- Hosting Creator Planet 2014 to unearth breakthrough ideas of creation and innovation based on the Internet of Things
- Selected 12 proposals with ideas for commerce and IoT convergence across online, offline and mobile. Deep-dive training programs—e.g. making of drones, 3D printing, etc.—available to participants for one month

Seoul, Korea, July 16, 2014—SK Planet is holding Creator Planet 2014 aimed at discovering unique and highly original ideas of creation and innovation based on the Internet of Things (IoT).  

Now into its second year, Creator Planet was first conceived as a part of SK Planet’s 'Dong go dong rak' Program, which aims to nurture partnership in the IT and mobile ecosystem. The Creator Planet is designed to help develop the imaginative and technological capacity of creative companies to their full potential and then to provide them a chance to showcase their products at the open conference.

This truly is a one-of-a-kind opportunity in Korea for startups engaged in turning ideas into the tangible using state-of-the-art tools like the 3D printer and physical computing technologies such as Arduino* based on the mobile platform.
* Arduino is an open source physical computing platform that can store programs written on computers and can serve as a circuit board capable of controlling machines without a separate semiconductor device.  

The first Creator Planet held last year has been widely acclaimed for broadening the creative activities in the country while providing an overview of the latest technological trends across the globe. This year the theme is ‘Innovative Ideas Based on On-Offline Convergence’.

SK Planet received proposals from applicants for a whole month and selected twelve projects with ideas centering on hardware and software convergence across online, offline and mobile. The chosen participants began their projects last week with a kick-off workshop held at Open Creators::Space in Yongsan, Seoul.

During the project period, SK Planet will provide a month of various training programs which can help participants acquire theoretical knowledge as well as learn by doing. In-depth workshops on technologies of interest to the participants are available to sign up for based on the project requirement and timeline. Some examples include the Physical Computing course which will give a chance to produce the drone, which Amazon revealed as a new means of delivery and the Digital Fabrication course on 3D printing and laser-cutting, which are essential to realizing online and offline convergence.

This year’s Creator Planet is very promising as several of the participating startups such as Hello!Geeks, 3L Labs, n.thing and Make Sense have already won recognitions from venture and IT programs like Kstartup, beLAUNCH and Siggraph. The aim of the organizers is to make Creator Planet more than an exhibition of conceptual presentation of creative activities. The ultimate goal here is to really highlight the work of these emerging players as they continuously make their place in the niche markets with diverse and very original ideas.

Jeon Yun-ho, Chief Technology Officer of SK Planet notes, “The world of next commerce we envision at SK Planet is essentially O2O (Online to Offline), and this vision is being brought to reality with technologies like BLE beacon, geofencing and NFC tag.” He emphasizes, “In the era of the Internet of Things SK Planet will serve as a platform for developers to share creative ideas and as a catalyst to making breakthrough innovation and delivering new values in the O2O commerce space.”

The presentations by project teams and the showcasing of their products will take place in the form of an informal conference on August 30th. The keynote session includes a lecture by Dr. Shigeru Kobayashi of IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences) who is well-known for his work on IoT. There will also be a presentation by SK Planet on its Beacon-based commerce technology. All in all, the conference promises to be a great opportunity for getting a broad glimpse of trends in IoT development both home and abroad.

Those who wish to attend the event should sign up on July 22nd or after at the conference homepage (http://Creatorplanet.skplanet.com). Registration is free of charge.