Behind the Screens is a video series where we sit down with people from inside Airtame to work through the questions we hear most. For episode two, we asked Simon, Chief Product Officer, to get into one of the most common frustrations in hybrid work: why BYOD consistently breaks down the moment you move from your desk into a meeting room.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is an umbrella term for using your personal device in a work setting. In a meeting room context, it typically means connecting your laptop to the room’s screen, camera, microphone, and speakers, then running the call from it. Sometimes you’re connected via cable. It means your device carries the full load, which works fine at your desk. In a meeting room, it’s a different story.
At Airtame, we use the term differently. BYOD means you can walk in with any device — laptop, phone, tablet — and start a meeting. But your device never carries the call. That load stays on dedicated hardware built into the room. Your device is just the remote control.This distinction is what we talked about in episode 002 of Behind the screens.
In a standard BYOD setup, one laptop is responsible for everything: the call, the screen, the audio, the video. The moment that device struggles, the whole room will be impacted.
Some vendors market wireless dongles or receivers as a solution — sometimes called BYOM, Bring Your Own Meeting. The idea is that you connect wirelessly to the room’s camera, microphone, and speakers instead of plugging in. But the connection method isn’t the problem. Wired or wireless, the call still runs on your personal device. Going wireless just removes the cable and adds latency and compression on top of the same underlying issue.
Watch the full conversation right here:
