Helio is now Virgin Mobile USA

Today brings a close to the chapter in our lives of Helio. As of today I'm now officially part of Virgin Mobile USA. I'm very excited about my future and Virgin Mobile's future however the day is bittersweet knowing that something I helped to develop from an idea is changing into something not originally envisioned.

With that said change is good.

http://virginmobileusa.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=176

Helio and Celebrity Apprentice

I started to watch this season's Celebrity Apprentice because of Gene Simmons of KISS. Unfortunately he lasted only a few episodes but seemed to have left on his own accord. I noticed in one of the early episodes that Gene was using Helio's Ocean device, our first flagship device. It was pretty cool to see someone I've followed since my childhood actually use something that I had a hand in creating.

I finally picked up on watching the post Gene episodes and have seen more Helio devices in use. Most recently the Fin device and one of the episodes even had the default Helio ringtone playing. I'm assuming our marketing team had something to do with device placement. It's exciting to see that the majority of the mobile phones shown on the show so far have been a Helio.



Above is a picture of some of the celebrities using a Helio Fin on a recent episode of Celebrity Apprentice.

My team gets an award from Red Hat and Jboss

I wanted to highlight a project my team at Helio was responsible for that received some industry recognition today. Red Hat and Jboss awarded Helio for innovative use of Red Hat and Jboss technologies.

We started the project in early 2007 and launched our new systems in September 2007. SK Telecom, one of our parent companies, was very pleased with the project and championed the intiative for the Innovation award within Red Hat and Jboss. Helio will formally receive the award at Jboss World in February.

Business Process Automation

SK Telecom (www.sktelecom.com), Korea’s leading wireless telecommunications services provider, and Helio (www.helio.com), an advanced U.S. mobile service provider, were selected for their use of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss jBPM to build and streamline its wireless data portal (WDP). After deploying Red Hat solutions, Helio quickly experienced cost reductions. Operational savings amounted to 50 percent monthly and the company experienced a 90 percent reduction in commercial software and licensing costs.

Click here for full press release.

Look I'm on TV

I had a bit of a surprise when I arrived at work today in Korea. Taeho who helps me navigate SK Telecom while I'm in Korea told me I was being filmed and interviewed today for SKT'sinternal television network. The topic of the interview was to highlight a content management system for mobile that SK Telecom and Helio worked on together. My team launched the product about a month ago.

It was funny to see how nervous I was for something that will be seen by so few people. Definitely an experience I won't forget.

The first run at the interview was disastrous, lots of umms, I was looking off into the distance as I thought of things to say and even made the mistake of looking directly into the camera.

After a couple of rehearsals and revised talking points we were able to nail it.

Amp'd Mobile RIP

One of our competitors is terminating customer support today and will shut off service in a matter of days. They recently filed for bankruptcy and were not able to secure additional financing. It is never good to hear of a competitors failure, but it is encouraging to see that our different approach to the space is yielding much more positive results.


http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/07/24/ampd-revises-shutoff-date-july-31-at-the-earliest/

Austin MoMo

I've made it back from a successful trip to Austin. Of course I ate some of my favorite food and was able to catch up with some old friends.

Once off the plane I immediately headed for the Salt Lick, but only the one in the airport. I ordered a brisket sandwich with extra sauce. Just as I remembered it, wonderful. The last time I had Salt Lick was when I had Jacki buy some at the airport when she was returning to Atlanta. Her flight was delayed multiple hours and I ended up eating that sandwich nearly 8 hours after she bought it. It was much better to have hot and right off the grill.

Next stop, music. I left straight for Waterloo Records from the airport. Spent about an hour at Waterloo and picked up quite a bit of Texas music including Vallejo, Storyville, and Chingon. I also picked some other things that only a store like Waterloo tends to carry.

At this point I checked into the hotel, and then headed over to see Ron and Kat. I hadn't seen them in years and couldn't have asked for a better visit. Good drinks and even better conversation. Thanks for the great time.

Now back to reality. Although Ron and I stayed up too late, I had to get to work on my presentation first thing Monday morning. The Mobile Monday Austin was the purpose of the trip and I had a good bit of work to do. I put in 2-3 hours up until lunch, then made a side trip for another bar-b-q lunch at Rudy's. I worked at Rudy's for about an hour and then I met up with Enrique, the organizer of Mobile Monday, to work on my presentation.

We met at Opal Divine's on 6th street and worked there for several hours. We had a surprise visit from Tux, a former co-worker. We were able to show each other family pictures, catch up on what old friends are now doing, and then catching each other up on how life is going in general. We worked right up until the time Enrique and I had to go to the Omni hotel for the event.

I thought I was going to be nervous when I presented, but fortunately the audience was very laid back and I was able to have a relaxed and interactive discussion. I was allotted 30 minutes for my presentation and believe I ended up talking for over an hour. People couldn't get enough of Helio. I presented the Ocean and discussed how the key is communication over data services. All content must be discoverable and shared, usability is key, the simple things often have a greater impact than complex features, and shared my ideas for solving mobility problems server side.

This was my first opportunity to present to an industry audience and to hear immediate feedback. There is a lot of excitement about Helio and the audience seemed very pleased with the presentation. It's great to see so many people rooting for us.

Enrique gave a glowing review of my presentation on his blog. My favorite quote is "and today David is one of my mobility heroes". Too kind, too kind.

A special thanks to C. Enrique Ortiz and to Marisa Sladek. Thank you for providing me a great opportunity and for doing a great thing for mobility by carrying the Mobile Monday torch in Austin.

After the event I met up with Terry at Trudy's South Star. He's now my brother in law but that night it felt like we were just catching up over drinks back in college. One of the best times I've had with Terry in years. Terry and I stayed out until Trudy's shut down at 2am. Sorry to keep you up so late!

Since I had a 6am flight the next morning I just ended up staying up all night, the risk of falling asleep and not waking up was too high. I'm now back in Santa Monica, caught up on sleep, and back to my regularly scheduled program.

Thanks to everyone for giving me a better visit home than I could have imagined. It was great to catch up with all of you and I can't wait until next time.

Oh and how do I feel about going back to Austin? Other than the fact that it was 97 degrees and I was sweating everywhere I went, I was glad to see the spirit of "Keep Austin Weird" is alive and well. It was great to see that it still feels like home.

The travel never stops... Austin

Just one more trip and then I'll be home for a while. I was in Korea last week and am heading to my former hometown of Austin as I type this.

I've been invited to speak at a Mobile Mondays Austin by a former colleague of mine, Enrique Ortiz. See below for the details if you are in Austin. I'll be speaking about the launch of our newest device the Ocean.

When: Monday, May 14 , 2007 5:45 pm - 8:00pm
Where: Omni Hotel - Austin Room (2nd Floor) 700 San Jacinto at 8th Street Austin, TX 78701 [map]
Cost: Free, space is limited so please RSVP

It has been nearly 5 years since I've been to Austin. I'm anxious about seeing the town I called home for many years and fear that I'll be disappointed with what the town has turned into. In other ways I'm worried that I'll fall back in love with the town and will want to immediately move back. Hopefully it will be somewhere in between the two.

The best part of this trip other than the food (bbq, and tex-mex) will be getting to catch up with my good friend Ron and brother in law Terry.

Well the plane is now boarding, so wish me luck on my presentation.

Welcome the Presidents of America

Last week I attended a wireless industry conference called CTIA. This is a chance for many of the big players in wireless to converge in a single place to show off their new products, services, and also provides a chance to catch up with old friends in the industry. I've been in the wireless industry for approximately 7 years and time and time again you run into the same people. The running joke is the people are the same only the companies on the business cards change.

Over the course of the week I met with numerous companies ranging from brand new startups with a handful of employees to some of the largest companies in the industry including Nokia, and AOL.

The highlight of the conference were the keynote speakers on the final day. President Bush and President Clinton both spoke to a packed hall. This was a great once in a lifetime opportunity.

I arrived about 30 seconds before they came on stage. It seemed as though every chair in the room had been taken. As I walked in a group from Helio waved at me and told me to sit in the reserved rows at the very front that were empty. Not hesitating I lifted the rope and settled into the 3rd row of what had to have been the press area. No one said a thing and I took out my computer and made it look like I was taking notes just like the rest of them. I also ended up with one of the best seats in the entire room. :-)

George Bush came out first, cracked a joke about he and Bill being the odd couple, and proceeded to talk a little about how the telecom industry had a positive impact on his presidency. Bush's speech was more philosophical and and although it had a little less substance than Clinton's speech it was very enjoyable.

Bush had a great presence about him. He came off as charismatic, funny, and very down to earth. My impression of him as president was that of a very formal, and stiff president. Hearing him speak you got the sense of him being a very down to earth person from Texas. You also realize that he has the brains in that family.

After Bush left the stage Clinton came out and made a joke about this is the punishment he gets for winning the presidency from Bush. He is now Bush's straight man, since he follows Bush and is the butt of many of Bush's jokes.

Clinton discussed the importance of Information Technology to the US. He took the principals of how IT benefited the US and stated that wireless technology has an even larger opportunity to improve quality of life in developing nations, and ultimately all of modern society.

The speeches wrapped and Bush and Clinton joined each other on stage together and took some lite questions through a moderator. It was great to see Bush and Clinton united together. They both appeared extremely sincere and extremely comfortable with where they are in life.

It was great to see the two of the them together. It really showed how unimportant the Democrat vs Republican debate is and showed the importance of how coming together and just being Americans can have a much greater impact.

I must also add that Bush looked fantastic. It is hard to believe he is in his early 80s.

Although I was on the third row I wasn't able to get any great pictures. The pictures I took were of the video screens in the room.
Link to more pictures

Link to a recording of the keynote
Link to a good synopsis of the speech

Fighting Foo

Last week in Orlando Florida I was able to see the Foo Fighters play a private concert. This was part of an invitation only party thrown by the mobile phone division of LG as part of the CTIA convention. Once I heard Foo Fighters were part of this event I worked my industry network and was able to get onto the private list.

A small group of us from Helio broke off from our dinner at Hard Rock Live and headed over to the LG party. Security was one of the tightest as far as the CTIA private events went. If you weren't on their list you weren't going to get in. The party was at The Groove on Universal City Walk in Orlando. The club probably held a couple hundred people at most.

We arrived early around 8:30pm, had a couple of drinks and met up with some of the people we knew at LG. After we caught up I headed to the stage. The band ended up coming on a little after 10pm.

Foo Fighters
The Groove
Orlando, Florida
March 27, 2007

All My Life
My Hero
Times Like These
Learn To Fly
Breakout
For All The Cows
Best Of You
The One
Big Me
Generator
Monkeywrench
Everlong

During the set Dave Grohl made reference that they were playing an office party. Since Dave knew LG was footing the bill he started to joke around about how cool LG was and how Sears sucks and that he won't buy Kenmore, he'll only buy LG. Little did he know that it was the Mobile Phone division of LG sponsoring the event and not the LG appliances division. At least he tried.

Highlights of the set for me were All My Life, Learn To Fly, Monkeywrench and Everlong. I've been playing drums quite a bit a the house and All My Life, Learn To Fly and Monkeywrench are regularly a part of my practice set. The parts aren't that complex but they are extremely tiring to play and are just fast enough to be out of comfort zone. During the breakdown of All My Life I noticed their drummer slowed the tempo to make it easier to play. Pretty interesting that their drummer seemed to struggle ever so slightly with the exact same part of the song as I do.

The oddest part of the show was you had many people, myself included, dressed in casual business attire with jackets and slacks. Many of the people at the show weren't very familiar with the band. It seems such a waste that these private events don't allow for their biggest fans to see them. Fortunately I was able to take advantage of this and was able to get a setlist, Chris Shiflett's , their lead guitarist, guitar pic (red), and Dave Grohl's guitar pic (black). Chris only threw one pic into the audience and that was thrown directly to me. I pulled Dave's pic off his mic stand after the show.

Afterwards the group I was with headed back over to the Hard Rock for another private party. This one was thrown by MTV. After talking to a couple of people at the front desk we were able to get in to the party. The artist at the MTV party was Three 6 Mafia. A hip hop artist I had heard of in name only. After watching about 30 minutes of their set I still don't see the fascination with live hip hop performances. A bunch of people on stage rapping to music coming over the PA.

The MTV event was nice and was much more conducive to visiting with people. The LG Party was all about the Foo Fighters concert, and the MTV party was much more social and allowed for light business networking.

After finding the larger group of Helio people at the MTV party we said our goodbyes, broke for the night, and all headed back to our respective hotels.

Link to more pictures from Foo Fighter's show.

Kickflip Sighting

I forgot to mention that Jacki, Darian, and I saw a girl at the table next to us Friday night that was talking on a Helio Kickflip. We were eating at the Cheesecake Factory in Brentwood about 2 miles from our house.

Helio

I get to rarely write about the company I work for, in fear of sharing information I shouldn't, but I wanted to share some of the accomplishments that we released to the press yesterday. I'm very proud of what we have achieved, and it is clear we've quickly come into the life and minds of many people in the US and all of this within our first 9 months of launching the company.

If you don't know, I work for Helio, a new mobile carrier focused on delivering a wireless experience that is geared for the data centric web generation. Although I'm sure my marketing people wouldn't approve that description. I run the Platform Engineering team and have touched nearly every aspect of every service Helio has brought to market. As Jacki and Darian can attest we live and breathe Helio, I work long hours, Jacki gets tattoos :-), and Darian is our "man on the street" peddling the goods to the kids in school. And of course I get to write this as I'm on the other side of the globe working at one our parent companies, SK Telecom, in Korea.

Here are highlights from our most recent press release.

Helio's Subscribers

• Launched 3 devices (Hero, Kickflip, Drift)
  
• Expect to surpass 100,000 subscribers in early Q2
• Average mobile bill is over $100 a month

Multiple Industry Firsts

• Myspace Mobile
• GPS-enabled Google Maps
• Buddy Beacon
• Gifting and Begging

Subscriber Statistics

• 25% of ARPU (average revenue per user) from data services. This is approximately $25, and is 2-3 times the industry average
• MySpace Mobile is used by over 70% of subscribers
• WAP usage by over 85% of our users (this is the mobile web for those of you that don't know what WAP is)
  
• Over 80% of our subscribers with GPS enabled devices have downloaded Google Maps
• Approximately 70% of our subscribers with GPS enabled devices have downloaded Buddy Beacon
• And the typical Helio subscriber sends over 400 SMS messages a month

So what does all of that mean? It means the stuff we have been working on is getting used by our subscribers more than we could have ever imagined. We are setting industry records and exceeding all statistics the industry had come to accept. It shows that the people who are Helio's customers are consuming every aspect of our service in every way possible. This is what we had hoped for but we didn't expect this level of enthusiasm so early into our company's existence. Whatever we are doing is resonating with our customers.

This is only the beginning and our future looks very promising. Of course I know what we have coming in the future and all I can say is you have no idea how cool the next 9 months are going to be.

At this point I must give thanks to Jacki and Darian for supporting me on this crazy ride out here in LA. I couldn't have done this without you.