Your first brush with civic tech was in Boston?
I was in Boston. I was starting my own non-profit. The non-profit was...
Basically, in the US, people get new smartphones all the time. I was collecting used smartphones and redistributing them to the homeless, teaching them how to use smartphones.
That’s how I got connected to the innovation arm at the mayor’s office. They’re called M-O-N-U-M, Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. A part of what they do is connect the government to private companies, and its citizens. Because I had my own non-profit, I could meet...
Actually, anyone can meet with someone from the mayor’s office. You book it. It’s a public calendar. You book a meeting. They talk to you. They learn about what you need. They connect you to someone in the government.
Through that, I met some key people who ran the homeless programs in Boston. They helped me with my non-profit. That was very easy. [laughs]
What was the name of your non-profit back then?
It was called Mobilizr, but it’s now called GridRise.
Mobilizr.
Then we changed to targeting senior citizens because there’s so many issues with maintaining a relationship. A lot of people we were working with, we would never see them again. [laughs]
That’s right. It’s more transactional in nature, almost.
We were like, we need to build a relationship. We need to see that they’re changing their way of life. Senior citizens actually was the best fit for what we were doing. We got iPads put in senior homes and taught them how to use technology. In the end, that’s what the...
...opportunity enabling, potentially.
Yeah, empowering them. Other things that the mayor’s office did that I just learned about in class, so I took a class about this as well. They solved a lot of problems that the government couldn’t solve on their own, because they don’t have the technology or the developers or the right talent. They would create RFPs, and then different start-ups in Boston would take that RSP...
Respond to part of the RFPs. Is that competitional in the sense that only one group that would solve one at a time?
Yes. It’s a competition. A lot of things they tackled were very small problems, city-level problems, but very smart ways of solving it.
One example is garbage collection, which sounds simple, but the way they used to collect garbage, which...I think Toronto does it the same way right now, is just someone goes around and collects the garbage with one route. It’s a fixed route.
The problem is, Boston traffic can get very congested and you don’t know which garbage you should pick up first. They installed smart garbage bins, so they only pick up the garbage that’s at full capacity.
Then they figured out a way to do it with Waze, so they partnered with Waze. Have you seen this?
Yeah, I’ve seen it.
Then the garbage pickup trucks would not obstruct traffic.
Wow, that’s life-changing. [laughs]
It’s pretty cool stuff. I think it’s cool.
(laughter)
But it’s just collecting garbage.
I have a very good friend named Luke Closs. He co-founded a startup with a few colleagues... they’re all Canadian, called ReCollect. They use, again, mobile phone to send SMS and so on to notice people when to take the trash out. They also partner with a lot of cities to do the city-level messaging, because if anything, that’s the one thing that citizens will actually look at. [laughs]
Yeah. Texting.
That’s right, and also to remind people when to take out their recyclables and things like that, because just like in Taiwan they collect different things on different days. It’s called ReCollect.
Oh, I like that.
I think waste management is one of the most interesting things around.
(laughter)
I’m glad you like it too. The other thing I noticed...This is not government-related but when I was there, that was 2014 so it was a while ago, but a lot of the schools run boot camps about entrepreneurship. There’s definitely the hackathons that are weekend events. To me, it’s not long enough.
I participated in a lot of hackathons. I also ran some hackathons, and I find that you don’t have enough time to think through the problem, and then people aren’t learning the right tools. They don’t have enough time to learn how to solve a problem right and then they just rush everything and then at the end...
Our hackathons are three months long.
Oh, OK. Great.
We kind of abuse the term hackathon already. But yeah, go ahead. [laughs]
I was going to suggest that you should do longer style boot camps. Then, for people like me, Taiwanese immigrants, I really care to help, I want to get involved, but I don’t know where to start. It would be very interesting if we could create boot camps and recruited, obviously, Taiwanese students in Taiwan, but also people of Taiwanese descent, maybe.
You’d get a more diverse experience. A lot of people I know want to go back. They don’t know the opportunities, because they don’t have a network.
The Toronto University has a Taiwanese studies program.
Studies?
A three-years program. One of our very good friend, Aaron Wytze, who was the one who caused all this conversation earlier, is going to meet for lunch.
It’s kind of interesting, because he used to work for the Foreign Office Canada as a dispatch to Taiwan, but after he shifted from Foreign Service to journalism he still very much cares about Taiwan. Instead of talking to government people, he now talks to g0v people as part of the correspondent -- the main correspondent, actually -- for the English g0v News project.
If you go to g0v.news, that is our main outreach network for the civic tech networks. Last week in Italy they started a g0v.Italy. They started with exactly the inaugural project the Taiwan people started, which is a visualization of a budget and how people can respond to individual items of the budget to enable a conversation around specific items, instead of something abstract as a whole.
That’s really powerful. All the municipalities in Taiwan are on board with something like that, and so this message is really, really spreading.
That’s one very concrete way, if you would like to meet Aaron and be a correspondent.
Does he live here?
He’s studying in Toronto University.
He’s studying at U of T or he works at U of T?
Study. He’s pursuing his master’s degree.
His thesis is related to g0v, right?
I’m not sure.
(laughter)
I’m not sure his topic, but I thought it’s more about international relationahips.
That’s right. That’s right. About the network of civic entrepreneurs, or however you call them.
I went to a different university in Canada. There’s a student chapter. It was a Taiwanese club, but they didn’t have information on how to connect back to Taiwanese government or anything like that.
It’s more like a diaspora than anything.
It was more for socializing.
I know.
It’d be great if all these different student clubs knew about these kinds of opportunities.
The g0v.news network is really interesting because everything is published bilingually. The focus is actually Aaron’s work and...It’s interesting. I don’t even know his English name.
Jason Liu.
Jason. Thank you. [laughs] Jason’s work is respectively tried to frame something that’s innovative in Taiwan and bring it to a international audience, or to bring something that happens locally -- it could be around waste management, why not? -- that they think the Taiwanese people would be interested in, and also then bring it back.
There’s a lot of exchanges both ways.
I definitely need to meet Aaron, then.
We’re meeting for lunch, so if you don’t have anything for lunch.
All day. [laughs] I have to check with my boyfriend, but for sure.
He’s local, so you don’t have to meet him today.
It’s so great. I definitely have a lot of perspectives I saw abroad, Boston’s one example, or even in my travels that I don’t know where to share it or what to do with that.
The easiest way is to have Aaron do a interview with you.
It doesn’t have to be Aaron. You can write an article.
Really?
That’s right.
And submit to g0v.news.
Right. After the g0v Summit, which is this really huge event that we ran how many months ago...
...I didn’t say summit. I said submit. She can just write an article...
...I know, but I’m saying, after the Summit, there was...
When is the summit?
October.
It’s October, just passed. October 5th to 7th.
Last month, a few weeks ago.
What I was about to say is that after the summit there’s many people in Japan, and also other countries, but primarily Japan, actually. They post on their blogs, and things like that.
Also, there’s someone from PRC, as well, who wrote up their experience engaging with the Taiwanese community. They submitted to Gov Zero News for syndication. It gets distributed quite widely.
What’s PRC? Is that China?
PRC being the politically neutral term to describe the People’s Republic of China government.
It’s not Taiwan?
It’s China? Thanks.
Taiwan is ROC.
I know. I’m always...
Taiwan is currently being governed by an entity that calls itself "ROC", but yes. [laughs]
I don’t take sides or, rather, I take all the sides, which is why I always use unambiguous terms. Like when I say "China" people have different imaginations, but if I say "PRC" I mean specifically PRC.
I saw that you also manage the center of innovation.
The Social Innovation Lab. That’s right.
How is that going? Is there a lot of...?
Thousands of activities.
You guys are very active.
We actually meet there almost every Wednesday evening for dinner. Pizza, and so on.
This is how it looks like. This is my office. You see it in my slides or talks. Sometimes there’s self-driving tricycles roaming around.
The rule is very simple. If you have any activity -- there’s huge amount of activities -- that you can say what impact are you going to make on any of the Sustainable Development Goals, then the lab is available for you for free.
The idea, very simply put, is that we want to cross-pollinate as much as possible. Our lady, like people who are data scientists and also work for gender equality, they can tick two SDG boxes.
We make sure that there’s many concurrent events happening at the same time so people discover each other. We also encourage recurring events, like the vTaiwan Meetup, who is always every Wednesday, every 7:00 until 9:00 PM.
Because the space opens until 11:00 PM every night, after events people mingle. There’s a resident chef. There’s good food. People can enjoy this atmosphere, very much like what you describe in Boston.
I also have a office hour. Wednesday from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM everybody can talk to me, provided they agree to this radical transparency arrangement.
It’s really going well, mostly because the space, itself, is co-created by social innovators. They’re not government designed. The soccer field you see is designed by a large charity that works with people with Down syndrome. Charity are brilliant artists, so they turned their art into public installations, and so on.
You really feel the vibe of innovation when you walk into the space. Starting next year we’re going to expand out to the rest of Taiwan, as well. Taichung has already started. Taoyuan, as well.
I have a few follow-up questions on the groups that get involved. You said they’re not government actors. They’re small groups, individual people. How do they know what the biggest problems are, or is it what they see and experience and decide this is the problem they want to solve?
That’s a great question. Ideally, they would self-organize, but for people who are really looking, like just entering the field, we have a annual summit called the Asia Pacific Social Enterprise Summit, which is not the Gov Zero Summit.
G0v is more, I would say, civic tech as its core, but with civic media, with activists, and all the social innovators at a perimeter, but with the open innovation as its core to hold everybody together. The Social Enterprise Summit takes a different end goal. It takes the sustainability of business model as the main thing.
It depends on the first question to ask. In g0v people always ask is your idea published somewhere? Have you written it up? Would you like to submit to the g0v News? Exactly the first questions you asked. [laughs]
What would you have to share? That’s the first question g0v people asks, but in the Social Enterprise Summit and the related circles the first question is...
How do you survive? [laughs]
Exactly. How do you survive? What’s your sustainability plan, and how do you tie into the larger ecosystem? Are you mostly relying on CSR or are you doing business development? Is your income sources all grants or has it embedded into the supply chain?
It’s a different conversation. There’s many people overlapping, though, but under the umbrella of social innovation. The civic tech side and social enterprise side are just now slowly converging so that they can see each other eye to eye.
This year’s g0v Summit has a much more than before emphasis on inclusivity and the people with disabilities, people with different social/environmental needs.
There’s even a agricultural co-op that share their year, or something like that, and how they use sustainable farming methods to work on agricultural lands without destroying the renewability of the land, which doesn’t used to be the mainstream g0v civic tech message, but right now it’s, as of this year, starting to be one of the main messages to connect back to the land and to the solidarity of the people.
Some new themes.
I’m sure Yun-Chen can talk more about this idea, because it’s shepherded by the grant process. Without a grant process people won’t discover the problem. The way you described it, people would just work on whatever they want to work on, but the focusing funnel of the grant process, that’s the main innovation that gov zero people has introduced, and then I get to eat something.
Sorry, you go eat.
No, that reminds of -- it’s different, but -- at Stanford, the design school, they have this program. It’s a fellowship that people apply to. They also choose different themes every year. Sometimes, the themes are the same, but they are very specific on, "We’re looking for people who are trying to improve education." Or something like that, so they gather like-minded people together.
Then usually it’s about someone who’s already made some progress in their business or the idea, which I also really like. It’s more about taking something that’s already a good idea, but scaling it to maximum impact.
This year, g0v’s, the original theme is open source civic ecosystem. In Taiwan so far, it’s that we have very good engineers. We’ve got very good ideas, but we have very few fundings and very few people can take civic tech as their profession.
Why is that?
Why is that? First of all, in Taiwan the NGOs that can afford an engineering team in-house are...not an engineering team, one engineer is already very few.
It’s very M-shaped. In Taiwan, there’s a few really huge non-profits, like Tzu-Chi.
They are not technology focused.
Well, they do work on technologies. There is simply just a huge number of small NGOs, which cannot afford...
Could not afford an engineer or something like that. The g0v grant is a very small amount, but it’s a start.
It’s around USD$10,000 to USD$15,000 for one team for six months. Just to support them to grow into a bigger idea. Then, now we have almost finished our third round, and we realize that to push the project further, after the first round, you need to find someone to take over the second round.
Just like a VC process, you give the seed round, and then you need to find someone for the next round. Also, we try to have some fellowship in Taiwan as well, but so far there’s no process but so many different fellowships in the world.
For example, Code for America and Code for Australia and Pakistan, they have fellowships that are sending experts into the government. We are looking for that opportunities in Taiwan as well.
That’s great.
Also, looking for international fundings, because local fundings doesn’t realize that the civic tech is very worth to invest in. Also, I think in Taiwan, I think at this moment, we haven’t bring the sustainability models to the civic tech people together.
Yeah, that’s what the civic tech people can really learn from the social enterprise’s circle. That’s all their focus.
Like my project right now, that is we are taking government funding, and we don’t know if we can take that funding next year. Our sustainable model is quite questionable at this point.
For sure. I think that’s definitely one of the shortcomings I saw, too, when I was in Boston. Maybe it’s a little different, but there’s a lot of interesting academic projects going on. Because I was a little different, I came from a business perspective; I went to school for business and worked at multiple companies.
I mostly think, actually, in terms of: how would you run this business? I was frustrated seeing a lot of academic projects because, to me, I just didn’t know how would you create it as a product.
How did you think, like New York, there are some like the civic hall, they are incubating some civic tech start-ups. What’s your opinion on them?
Actually, I think that is a little bit more accelerator-minded. They tend to find a startup team with different skill sets. Whereas I found that in pure academia, it was more -- not always, but for me -- what I saw is more like-minded skill set people.
To me, cross-functional teams, that’s the strength, and having someone like a product manager, or CEO role, that would be their job, is how do I find a consumer? How do I create, now, a revenue model, etc.?
I think it’s really important, because I saw a lot of people who either think revenue is bad, charging money is bad. "Because I’m doing something for good, it should be free." There needs to be a balance.
We’re totally fixing that view in Taiwan, that economical sustainability is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s right here with social and environmental sustainability.
I don’t know if you guys have heard of Scratch?
Of course, I met him over teleconference in an event and had a...
Oh, Mitch Resnick?
We had a conversation.
Mitch Resnick. I did an internship as part of MIT Media Lab. I saw a little bit of what their teams did. That was one of the more, I think, phenomenas where they didn’t really plan for it to grow so quickly and latch on, but they were able to key into something.
Which was that teachers were scared to teach coding, because most of them didn’t really know how to code. They’ve created something that teachers can learn and feel confident in teaching.
I think that was a product-market fit that was just the perfect mix. A lot of times, products don’t have that organically, the perfect fit. You need someone to explore intentionally, and then maybe adjust the product or find a different market, and grow it from there.
How is this Scratch team funded, though?
Lego is one of the primary sponsors. I believe it’s called also the Lego Lab.
What’s in it for Lego?
I don’t know.
(laughter)
Actually, I think Scratch in particular, I’m not sure.
Lego has its own thing going, the Mindstorm thing, right?
Yes. I was going to say, Mitch and I think other people of that lab have made Mindstorms, and other more directly Lego-related products. I believe Scratch maybe was inspired as well, because block-based programming, it’s Lego blocks.
Oh. [laughs]
I’m not sure what the benefit is, otherwise. I think it’s just philanthropy.
OK. Yeah, now that I think about it, the way the blocks in Scratch fits, it looks a little bit like Lego blocks, so maybe it’s product placement.
There’s definitely a correlation. No.
(laughter)
I’m just kidding, for the record.
Actually, I think that the benefit is that Lego is an educational toy, so it’s all about supporting STEM and those things, which are very popular in these days.
I think the Scratch team is now focusing on making the experience actually bearable on iPad, because the old, Flash-based model doesn’t work.
Scratch Junior, you mean?
The app?
Actually, I think they’re working on version three or something like that, which is not an app. It’s just a native web page that also works really well on iPad. I am really looking forward to that because I think smaller screens in ed tech, smaller screens, they really distract children.
Anything that has a larger screen, I think, has a much higher chance of actually teaching social skills, whilst using the screen as interactive medium, because two people can look at it at the same time. That’s what I mean.
There’s co-play. Hopefully, the kids can actually, because the problem with children, especially someone who’s five or under, their fingers are not very precise. You need a large touch area, or they get really frustrated.
At which age do they use Apple pencil?
Apple pencil. I think they need to first know how to hold an object, so probably more grade one, two.
Seven?
Right now, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m currently creating apps for babies.
I know, yeah. I’ve checked them out. They look awesome.
Oh, really?
You’re the product manager?
Yeah, Sago mini. It’s actually right around the corner.
"Award-winning."
Oh, that’s a marketing thing.
"Choice of parents." [laughs]
Oh, that’s embarrassing, but yeah. It was influenced by Apple, but we recently added an AR feature. I found that to be very tough, because four-year-olds don’t understand AR.
That’s right, I was about to say. They’re still in the transitional space in their mind, anyway.
They don’t yet know what’s supposed to be in reality.
Reality.
Exactly, so they think when they see through the camera, it’s there, and they don’t understand that that’s an effect in place. The other thing is, they don’t always hold the tablet properly, because theyir hands are small. A lot of times, a tablet is face down on the table.
My nephew is three-and-a-half. I know exactly what you’re talking about. [laughs]
This all goes back to product-market fit.
(laughter)
Just because the technology exists, you need to understand the need for it, and what the audience is gaining from it. Is the audience ready to use it? Just as I found as well for smartphones, for different spectrums of homelessness, there’s different needs, and a different mental capacity.
Basically, what can they do with a smartphone at that stage in their life? That’s what I realized very quickly. I had this dream of, "Oh, once you have a smartphone, you can write your resume on there, and apply to jobs through it."
A lot of people are not ready for that. A lot of people, even just watching YouTube videos, that helps them feel normal. That was step one.
Very much so.
I was very changed by that experience.
I think the MIT Solve -- I think that’s the name, Solve, as in solution -- partnered with what they call the Digital Superhero Academy in Thailand.
They thought they wanted something interactive, and as it turns out, just getting social workers to record essential life skills with good, local cultural awareness and narrative, and make the people who are part of a disadvantaged group feel that they can watch it, and bring something useful to their community, that’s actually what they want. Nothing overly interactive, just appropriately designed for their particular use case.
I wish I could do more of that in my everyday life, which is parking my own bias aside, and then getting in touch with more different groups of people, and understanding they think differently from me. Their needs are not the same.
When they wake up, they’re thinking of other things, like, "Do I have a shelter for my kid to live in next month?" Once you can empathize, it changes the conversation you’d have.
And of course, what I can do for them, or what they can teach me.
Have you received any ethnography training, or...
Not traditional ethnography, but I’ve done a lot of design thinking workshops, which is more about...From IDEO, that kind of framework.
Our office is heavily influenced by the IDEO mindset. We have people from CIID doing interaction design, we have people from RCA doing service design. It’s all design thinking based.
I think ethnography is unique though, it’s not just design thinking. Design thinking uses that as one of user survey or personal creating methodologies, but the method itself comes from cultural anthropology, which takes a very non-solution view, a more immersive view on things.
There are g0v contributors who are not part of our office proper, but they use ethnographic methodologies. I’m pretty sure MG Lee used that as her paper, her thesis. She basically is in cultural anthropology, and studies g0v, using ethnographic methods, by immersing herself into the g0v community, and then writing something about it.
We have also worked with Yu-Shan Tseng, a human geographer. Which is again, exactly like cultural anthropology, except focusing on space instead of people. It’s this at the center. She studies space and the interactions enabled by the social fabric and the social infrastructure.
As if the space itself is alive, and people are just its inhabitants. Still, like she does ethnography on the Social Innovations Lab as its subject.
And the spaces in there.
Exactly. Both processes, I think, have taught me, personally, a lot. Well, I’m their subject, their field research subject, but I really learned a lot about how to kind of step into somebody’s shoes, and just put all your existing bias aside, using those methodologies.
I never thought about the space, but that makes a lot of sense. Even recently, I was thinking about food, and how food is a reflection of your culture and your history. That could be a way of people don’t know a lot about cultures. I was thinking, food is the common thing that, or usually, the first contact people have.
Say Mexican or Korean food. For people in Toronto, that’s their first contact with Korea etc. I was thinking, how could you use that first experience to introduce someone to even deeper cultural significance, or get them interested in that culture? This space is a new one that I thought of.
There’s a museum here that’s shaped like a shoe?
Bata Shoe Museum.
Yeah, I think one of the contributors to that from Taiwan brought a 藍白拖, a blue-white slipper. I think, is that the right English translation? Slipper. That’s just very simple. It’s better with the visuals, but it’s kind of like bubble tea. It’s Taiwan national identity outfit.
It is, yeah.
Shoes are easier to transport than food and easier to get everybody to try on... Like literally step into each other’s shoes.
I like that analogy.
It’s also space, in a sense, because it’s close to your body. Something along that line would be very interesting for an intercultural conversation.
I just want to talk a little bit about funding, and about funding issues. There’s two things. One is, have you connected a lot of the different groups, whether it’s social enterprise, or the civic tech groups to, I guess, more traditional...?
Just private companies. The HTCs of the world, that kind of companies.
Oh, yes.
Are they interested in funding?
What we’re asking now is, starting next year, they all have their CSR reports.
By the new Company Act of Taiwan, they have all the obligation to declare it publicly, no matter their capital size, as long as they’re publicly listed. What we’re going to ask them is to use the SDG index, to index their work.
It could be overseas, it could be in Taiwan, it doesn’t matter. We want to know how many HTCs of the world are doing no polity? How many are doing plastic waste management of the marine species, and things like that?
We can put it on a map, visually, and let the people who are working on civic tech or social entrepreneurship to discover them without a lot of overhead. At the moment, it’s not that they’re not interested, it’s just the overhead of talking individually to patrons or collaboratives.
I’ll be very frank here, and say to talk to traditional Taiwan grant makers from the government, or from the older generation of manufacturing or hardware communities, the better you are at pitching to them, the worse you are at pitching to Y Combinator or any of those international outfit. It’s almost diametrically opposite.
It’s very different language, very different thinking, very different values. There’s no right or wrong, because OEM, ODM, semiconductor, these are Taiwan’s core economic supply chain lines, value chain lines. If you talk in that language, it’s very easy to get funding actually.
Then this whole, maximizing impact, triple bottom line, all this.
Where social capital doesn’t mean much.
Social capital, it doesn’t mean much. You almost have to create two slides, which someone has a lot of experience of. [laughs]
Pitching to different audiences.
Yeah, pitching to that more ODM, OEM generation and pitching to the more SDGS generation. What we are now doing, instead of pitching individually, to put everybody’s goals and concerns on the same map, and also working with universities, which all now receive funding from the Ministry of Education and what we call universities, social responsibility or USR programs.
Which again will be SDG-indexed, so that their students can work as part of their capstone projects -- I’m sure you have those here, too -- to do social entrepreneurship and solve a social or environmental problem as part of their learning.
Because of that, their parents are easier to understand this. First, it’s not really entrepreneurship. There’s no failure. There’s just paper published about the actual experience of what’s working, what’s not. The parents can accept this much easier.
If we start earlier in the process, then people build a network so that actually, when they become entrepreneurs, they know exactly who to look and what CSR resources to use, and BD resource to use. It starts when people are 18 is our work in the past couple years.
From next September onward, we’re going to start from 15, that is to say, senior high.
Wow, I like that a lot. I have so many thoughts to share. It’s not really a high school, but there is another school in Boston called NuVu studio. It’s immersive in the sense that all day, the students just create a product or something completely innovative and different, that is very practical.
Not theory-based at all, and they start very early as well. I know that there’s a lot of curriculum changes happening in San Francisco. I haven’t seen one that’s, "This is the best idea. This is the best solution," but I could see that there’s already a lot of experimentation in open-ended learning, or project-based learning.
PBL, yeah.
I’ve seen the shortcomings as well, which is it’s hard to have a consistent quality of experience. I’m excited towards that kind of education, for sure.
Why is consistency important to you?
It depends on your age. For example, Montessori, so Maria Montessori, right? It’s all about letting the child guide their experience. Then the teacher is the facilitator. I think that at that age, it’s very important to foster the sense of curiosity, mastery, and independence for the kid to feel confident and brave approaching things they’re not familiar with.
I think that will have an impact on the rest of their lives. To me, we still live in today’s society. I still think we need some math foundation.
You still need to know the basics of mathematics to function in a society. My fear with completely open-ended is, what if you somehow, it is possible that you skip any exposure to math?
In Taiwan, we allow up to 10 percent of the total population of students to be alternatively educated. We’re by far the most open in terms of curriculum in the entire Asia. There are Montessori systems that goes all the way to high school. There is also a lot of Waldorfschule. I’m sure you know that German idea. That’s also from kindergarten...
Yeah, and Reggio...
All the major thoughts of education, you can find experimental schools in Taiwan running that, because the law not only allow it, it really encourage them. It’s been like that for 10 years now.
Frankly speaking, a large number of them, exactly around the age when to student has to integrate back to the society, around the age 18-ish. Some of them actually do really well.
When we do the new curriculum -- which would take effect next September, and I’m one of the committee member -- we took what worked in the experimental education system, and incorporated it back to the national curriculum, into basic education. Yeah, the three pillars, I think we really worked.
It’s autonomy which is this curiosity-based learning. It’s interaction, which is critical thinking, media literacy, and talking with people who are very different from you in background. Finally, the common good.
That is to say, see people not as means, but as their own subjects with values that we can co-create, intersubjectivity and all that. With these as our new education goal, we don’t focus on skills that much anymore, or on competition within preexisting tracks.
It brings us to a more Scandinavian education methodology or philosophy, which really sets us apart in East Asia.
I think that’s great.
Next September, it’s the first grade of primary, the first grade of senior high, the first grade of junior high is going to roll out a new curriculum, and we’ll see how that works with the rest of society. The science are really good, because then we changed the undergrad system also.
By the time they are 18, they can enroll in any of the schools, but they don’t have to stick with one department for four years, or six years. They can study for a couple years, get a semi-baccalaureate, go and do anything, and go back to a different school, to a different major, to do whatever.
The idea of major will disappear. By the time, you can work on capstone project for six or eight years, and by the end of it, it’s just a lot of accomplishment unlocked, it’s like badge, a skill tree. After which, you can go to do a PhD, if you feel like.
That’s a really big change, but exactly as you said, if people decide to skip math altogether, even when they’re 18, that is actually one of the intentions of the experimental school and the basic education, which is why we didn’t quite incorporate that in. There is still mandatory math and language acquisition structures.
To be honest, if you to really have those values in place, I think you will be exposed to language and math because you need language and math to solve problems and to build things.
Oh, yeah.
I think it’s just people are scared of change. You have to bring evidence.
On the other hand, if people start learning arithmetic when they’re 20 years old, they can still learn it, right? It’s not rocket science.
That’s why I think the values part is the most important part. If you believe you can learn it, then you will learn it.
That’s right. If people feel paralyzed, learned helplessness, and so on.
Even today, when I share some data analysis with my co-workers, a lot of them will just say, "I’m not good at math." That always bothers me, because it’s not a fixed reality. You need to first change your perspective, to then be able to improve on something.
There’s a word for it. It’s called numeracy, right? Like data literacy, but before data literacy, numeracy.
You have to understand that it’s a language, and you can learn any language. Awesome.
It’s not even a large language. The vocabulary is very small.
Currently, I’m looking to start my own business. Starting next year, I’m still working my job, but I think taking off one day a week to start my business.
Oh, really? Cool.
I was actually looking at Taiwan. I was going to try to disrupt education in Taiwan. That’s when I realized the education in Taiwan is very good, so that’s not a good place for me.
(laughter)
Oh, yeah.
My focus is preschool. I learned that Taiwan has universal preschool. And the quality of the preschool is one of the best in Asia.
That’s right.
So there isn’t much opportunity for me.
We’re going to make it super affordable, so you cannot even disrupt the payment system.
(laughter)
Yeah, so I will try disrupting something in North America instead. It’s still a problem here. Affordability is a huge problem. In the US, it’s even worse, because once you have a child, you can only take 3 months mat leave. I don’t know how to say it in Chinese, but maternity leave?
Sure, yes.
For three months.
Oh, I know. Totally not Scandinavian.
It’s the same in Taiwan.
It’s better in Canada. Is it three months in Taiwan?
Here, in Canada, it’s one year. Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister, just made it 18 months.
Optional, one and a half years.
Paternal leave as well?
Paternity leave is shorter, but I think you can trade now. It depends.
We’re working on that in Taiwan, as well. I think it’s really progressive for Canada to extend this.
Parental leaves are good for the economy. If you’re forced to quit your job, it becomes harder to return to the workforce, and all these other issues.
We rolled out, back in 2015, teleworking for that purpose, but not all job posts can be teleworked. So, exactly.
My business idea is for the moms who have to stay at home, for different reasons, either because they make less than the daycare cost. That’s one huge reason. Daycare right now is very expensive.
For someone who has a one-year-old child, it can be, it really depends on what school you choose, but it could be a couple thousand a month. My rent is only $1,600 a month. It’s more than rent.
How would you like to disrupt this?
Yes, sorry. For these moms who have a very hard decision to make, I want to give them a new choice, a third option, which is the option to start a turn-key business. Essentially, it will be a "start a preschool" kit.
Oh, wow.
You can stay at home, take care of your kid, start a business by taking on some other people’s kids, for one or two years. What’s great about it is now they have more work experience on their resume. So hopefully, they can get a better job afterwards.
Or, like you said with the entrepreneurship programs, now they have the experience to run another small business.
Yeah, and they have to do it anyway.
Exactly, that’s the thing, is they have to stay at home anyway, to take care of their kid. Why not get experience, make money, and then in two years you can hopefully get an even better opportunity. That’s what I’m working on right now.
That’s an excellent idea.
Oh, thank you. Back to product-market fit, I’m in the user research phase right now, looking for the right kind of parent who is in this kind of situation.
Taiwan is probably not the best market for this. [laughs] It’s too affordable.
It’s definitely more targeted to North America.
Similar to what you were saying with Asian parents, my dad is very against me starting a business. [laughs] Also, when I worked at McKinsey, he was already very upset that I left McKinsey to a smaller company.
If people worked mostly in capital-intensive industries, they think start a business and think experiment and fail and lose a lot of money.
Nowadays with this kind of social entrepreneurship, it actually doesn’t cost much to start a new idea. It’s not like building a new factory. Also, sometime it even costs you negative. There’s negative cost. [laughs] People pay you to start a new enterprise.
Right, because they need...
All through crowdfunding or in Taiwan, security token offering [laughs] and things like that. STOs, they’re huge in Taiwan. People just randomly start a security token offering, and they get the funding they need for social change. That is also actually a community that I think the civic tech community is just barely overlapping.
These people, the blockchain people, they are really good at designing incentives.
(laughter)
Oh, blockchain. Very popular here, too.
I’m really glad we had this talk. I just felt disconnected. I’ve wanted to find groups that are, like me, on the inside. To me, living a successful life is having a positive impact on society.
Of course.
I think the more that you can find people all over the world who feel the same way, you realize you’re not alone. [laughs] You’re not crazy.
That’s right. If you go to join.g0v.tw, you’ll find thousands of people.
Do you have name card?
Oh, my gosh. I’m sorry. I don’t. [laughs]
No, it’s fine.
I don’t have name.
I’ll pass my...
Uh-huh.
Are you still heading to Ottawa later?
Ottawa.
Oh, Ottawa? No, actually, I wasn’t going to Ottawa. I was going to see you guys. That’s why.
I wasn’t going to Ottawa, but it’s not hard to get there, because we have a train system. You came from Ottawa, right?
No, we just arrived last night.
Last night.
Oh, you’re going to love Ottawa.
You were our first meeting. [laughs]
Oh, my gosh. Welcome to Canada.
Yeah, literally.
Oh, my gosh, OK.
Part of our delegate will stay here. Fang-Jui will stay here.
If you can leave your email here, I can email you g0v news, or if you’d like to join g0v.
And meet Aaron. [laughs]
Yes, I need to meet this person.
Really? It’s all relative. Here, my Chinese is good, but not in Taiwan.
[laughs]
Some of them stay in Toronto?
Only Fang.
Fang-Jui Chang is staying in Toronto.
Aaron, of course, is based here. The two of them will be still around.
I can take them around if they’re bored. [laughs]
Thoughtful. Very kind of you.
Fang is our consultant of service design.
I love service design.
(laughter)
I’m just adding details in case I forgot who you are.
It’s OK. [laughs] I’ll remind you.
Fang is now working with the workshop materials. She’s designing with another friend, Alex, and thinking perhaps switching the subject or topics that attendees would like to touch in the workshop.
We’re running a two-day workshop.
In Toronto?
In Toronto, on the g0v vTaiwan project’s methods and participatory office methods.
The group in Toronto’s very new. Our current mayor used to run a business, so he brought a lot of change to Toronto. He started the first civic innovation group in the mayor’s office. This team is only maybe two years old.
Is there a distinct line in between liberal parties, conservative groups?
Is it partisan?
(laughter)
We’re just learning background information.
I believe US and Canadian politics are different. In the US, you tend to vote for the individual candidate. Here in Canada, we vote for the party.
Honestly, if you put it US and Canada on a spectrum, Canadian beliefs lean a lot more left. We lean a lot more socialist. Even our Conservative party, which is more about cutting taxes and capitalism, [laughs] it’s still more on the Democratic side for the US. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the US.
They’re a lot more extreme than we are. [laughs] We have a lot more taxation here. I think, as a Canadian, our upbringing encourages fundamentally different values. You understand that the taxation is for the greater good. It’s more European.
Taiwan is like that, but it’s Taiwan before martial law was lifted. It’s directly the opposite. We do have a intergenerational value reconciliation issue in Taiwan also. I still remember the martial law. When I was in the first grade, the martial law was still in effect. It was lifted when I was in the second grade.
The tone of education is very different. During the martial law era, which run for three decades or something, it is very authoritarian. People are taught that it’s not really for the social good, like for the good of the neighbors, but rather for the prosperity of the authoritarian nation, which is not dissimilar to what PRC is currently telling its people.
After, of course, the martial is lifted and...
It’s more democratic.
...wildly democratic and directly, like the president, then we’ve been much more Democratic-leaning. Now with Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, of course, it’s a feminist [laughs] government in Taiwan also, and utterly democratic.
I think it’s critical. [laughs] At the city level, it’s not really about political values as much. It’s more about improving the city. I don’t know if you guys have seen any Toronto news, but we won this bid for Smart City with the Alphabet Group’s Sidewalk Labs.
They’re building a smart city from scratch on the east end of the city. Right now, no one lives there. It’s not used.
Wow, bootstrapping. [laughs]
I think they wanted a city that’s a good size. Sidewalk Labs is based in New York, so it’s also very close for them. Also, it’s important that government is very cooperative. They’re very much looking forward to that.
Toronto’s becoming more and more a destination for tech people.
Oh, yeah.
I don’t know if you know this, but Canada deals with, historically, with what we call "brain drain"...
We had the same...
...which I think Taiwan definitely has.
We know how it feels like. [laughs]
Yeah, I can see that. My whole family immigrated, so I definitely see that. In the Canadian brain drain, our top programming talent completes co-ops in San Francisco. It’s very hard to compete with [laughs] the Facebook or those kinds of...
Getting easier nowadays. [laughs]
I think there’s more tech opportunities in Toronto now.
That’s right.
Our biggest success in the last five years is Shopify. It was very important that they chose to stay in Canada. Slack was a Canadians start-up as well, but they moved to San Francisco. [laughs] I think a lot of Canadians understand you have to move to San Francisco, because of the network, the benefits are there, the VCs are there.
That being said, more and more, Toronto is being more of a hub.
This is important for putting us in the context. Tomorrow, we’re going to have the workshop, and it’s good for us to know...
How it’s changing.
...what people are thinking.
The changes are exciting. There’s definitely still a lot of tension. All cities have these kinds of tension, like public transport is still bad. Those kinds of things can always get better.
Our previous mayor had a lot of issues, [laughs] corruption and those kinds of issues. That accountability from the city, or even all levels of government, that’s still something we can all work on.
I know that they publish open data. Like you said, Taiwan has the budget publicized. But to be honest, I’m not sure how many people look at this data, [laughs] just things like that.
It’s true.
How well is it integrated with their journalistic pipeline? If the city government publish a press release, does it link back to the evidence? It’s the little things, but it’s those things that count.
For sure. Another thing that has been a shining light for Toronto recently is the chief city planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, she recently ran for mayor. She was a leading force. We have a lot of wasted areas that are not very pedestrian-friendly. It’s a lot of places under the highways. It’s called the underpass.
Owned by the city?
Yeah, it’s public property. She helped revamp these spaces so they could be used by the public. Now, several different underpasses display artwork. It’s not really graffiti. When you walk around Toronto, you’ll see there’s a lot of street art now that is very well done.
That’s great.
There’s that, and they made it into a skating rink.
Yeah, it’s cold here. It’s just a very long skating rink that you.
That’s quite creative.
Wow, that’s super creative.
That’s something that’s good. [laughs] Another good thing.
Definitely, yeah.
You’ll find similar issues that all cities face.
I guess Toronto is changing toward a better side. Don’t you think that’s exciting?
Also, that’s my perspective [laughs] as someone living Downtown Toronto, this age bracket, 30, and I have a job.
(laughter)
Someone else in another situation might not feel the same as I do...We also have increasing crime, increasing homelessness. [laughs] Definitely, bigger social issues are not being solved. People are turning a blind eye, but you know when you get desensitized because you see it all the time?
I read a report that says the Canadian government, the federal one doesn’t quite use the Sustainable Development Goals to index these social issues, perhaps because the previous version, the Millennium Development Goals...
Yeah, MDGs.
...was seen more as a developing world thing. Canada is providing help for sure, but surely Canada doesn’t have those problems. [laughs] I don’t know how the SDGs are being viewed now in the public.
I haven’t really heard much about that here.
That’s right. That’s what Aaron told me as well.
I’m excited for you guys. I’m sorry I can’t attend. I won’t be able to.
That’s all right. We’re learning from you a lot this morning.
(laughter)
I feel bad...
It’s good to know about Toronto in Canada just by chatting with you.
I’m trying to think. It’s funny, because I never intentionally study Toronto.
(laughter)
I always study other places. I just live here [laughs] ...
Right, it’s your hometown. [laughs]
...so I don’t really think of it as a subject.
OK, cool.
Cool. Thank you for taking the time.
Yeah, thank you for making the time.
Of course.
We’ll make a transcript. We will not publish right away; please feel free to edit for 10 days.