Unforseen problems

I've recently toured the county telling managers of Early Years establishments that I shall be providing them with Broadband dongles so they will be able to get on line. These aren't compulsory, but a lot of these guys cannot access normal broadband facilities so we're rolling out mobile broadband to make sure everyones at least got something. So I have several sessions planned to hand out these dongles and get everyone set up. Yesterday was my first one.

So it turns out that when you have several broadband dongles all trying to access the network at the same time all close to each other, they basically steal each others signal. We could only get 3 or 4 on at a time.

The words 'absolute disaster' were ringing through my head here. I had a whole session planned out where we'd set all the dongles up, show them how to set up free e-mail addresses and walk them through online data submission. And only 3 of them can get enough signal. And that keeps dropping out.

I'd previously toured the training venues with a dongle to ensure signal in those areas. So it's not a lack of signal there, it's just the fact you don't seem to be able to get several on at once. And to be honest, how often will you have 10 or more people in one room all logging onto the same mobile network?

It was a disheartening start to this phase of the project, which has gone so well before. I should have predicted this problem really. It seems so very obvious after it happens, but it never occured to me. I felt particularly bad when I saw two nursery managers at the back of the room waving their dongles in mid air in a vain attempt to re-capture their signal.

So it's back to the drawing board, as I have to re-write the training session to reflect the fact that I cannot use the dongles, effectively turning it from a practical session to a theory. Which is never as entertaining. I try my best, but all my broadband/internet/windows jokes seem to be falling flat.

I feel that maybe my reputation at work as the IT guy has been built up too much when something goes wrong like this. Especially something that seems so obvious that I should have spotted it. But the important thing is to look objectively at the experience and see what I can learn from it. And I have learnt that mobile broadband, while a wonderful thing is not yet enjoying strong enough network coverage to be that reliable, and that Skegness is a frakking difficult place to find your way around. I got lost and barely made it to the session on time.