Brief summary on Korean social enterprise support symposium

I couldn't participate in person in Korean social enterprise support symposium because of company work (My company is not social enterprise.)

Relay base is in here. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/%EC%82%AC%ED%9A%8C%EC%A0%81%EA%B8%B0%EC%97%85 In this relay base link, people speaks Korean.



This is the brief summary on this.

1. In future, Social economy organizations will prosper including social enterprises, non-profit organizations and cooperative.
2. Korean government's social enterprise support policy should be changed. In present they often supports employment, but their final goal should be social innovation and persuit of social value. So the system to measure social innovation and social value is needed. And government should support company who try to accomplish social innovation.
3. Korean government should support activity to create social ecology.
4. Innovation cluster should be adopted in social enterprise.
5. Korean government should support social enterprise fits on their stage of development. They should expand indirect support.
6. Innovative social enterpriser is needed.

I thought my blog's direction should changed. In my opinion, I should expand the target to review social economy organizations, not only social enterprises.

Portalsite Daum offers quick link service on Korean social enterprises

Daum ( http://www.daum.net/ ) offers quick link service on Korean social enterprises.

I think this will be helpful to advertise social enterprises.

I experienced it works for Korean social enterprises. But for foreign social enterprises, it doesn't worked except the company with overseas expension to Korea.

I disappointed most on their service because it doesn't work for relatively unknown Korean social enterprises. I think unknown social enterprises will desperate needy for this services than well-known social enterprises. Because for well-known social enterprises, there are a lot of accurate informations in many ways. But for unknown social enterprises, there are not many informations except their official homepages. And searching their official homepages are often hard.

So I suggested Daum to offer their service for unknown Korean social enterprises. They responded that they will consider it.

Little farmers bag review

I bought a bag in Little farmers.

Little farmers is a social enterprise who manufactures bags and shoes using eco-friendly material in eco-friendly process.

Quality of this bag was sufficient. Problem was the price. My sister also agreed this bag is expensive.

This bag was 158000 Korean won.

Dokdo is the Korean territory, Dokdo cookie review

I bought Dokdo cookie in 2012 Social Enterprise exhibition.

I'd like to gather information related to Dokdo cookie so I tried to go to the official homepage of Dokdo cookie. But in present its homepage doesn't work.



In Japan, Japanese are advertising that Takeshima(dokdo) is Japan's territory to sell Takeshima cookie. In order to correspond this, to advertise Dokdo is Korean territory founders built a Dokdo cookie company. R20(Represent 20 : Volunteer's union) said Dokdo cookie company sells cookie cheaper and uses natural ingredients. I'd like to check it but gave up because of lack of Japanese language skill.

If you buy Dokdo cookie, 2/3 of their expense are spend in Activity groups related to Korean Dokdo.

This is summary of Dokdo cookie story.



But, I'd like to focus whether it is delicious or not. I ate it with Social Enterpriser forum people.

Frankly speak, the taste of dokdo cookie was commonplace without suger and antiseptic taste. It would be positive for health, but no more special thing.

Dokdo cookie is hard to buy in off-line. In online, You can buy dokdo cookie in its official homepage, but the homepage doesn't work now.

I hope their homepage will work soon.

Web Accessibility statistic for (Korean) social enterprise homepages

Socially weak like the disabled often cannot use internet explorer because of their  physical condition. So offering good web accessibility is espeically important for social enterprises.

Through internet searching, I couldn't find any statistics about web accessibility for Korean social enterprises.

So I checked web accessibility for Korean social enterprises and verified using firefox 12.0 and firebug 1.9.4, To clarify whether the web accessibility problem comes from web standard programming or not.

 (Result attached. To see the detail you can click the picture)

I didn't researched for all Korean social enterprises. There was too many homepages so I couldn't searched all of them.

For social enterprise I researched, 50% of them had homepage. Rest of them didn't have any homepages.

71% of Korean social enterprise homepage's web accessibility was good.

In my statistics, 'Bad' means there were significant problem for web accessibility, the case I couldn't read contents or connect menu link. The proportion of 'Bad' mark was 8%. The case that there was minor problem, I discribed to 'Slightly problematic'. The proportion of 'Slightly problematic' was 15%.

Rest of them had problem to make up accounts. This proportion was 6%.



There is a statistics in 2011, although this is not for social enterprises, but for common companies, web accessibility for mobile phone was often bad. So I will offer web accessibility statistics for mobile phone later.

dornation through walking, smartphone application Bigwalk Review

Bigwalk is the smartphone application to dornate an artificial leg who cannot easily walk through walking.

I didn't checked there is Bigwalk App for iPhone, but you can download the App for Android in google market for free.

To use bigwalk Application first, you should join online membership. (Once you join membership you wouldn't see joining form anymore. That means this App provide automatic login. There is no corresponding image because I didn't captured screenshot at that time) The process to join isn't complicated so you can join it easily. But for foreigners, I didn't checked whether English service is provided or not. So foreigners can feel complicated to join the membership if bigwalk English service didn't applied.

After you successfully log-in, you can see the screen like this.

To click START, measuring walking to dornate would start.

The more you walk, the more you can dornate in this state. This Application is using cyber money called noon to dornate.

If you select STOP in this state, the App shows confirmation page and returns main page before you clicking START.

You can see menu in left top of the main page. The first top menu shows notifications. To click second menu you can see dornation target. In third menu you can see the place you walked.

The upper picture shows when you select menu in second.

The upper picture shows when you select menu in third. The upper picture shows exact path when I walked, but especially I walked short distance, the path often incorrect.

If you click START and instantly STOP before walking, the map shows unknown space.

I did some experiments through Bigwalk.

You cannot gain cyber money when you are in bus and subway.

If you click START in this App and don't move for a long time, you wouldn't gain cyber money. But calorie calculation operates and this app shows that you consume many calorie. As a result, you cannot dornate to click START and merely sit down.



I couldn't find any English version of this application through searching web. And because of the GPS calculation system, I think this app wouldn't operate in foreign country.[modified : I questioned to Bigwalk facebook homepage and they said Bigwalk application is available anywhere in worldwide.] I hope Bigwalk company offers English version with detectable GPS system in foreign country.

I plan to review later Bigwalk app again after using Bigwalk in foreign country except Korea.

Review on Big issue Korea, the magazine by social enterprise

I bought and read the Big issue magazine in May and June.

In this magazine, there is a lot of information about entertainment and social issue. In case of entertainment section, I rarely read except informations related to singer Heo Young-saeng personally. So I read social issue most in this magazine.

The merit of this magazine is there is detailed informations which cannot obtain much for one subject. But demerit was there is a lot of informations that I don't paying attentions. In this case, I thought the printing is wasteful.

When you decide to read Big issue, you'd better buy it directly by salesperson. They are street people who are willing to accomplish financial independence. You can help those people to buy it in person.

I am afraid because in Korea, this magazine you can by only in Seoul. I hope sales network of this magazine will be wider.



In case of foreigners in abroad, You'd better to buy Big issue in your country.

review on book, Bonobo revolution.

The most inspiring thing of this book is the example of US social enterprises. Because in many cases Korea follows the trend of US socially. So people in Korea who plan to build social enterprise 10-20 years later, in my opinion, this book will be helpful.

This book introduces many examples of social enterprises in worldwide. There is not profound and very detailed informations of social enterprises but It will be helpful to understand social enterprises pretty a lot. For people who want to know what social enterprises doing, I think this book will be helpful.

I disappeared most on Kyobo e-book system because I read it through Kyobo e-book smartphone application. It often malfunctioned when I turn the pages. There was no convenient additional functions which exists in other applications like ridibooks.

But overall this e-book was good. Personally the example of Ashoka was greatly helpful to think about my future plan.

Brief review on Social Enterprise Exhibition

There was a Social Enterprise Exhibition at COEX, Seoul in 2012 July 1-2.

I went there in July 1

There was many social enterprises who exhibit and advertise their goods and services.

There was too many companies I contacted so I couldn't remember the exact source of goods.

I think the most missing points of the exhibition was in below, there was not many companies who sell goods on the spot. Many companies prepared their goods just for exhibition, not for sale.

But I succeeded to buy some goods on there. For those goods, I will review later. Some of goods are required to be utilize for long period because of characteristics of the goods.

Some of other products, I plan to purchase and review later.

For foreigners who cannot speak and listen Korean, it wouldn't be hard to understand the contents of the exhibition.

[Preview by picture] Social Enterprise exhibition

There was a Social Enterprise exhibition in 2012 July 1~2, at EXCO, Seoul.