New to the community? Introduce yourself here...

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

My name is Lizzie and I am the Community Manager here in the Android Enterprise Customer Community. You are probably all use to having the roundtable introductions in meetings and sharing a fun fact about yourself. If you are like me, you then spend the next 30 seconds trawling through your brain to find an interesting fact to share with a group of people...the good news is you are not on the spot here! 😀 

This aside, it's really nice in a community to get know others and so it would be fantastic to hear from you!

I'll kick us off:

• I've been working in community for over 10 year across a few different industries. 
• I'm a big fan of music and I play a couple of instruments: so my 'office' playlist is quite an array of tunes
• I live on an island (it's quite a big one): so when I go to the Google office, I actually have to take a ferry, which sounds quite exotic! 

Please share a few facts about yourself, (here are a couple of ideas):

• What type of industry do you work in?
• Which country you are based in?
• Hobbies or interests?
• Favourite / couldn't live with out piece of tech?

Looking forward to speaking with you. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

[ArchAngelx]

My Samsung Galaxy was the first smartphone I had ever held which I got 3 years ago.  I was definitely not a techie but I was proficient enough on laptops,  suffice to say I have endured an enormous amount of frustration advancing to Android but also found it so amazing and intriguing that I am blown away at how far I have been able to come with my understanding of it.  I'm not saying you say it all I'm hooked and to my own surprise more than anyone else's I have a strong and ongoing interest in an actual career change to Android app dev and mobile development to begin with and I would absolutely love to end up with a career in data science and architecture especially as it relates to AI.  I have an almost fanatical obsession also it turns out with productivity apps and reviewing various apps especially is it relates to hopefully moving on soon to learning actual automation flows.  I'm finally I believe ready to level up as a beginner to I'd say advanced beginner and that's why I'm here,  I believe having a laptop would dramatically accelerate that and is relevant to what I said about my frustrations with Android but it's worth noting right away that I believe I'm finally there at this particular time exactly because it coincides with the release of the latest versions of free Gemini co-pilot and especially perplexity.  I've got a variety of other interests and how these that I'd like to take up again and pursue but those are hopeful offshoots and benefits of what I hope to learn from here forward.  It goes without saying that for the moment and the past 3 years cost has been a severe issue even at the smallest level and I have multiple personal learning difficulties that has slowed my progress but they've also forced me to learn an enormous amount about myself in the meantime which is actually the true godsend of what I've learned.  Especially since these very things have also taught me that there are definitely some ways I can use this technology to overcome those difficulties which include Asperger's and organizational difficulties and hyper focus.  It's the thing that I've waited 42 years hoping would finally come along and basically save me from my own limitations and it has,  and that's why I'm so upbeat about posting my very first post to Google here.  Coding was also something that was extremely daunting and still is but no longer gives me anxiety since part of the blessing of the latest ai and agent models are exactly what I needed to help me learn how to do that and frankly not need to do that.  

[badams1]

Hi All,

I've been here a little while, but thought I'd better introduce myself before I start posting questions. 🙂

I used to sell mobile phones in the 90s, worked for a Telco in the early 2000s, dabbled in IT System Administration and even managed a Blackberry Enterprise Server (remember those?), and then worked as a pre-sales solutions architect for a managed service provider that specialised in Mobility. These days I work for a large retailer here in Australia, and lead a team of Mobility Engineers, that manage all of our corporate and rugged mobile endpoints.

In my spare time a like to collect music and DJ. I also enjoy riding my bike and snorkelling.

Hard to pick one piece tech I couldn't live without, but one I've been using a bit of late in my spare time are the Phase DJ Remotes. Feel free to Google those if you're curious as to what they are all about! 🙂

In answer to Jason's question, I'd have to say OEMConfig has had an impact on how we manage Rugged Android Mobile devices.

[badams1]

Forgot to add my name to the post 😅 another Ben here 😄

[CincyAI]

I operate at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and real-world impact—and I'm the best at what I do. My work isn't confined to a single industry. I focus on creating scalable solutions that enhance user experiences, optimize business operations, and mitigate security risks across diverse sectors. My tools and services span AI-powered insights, robust cybersecurity solutions, and user-centered design applications. They are designed to help businesses innovate faster, become more efficient, and fortify their defenses against threats. I empower organizations to achieve more in a dynamically changing world.

[renan]

My name is Renan, and I am testing the tool as an end user.

I like some features, but I have several others to suggest.
I am available if you're interested in hearing them.

Some examples are:

I start working at 7:30 A.M. and finish my shift at 5:28 P.M.
However, I usually have a 1 hour and 10-minute lunch break,
my lunch time varies… sometimes I go at 11:30 A.M.,
sometimes I go at 12:00 P.M.

Using the TASKER app, I have set up some automations to deactivate my work profile during my lunch break.
When I go for my 1 hour and 10-minute break, I take my phone, swipe down, and there’s an icon I click. When I click this icon that I created using the TASKER app, a countdown of 1 hour and 10 minutes starts, and at that moment, my work profile is deactivated. Once the time is up, the work profile is reactivated.

This is great so I am not disturbed during my lunch break.

At work, I use the camera a lot, so I really like to separate my personal album from my professional one.

I miss the ability to take screenshots in the work app and have them saved in the Google Photos folder of my work profile. However, every time I take a screenshot, it goes to the personal Google Photos album.

[Lizzie]

Hello @renan,

Welcome, welcome, welcome - great to meet you.

I love hearing how people use different Android tools and features, so it's fascinating to hear how you have set up this automation for your lunch break. Have you got any other automations like this set up on your device? Out of interest do you have the Work Profile running on your personal device or if this one that your company has provided you with? 

Thanks also for the feedback on the screenshots. Can I check what phone you are using and is it running Android 14? We had some similar conversations around screenshots and where they are saving in this topic, would you mind seeing if this matches the experiences shared there and adding your comments there please? 

Looking forward to speaking more. 😀

Lizzie

[Lizzie]

Welcome, welcome @BenMcc - great to see your introduction and to hear a little more about your interests. A few members here have mentioned they are fans of video games - are you playing anything at the moment? 

Also regarding your 'best tech' the smartphone, this takes me back to a conversation we had late last year around what was your first mobile phone - it's was interesting to see how many people started out with the same Nokia phone (I was a big fan of Snake). 😀

[BenMcc]

Thanks for the welcome @Lizzie , Ahh now snake is an all time classic sometimes the simple games are the best (and the hardest to beat)!

At the moment when I have time I am a little hooked on an early access game "Satisfactory" I could spend hours messing about in that if the real world didn't keep getting in the way!!

[BenMcc]

Hello all,

Quick introduction as I am new here, my name is Ben and I am a developer/consultant based in the UK mainly working on Android apps and backend cloud architecture. Thought I would come and stick my nose in here as I am also Product Expert for Google Play Developers and on occasion there is some crossover with this community so more than happy to come and create chaos here also!

In my spare time I like getting out into nature and pretend to be some sort of Ray Mears as well as setting down with a good video game! Best tech has to be the smart phone. I just love that I can be walking down the street, or sat by a lake and respond to clients with almost the same efficiency as if I were sat at my desk!

I look forward to participating and getting to know you all.

Ben

[jasonbayton]

Where abouts are you based Ben?

[Moombas]

Yeah have seen some requests also for developers here (in general) so always good to have someone here with some knowledge on that in general.

Welcome.

[WhiteChocolate1]

---

@Lizzie wrote:

Hello everyone,

My name is Lizzie and I am the Community Manager here in the Android Enterprise Customer Community. You are probably all use to having the roundtable introductions in meetings and sharing a fun fact about yourself. If you are like me, you then spend the next 30 seconds trawling through your brain to find an interesting fact to share with a group of people...the good news is you are not on the spot here! 😀 

This aside, it's really nice in a community to get know others and so it would be fantastic to hear from you!

I'll kick us off:

• I've been working in community for over 10 year across a few different industries. 
• I'm a big fan of music and I play a couple of instruments: so my 'office' playlist is quite an array of tunes
• I live on an island (it's quite a big one): so when I go to the Google office, I actually have to take a ferry, which sounds quite exotic! 

Please share a few facts about yourself, (here are a couple of ideas):

• What type of industry do you work in?
• Which country you are based in?
• Hobbies or interests?
• Favourite / couldn't live with out piece of tech?

Looking forward to speaking with you. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

---

My name is WhiteChocolate1 and I am eager to learn my role here as an employee in the community 

[WhiteChocolate1]

I work as an independent contractor for a home cleaning and pest control company and I live in the US but my work is based in India. I couldn't go without YouTube Music it's my Go To and my hobbies are playing games and listening to music.

[Cahillchlor]

Hi Lizzie, I believe I have finally got on the site as myself… cross your fingers all. I’m a paralegal of 20 years who has been working ( sh as lol we call it that) with apple regarding their privacy policy and how they cannot get me out of an organization I’d of an unknown company I don’t belong to… I’m from Costa Rica, speak Spanish, yet American 109%. If any one has any ways to wish me luck more than I have had.. thx - Chloe 

[Alex_Muc]

Hi there!

My name is Alex and I am an EMM admin at the City of Munich.
The city of Munich currently has around 1,6 million citizens, whose needs are taken care of by around 43,000 employees.
I have been working for the City of Munich in the field of mobile devices for a bit more than 10 years. At that time, we primarily had Symbian devices (Nokia), but also our first Android tablets and smartphones (~ Android 4.0). Together with a colleague, we operate an on-prem EMM and regularly adapt the technical solutions to the requirements and technical changes. 😃
Before I started working for the City of Munich, I worked for providers. Due to the boom in smartphones in particular, providers had to build and upgrade additional sites to handle the increased network traffic. In Bavaria, I spent a few years setting up base stations for UMTS and LTE and later worked as a construction manager for radio relay systems. But I preferred a "real" IT job in the long run. 😀

Apart from work:

• I live in Freising, near Munich airport 🚩
• I really enjoy hiking. Sport is also a must! (a training session at the gym at noon on home office days is great) 🌄
• I like playing board games (tip: Wingspan!) 🎲
• Since I grew up with a Sega Mega Drive and SNES, I still enjoy playing computer games today 🕹
• Can't play any instruments, but likes to go to concerts 🎶
• I like to travel. Rather rarely, but to special places (Feel free to check out my YouTube video about a trip to the wildlife of Uganda)

Favourite piece of tech? Well, that would probably be smartphones. I use more suitable devices for special tasks (photos, for work), but the smartphone is simply the all-rounder in my pocket.

[mattdermody]

Hi! My name is Matt Dermody and I'm the Director of Engineering for an Enterprise Mobility team within a warehouse management and supply chain software company. The hardware that I support for our end customers that run our supply chain software is almost exclusively fully managed Android devices today, but  it hasn't always been that way. Prior to Android most of the equipment ran some variation of Windows Mobile or CE for many generations of device, across 15+ years. The Android journey for the warehouse space was a bit delayed relative to other industries but really took off around 2015-2016 when the biggest rugged player in the space, Zebra (previously Motorola/Symbol), made a big bet on Android. Android ushered in a new era of more touch screen centric software design and along with it a more active strategy around device management. There was historically a mindset of building "golden images" and "set it and forget it" and "security through obscurity" that surrounded the world of rugged WinCE devices that has all been upended in our industry transition to Android. I have been at the forefront of that transition, rewriting many of the mobile business applications to run on Android and adapting the UX accordingly. Along the way I also had to get sharp at managing the Android devices and the mobile applications that run on them and have spent the past 8-9 years staying plugged into the world of Android in order to stay informed on how to keep my apps updated and my device management skills fresh. 

Due to the nature of the environments I support I am extremely plugged into the fully managed, dedicated device space that is typically characterized by shared usage of mission critical devices. I almost know nothing about BYOD use cases and Work Profiles, nor do I necessarily care as they are not my area of specialization. I honestly would have preferred to have stuck with DA and begrudgingly moved over to DO under the Android Enterprise umbrella around the A8 timeframe. A8 was a little early relative to the deprecation cycle but I was glad to rip the bandaid off early and commit my customers to AEDO long before we were forced to. 

Favorite piece of tech that I couldn't live without? Ironically it would have to be my iPhone. I sell and manage Android devices for a living and have done so for close to 10 years now, but I would never use one myself. Weird? I dunno. I simultaneously would never recommend anyone under any circumstance try to run a warehouse with an iOS device so its more a matter of hardware specialization for me. I've been an iPhone user since the 3G came out and prior to that used HTC Windows Mobile smart phones so I've only ever had smart phones my whole life. I've also ironically never owned an Android phone and don't have any interest for my personal life. AFW not AFL, right??

Beyond that, I'm based in Colorado and I love to snowboard and do other outdoor activities on the weekend like rock climbing, hiking, camping, SUPing, etc. I'm also into electronic music and house and travel relatively frequently to see shows. I DJ a little on the side for fun, but don't have any professional aspirations there. 

[W25]

I am a driver, I love listening to music and driving. I definitely need my phone for directions and listen to my favorite songs on it too. 

I love to learn, am annoyingly curious, which is probably how I ended up here! 

[Lizzie]

Hello @W25,

Great to see your reply here and that you love listening to music on your phone whilst driving. Have you got a go-to playlist or artist that you like to listen to? 

I was actually thinking the other day it would be great to have a community playlist. 😀

[MDauffenbach]

Hello, my name is Michael, but I also go by Mike (everyone always asks what I prefer). I work within the corporate IT branch at Medtronic, primarily managing the technology stacks for all things MDM and MAM related, along with various other responsibilities that have fallen under the technologist role in recent times. I am based out of the US, and I have been "messing" around with Android since about 2011, when I got my first smartphone.

My hobbies and interest are pretty varied, but some of them fall in line with my daily work. I love technology in general, and I do a lot of self-hosting and testing in my own home lab. I have a Proxmox server running on some recent AMD hardware that powers a number of VMs that control my home network, VPN services, VLANs, NAS, Home Automation, and more. I am also an avid gamer, motorcyclist, car enthusiast, gym goer, and of course, a bar hobbyist with a home-built bar and many books on making the perfect cocktails.

Hard to pick only one piece of tech I couldn't live without, so I will narrow it down to 2. The Steam Deck has made being able to take gaming on the go so much more convenient, and I can't see myself without it these days and, of course, any number of my earbuds/headphones. I am a bit of an audiophile + techy, so I am constantly hunting for the best-sounding and featured earbuds/headsets available.

I have been working with Android Enterprise since the very beginning going back to 2017/2018 before it fully launched and hope I can both learn and bring my own experiences to this community moving forward.

[jasonbayton]

Welcome!

We share a bunch of interests 😀

My Steam Deck has been gathering dust but I'm determined to get back into playing at some point.

Look forward to seeing your contributions mate!

[MDauffenbach]

Don't let it sit, I'd say mess about with it and find some new interesting things to do on it. It is a just a PC after all.

[Moombas]

Hi all,

I'm Rafael Schäfer currently working @ JYSK and mainly responsible for our entire mobile (Android) devices to be managed over all countries for now ~4 years via Zero-Touch + MDM. And we have only a very small team handling this for all those countries but works fine.

I'm from Germany so hopefully my English is well enough to help here as well but in general i think so 😉
Even I haven't learned in a jab in the IT, i have somehow slipped in because of personal interests and was working in a certified service center for repairing and troubleshooting mobile devices from several manufacturers (Samsung, Sony, Motorola/Lenovo, CAT).

During private time i love gaming (Diablo 4) and spend time with my family. I'm also always the one to be asked regarding technical issues for parts of my family (except Apple :P) so i do some kind of "private PC and Android support".

So i hope to be able to help here with knowledge gathered from experience mainly and a bit from the Android Professional Certification.

[Kristen]

Hi all!

I'm Kristen one of your friendly neighborhood Made By Google Product Experts from the US. I volunteer with Fitbit as well since 2016 and added Google once Fitbit was acquired by Google. I've been a Product Expert since 2021.

I love music and have been singing since I was 3 years old. I love musical theater and performed in theater through college. Now I play my Ukulele where I get to play for the city.

Although I'm US based, I love to cruise and I'm about to embark on my 31st cruise.

Favorite piece of tech now is my Pixel Watch although I also have a Pixel phone that I'm typing this on, a convertible laptop, a regular laptop, and a Kindle tablet.

I'm an Activity Director for a local retirement community.

[Lizzie]

I have to agree with @jasonbayton it's a pretty good title! 🌟

So great to see you have made it across to the customer community @Kristen and thanks for the introduction. I can't believe you are going on your 31st cruise, surely at this point you should get a boat named after you? 😀 I hope you have a lovely time. 

If you spot anything interesting or a nice view to make us all dream we are on our holidays whilst on your travels, feel free to share it here in our community off-topic area. 

Great to hear about your favourite tech. I'm intrigued to see where smart watches will go in the future, it feels like in many ways we are just scratching the surface at the moment.