GDPR - an accidental work of genius

If you could claim airmiles for every GDPR seminar attended, I’d be lazing on a beach somewhere in the Indian Ocean instead of reading on my office screen about Jan Koum resigning from Facebook. 

Jan Koum and I have very little in common.  When it comes to personal wealth, for example, I am still working on plans to match his share of the $22 billion he and co-founder Brian Action received from selling WhatsApp to Facebook. 

But we do share one preoccupation – data privacy.  Press rumours suggest that his departure may have less to do with “taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology” than with his disagreement with how Facebook is using WhatsApp’s personal data and changing its encryption standards.  At a much humbler level, my concern is how to respond to the new data privacy environment that comes into force in a few weeks’ time on May 25 when GDPR, the Beast from the East (Brussels), finally arrives.

Let’s be frank. GDPR preparation has been a grind. GDPR seminars haven’t been much fun (does anyone know any GDPR jokes, let alone good ones?) and often confusing.