Minkrappa: from sharing technical knowledge to connecting an industry

“The most rewarding moments are when I receive a thank-you message or email from someone who has joined a company such as Samsung or LG, or from a university student working on a graduation thesis.”

Cho Young-bong, then 47 and head of Hings, described the satisfaction he found in running an online community. Better known by the name Minkrappa, he operated Minkrappa’s Display Portal, a café with approximately 45,000 members and seven million cumulative views. It was established to exchange information and build professional connections across displays, semiconductors, mobile technology and solar energy.

The café had its own booth at International LED & OLED Expo 2011, held at KINTEX in Ilsan from 21 to 24 June. Its regular participation had begun three years earlier at the invitation of the exhibition organizer. Cho recalled being concerned about the modest booth on the first occasion; by 2011, he joked, the challenge was accommodating the enthusiasm of participating member companies.

Minkrappa began as a blog in which Cho collected information needed for his sales work in the semiconductor and display businesses associated with Anam. Starting with displays, the subjects expanded to semiconductors, mobile technology and solar energy.

Some posts attracted more than 100,000 views within days. Realizing how many people were interested in the same information, Cho joined with other bloggers to create a place for exchange. High-quality comments from specialists suggested that the platform could become a new setting for technical communication.

Moving the existing blog material into the café took a full month because posting was limited to 200 entries per day. Membership nevertheless grew quickly, particularly among university students and newcomers to the display and semiconductor industries during recruitment and admissions periods.

Cho explained that the information did not replace expensive reports produced by specialist research firms. However, collections of information from market-research seminars and IT publications could rapidly receive more than 10,000 views.

Members also included senior researchers at Samsung and LG and former employees who had established their own businesses. Many preferred to read and search for information without revealing their identity or posting comments.

Cho was preparing broader exhibitions across semiconductors, displays and solar energy. The article identified a joint technical exchange involving the Chungcheong regional office of the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation, the Regional Innovation Center at Korea University of Technology and Education and Minkrappa as an example of the potential for collaboration.

For Cho, the significance was that an online community, a public institution and a university had come together voluntarily. He also wanted to create an offline technical exchange with a public-interest purpose, accessible to graduate students and others unable to afford costly commercial seminars.

Discussing piezoelectric energy harvesting, Cho expressed the hope that the field would be recognized as renewable energy. Although its power output was still limited, he saw potential in recovering energy that would otherwise be lost in everyday activity.

His work had ranged across semiconductor packaging, displays and LED lighting. In that sense, the café’s subject areas reflected both his experience and a short history of the IT industry since 2007. Hings, the piezoelectric company he led, was participating in development and manufacturing through an energy center led by Senbul and the Korea Institute of Ceramic Engineering and Technology.