Team member of Sullivan's Voice
The software, Sullivan’s Voice, developed by the team of the same name from UNIST, was chosen to be one of the finalists of the Asia cooperative pilot projects at the 2013 Asia Youth Tech Entrepreneurship Camp (AYTEC).
“We hope our idea, Sullivan’s Voice, could help handicapped people to foster their dreams and make them come true,” said the leader of Sullivan’s Voice, Ki Hyeock Lee from the School of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering at UNIST.
“Our creative idea is about to generate business foundation and social value through international cooperation,” added the leader, introducing his achievements accomplished with his friends and social venture businessmen in Taiwan and Thailand. “This would be a great example of the creative economy of Korea’s new government.”
The camp was held on June 24 ~ 28, in cooperation with the British Council in Korea and Intel Korea.
Sullivan’s Voice received $5,000 and is eligible for the social business forum, ‘APEC Start-up Accelerator Leadership Summit 2013’, and the ‘Intel APEC Challenge’ for social businessmen in the Asia-Pacific region in August 2103.
If they win the above competitions, the team will have a chance to attend the Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley in 2013. This will be the first time a Korean team has attended that event.
Sullivan’s Voice is an enterprising team based on creativity and innovation. “The ultimate goals of Sullivan’s Voice are to understand and solve the problems and social gaps generated by the digital divide.”
For this goal, the team developed software which is able to make and propagate audio books for the visually impaired using a Smartphone. The team won the grand prize at the 2011 National Challenge for Social Ventures and was selected at the 2011 Fostering Program for Youth and Social Enterprises by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
The journey to this achievement didn’t go smoothly. There were hard times which almost broke up the team, and technical difficulties in developing the software. But the support from visually impaired people made them continue on.
“The sightless people supported and trusted us, and because of them, we were able to complete the development. We hope more people will have the opportunity to use audio books because of our software,” said Lee.
The software developed by Sullivan’s Voice manages copyrights associated with the distribution of audio books beyond the production.
More audio books will be produced and more people will benefit from audio books. By cooperating with attendants from Taiwan and Thailand through the international camp, the software Sullivan’s Voice showed the possibility to grow even to Asian Platform.
“We were able to open a business in the science and technology university, UNIST, due to the interdisciplinary study provided by the school,” said Mr. Lee. “I hope more students can challenge themselves with creative ideas.”
