Bringing Technology to a Community

You are cordially invited to The HeliOS Project grand opening on Saturday, the 4th of June between 1 and 5 PM.  We will have the traditional Central Texas fare of grilled hot dogs, chips, dips, and other assorted foods along with a raffle of three of our computers.




I also want to warmly thank The Taylor Meat Company for helping us sponsor the event by supplying the 100 hot dogs we will need.  I am sure we will use them all.

We are expecting a pretty good turn-out as the City of Taylor has welcomed us at every turn.  We look forward to serving this community and if the response to our initial presence is any indication of future activity, we're going to be busy.

About that...

We've received some criticism for "isolating" ourselves with this facility move to Taylor Texas.  Taylor is considerably outside of Austin.  Some have said that we've abandoned a large need-base in order to serve one of lesser demographic.

First off, this is untrue.  We still serve Austin Texas and the entire 50 mile radius.  The point of our move was in gaining a permanent and stable home for HeliOS.  And being more honest than I probably need to be, as nice as Austin is, we spent 3 years trying to get a place donated for our dedicated use.

That didn't happen.

That did not happen for one main reason.  Austin hasn't been clobbered by the economic down-turn as badly as the most of the nation.  Commercial real estate is still demanding and receiving premium rental prices so there is less unused space in Austin.  A building owner or manager isn't going to donate a space when she can recognize income from it.  We were simply unable to gain a foothold there.

Taylor Texas has given us that foothold.  And for that, we are going to repay them by bringing computer technology to a greatly under-served population.  As we've made our way around the local businesses and introduced ourselves to many residents, we've found that community computer resources are over-taxed and waiting lines at the library are at times, two hours long.


That's why we have dedicated much of our 2200 square foot space to an open computer center.    While we haven't gotten the scheduling worked out yet, we plan to have not only open-use hours, but we've identified an extreme need for computer and Internet 101 classes.

Here's a conversation Skip Guenter had with a friendly neighbor last week.

"So anyone can come in and use those computers?"


"Sure, but students have priority."


"What if I don't want my daughter exposed to perverts?  How can you make sure that doesn't happen?"


"We can seat her at a computer without an Internet connection."


"Well, how is that supposed to keep perverts away?"

Apparently, the perverts live in the computer.  It also apparent that we have our work cut out for us.

So yeah, we plan to concentrate on bringing computer technology to Taylor Texas.  Taylor Texas is the place that brought us out of the desert and for that we will repay them in kind....several-fold.

I'll stop short of the manna references....

But I will state that I know on which side our bread is buttered.

We've received a ton of emails, asking how people can start a project such as HeliOS.  Email me at helios at fixedbylinux dott Kommm and I can get you pointed in the right direction.

I again want to thank in particular, Skip Guenter for his long hours and dedication to getting this facility ready for operation.  He spent almost all of his off-work time at HeliOS, getting it ready for this moment.  Take a few minutes and look at some of the pictures that document our progress during the transformation.

We look forward to seeing you on the 4th of June.