of what can end up being the data story of a person or business has value in illegal markets.  As individuals working together, we share and collectively solve these issues to protect the information entrusted to us.

BYOD, Bring Your Own Device, BYOT, Bring Your Own Technology, good or bad, plus or minus, people are doing it.  They are using personally owned devices to access networks, exchange data, communicate with others, and do work related tasks -maybe for the same reasons I did.  Sometimes one must act! Waiting is not an option.

In previous assignments, I spent normal business hours communicating with people to coordinate and resolve issues.  Nights were spent doing things that I no longer had to speak with anyone about or due the following morning.  Eventually, I would run into an access or a browser issue. IT ran much fewer resources at night.   So, I turned to my personal laptop to get the job done.  When asked why I always had my personal laptop with me, I remained open and honest about the reason.  As long as the work was done, there was never an issue.  In fact, my bosses seemed to appreciate that I didn’t use those types of issues as an excuse.  The IT departments did not complain because they were stressed for time and resources the same or perhaps worse than me.

I could give more examples. Like of the time I was on dial-up and my average success to connection was over 100 attempts – after each time I was knocked offline.   

Anyway, did my behavior help or hurt?  Or was keeping a high-visibility, $40M project with thousands of moving pieces on track and on time the ultimate trump card?  No one ever counseled me on the business use of my personal laptop.  In contrast, there was immediate concern directed at anyone whose actions or inaction even appeared to threaten a project timeline.

Work with the RFID in Healthcare Consortium comes first, but I definitely plan to educate myself more on the financial benefits and strategies of BYOD/T while at MobileCon.