The Return of BelkBlog

Welcome to the return of Belkblog. Ok, so this blog has been dark for a while. Six months to the day. Well, a lot's happened in six months. We got home, safe, sound, and somewhat enlightened by the 110 day trip that prompted my creating BelkBlog.

I went back to work in Mid-August. I had a lot of great discussions with Qualcomm, and after almost 14 years, for a bunch of reasons, decided it was time for a change. The company is not mad at me, and I'm not mad at them. To the contrary, as folks read some of the things I'm likely to be writing, I remain a aficionado of Qualcomm the company, and the technologies it has brought to the world. Plus, I gotta say, the experience I gained in almost 14 years at Qualcomm, combined with the commercial success of the company is what's enabled me to choose my own path, and be writing this blog. And I also gotta say, writing for the first time in 14 years without lawyers looking over my shoulder! However, in full disclosure, I need to say that although Qualcomm is no longer paying me a paycheck, I still own stock in the company, as I have since 1991, and expect to for quite a while.

My last day was January 10^th of this year. A lot of folks would reflexively say, "well, are you going to take time off", and then if they knew me, just as reflexively say "hold on, you already took time off". Yep, a rolling stone gathers no moss. And a busy me does not bother my wife.

So it's been three weeks, what am I up to? I formed a business entity, ICT168 Capital, LLC, as a home for my various initiatives. I've got the URL ICT168.com, but don't bother checking it out, as I haven't had time to populate the site yet. The name is less esoteric than one might think, as long as one speaks Mandarin (which I don't). ICT is the ITU (International Telecommunications Union, the comms arm of the UN) description for Information and Communications Technology and 168 is the Chinese Number that can roughly be defined as "moving prosperously together into the future". Don't take my word for it, check out Wikipedia ("chinese number 168"), or even the US Treasury's Bureau of Engraving that sells US $1 bills with 168 serial numbers as "lucky money". So what is ICT168? As I describe in my new bio: Jeffrey Belk is a principal in ICT168 Capital, LLC, a newly formed entity focused on developing and guiding global growth opportunities in the Information and Communication Technology space. That's ICT168.

It is truly staggering how many bright people and how much entrepreneurship is going on in the IT and mobile spaces. While there is still excess, the focus, drive and innovation is very different from Bubble 1.0, as for the most part folks seem a lot more pragmatic about the time and lifting it takes to productize and scale. It's been a lot of fun working the phones, scrambling around the country/world, and having great dialogs with a broad swath of folks who knew or found out that I was making a career move after 24 years as a corporate guy.

So far so good. Two weeks ago, I joined the Advisory Board of an exciting Israeli-based Mobile Video Ringtone company named VRINGO www.vringo.com whose CEO , Jon Medved is a true visionary, superb entrepreneur, and great guy. Last week, I was elected to the Board of Directors of a West Coast Semiconductor company (I'll wait for their announcement before I say more, but it's a very, very exciting little company, that I'll add is NOT competitive with my old company). I'm advising a global marketing organization on mobile strategies, and have a bunch of other stuff in the hopper. The tough part is choosing among all the great stuff out there to do!

So I haven't stopped thinking, and I've got a lot of thoughts. And did I mention that I don't have lawyers looking over my shoulder? There will be more to come. Check this space. As usual, you may not agree with me. But the ride won't be boring. And how many other blogs have noodle factories in Vietnam and Balinese festivals in their archives?

Or, if you want to stream a video while you do your mail, this was my last 'official speech' as a Qualcomm guy, "Enabling Growth in Emerging Markets" ( http://blip.tv/file/529201 ) which I delivered at part of the Stanford/MIT Venture Forum on Why India? Why Wireless, held on the Stanford campus. Guess if one is giving a last speech with a company, not a bad venue!

Comments

[Alan A. Reiter]

Hi Jeff,

Best of luck with your new ventures.

Perhaps you can convince some of the companies with which you're involved to start blogging, creating podcasts, videos, etc. -- assuming they aren't tied up in knots by their lawyers and "get" what marketing really is about.

[writing jobs]

welcome back belkblog!!.