I knew when we chose the topics for this year’s Blogging Idol competition that the burgeoning BYOD movement would be a hot-button issue. What I didn’t expect was the philosophical approach our bloggers took, and that viewed through the right lens, BYOD is more of an opportunity than a challenge for the IT department.

Unlike the survey we posted for our readers — which offered the options to ban, allow or negotiate over BYOD — there are more shades of grey than anticipated. (For those of you who are curious, view the poll results here and comment below on whether you’re surprised or it panned out exactly the way you thought it would, Kreskin.)

Next week, we’re moving on to the subject of Big Data. There’s a lot of angles to take:

* Does this have legs, or is it a marketing flash in the pan? Is this just data mining by another name, or is it an entirely different kettle of fish?

* What’s the use-case — really? Considering the huge investments required, who can big data work for, and under what circumstances?

* Ever given any thought to the notion that maybe we’re collecting more data than we can actually use?

* Has big data reinvigorated the open source movement?

Looking forward to what our bloggers have to say next week.