Thank you.

You have nothing to add, really? That’s good, then, I think.

Amazing.

The handle’s probably better.

Perfect.

Whether it’s you, MOFA, or your office, looks forward to welcoming the speakers and guests, and exploring these themes that can unite us, democracy, human rights, and civil liberties.

No big deal. [laughs]

Do you tweet just immediately, or do you wrestle over the text for hours? We can take 30 seconds here.

Let’s think about that for a second. At dinner last night, we were discussing with a bunch of people who have massive Twitter followings.

Fantastic, cool.

Fantastic.

That might be a natural fit.

Within your portfolio, there may be a particular civil society organization that you’re particularly proud of or excited about. Maybe that’s a time to even focus on that. Even though the focus of this event is not on, domestically, Taiwan, per se, we do want to make sure that civil ...

We, as staff, will probably start arriving on the 10th. I think what Jenny suggested is a great idea. Essentially, what we try to do is pepper, in between the activist talks, brief moments where we can share collaborations between either our organization and some of the other folks we’ve ...

You were there, Jenny.

It complements other events in Mexico City, Johannesburg, and the mother event in Norway, as well as a one-day event that we do in New York in the fall. We hope to grow something here. It’s been totally inspiring to see the reaction so far. Last year’s event was sold ...

We wanted an alternative platform that civil society and troublemakers could run. That’s really the idea behind Oslo Freedom Forum. It’s a perfect home for it here in Taiwan, we think.

They were side events or peripheral themes if you go to TED or something like Davos. If you count the thousand panels of Davos, four of them cover this or something like that. At the UN, it’s even more ugly in terms of the organizational units at the UN, for ...

One of the reasons we started the Oslo Freedom Forum many years ago is that there wasn’t really a global conference series on the same level as the World Economic Forum, TED, or the Clinton Global Initiative when it existed, that focused explicitly on these basic freedoms.

Yes, but also focused on civil liberties, civil rights, and freedom of democracy, explicitly so, and, hopefully, provocatively so.

We’re going to explore the cutting edge of that in one of our breakouts as well, which I think should be interesting. We can bring in some of the community that I’ve been meeting. This is my second time at ABS, so I think that’ll be cool.

Traditionally, you send a $100 or $200 remittance from, let’s say, Korea, Seoul to your family. You have to pay 7.5 percent, on average, and it could take many days or even weeks for it to get home. On their platform, it takes just under an hour, a half an ...

For example, one of the guys who’s coming is an entrepreneur from the Philippines. His name’s Luis. He’s been using a Bitcoin-based payment rail to help some of the 10 million Filipinos who live abroad who are non-resident workers who need to send their remittances back home.

We have some people from many different countries who are using Bitcoin to get around financial barriers and obstacles.

In the next decade, cash will disappear. Only eight percent of the world’s transaction are paper or metal anymore. When that goes, we need a replacement for what cash provides in terms of privacy, fungibility, etc. There’s a challenge for the Bitcoin community in terms of can they deliver on ...

They’re also able to use cash to buy burner SIM cards for cellphones and go into Telegram groups without disclosing their identity, very important for coordinating for protests.

The interesting part about Bitcoin, for us, is in terms of when you look at how payments work. For example, today in Hong Kong, people are able to buy a public transit ticket, top up with cash, and be able to travel without being spied on by the government easily.

At least this is the conversation I did this week. There’s lots of potential for things like Facebook’s project and others to grow. I just have concerns, personally, about their intentions and how they will roll those things out.

Specifically Bitcoin.

We’ll be having a similar conversation in terms of why we need money that is not controlled, confiscatable, and surveilled by governments and corporations.

We’ll have a conversation on how money and payments relate to human rights. I was here this week also speaking at the Asia Blockchain Summit. I had a conversation where I brought together some experts and entrepreneurs to discuss why Bitcoin matters for freedom.

We have the panel we mentioned that’s going to talk about election interference and disinformation, so we should be hitting a lot of topics. In the breakouts, we’ll explore a few other areas. Jenny, what do you hope we can touch on there?

We will have Netiwit, who’s a very well-known student leader from Thailand. We’ll also have Esther Htusan, who’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from Burma. She’s someone who helps expose the Rohingya massacre and ethnic cleansing crisis. Amazing woman, just incredible, so she’ll be here as well.

We’ll have Hong Kong in the spotlight, with Denise probably being the opening speaker. We’ll have Mr. Thae and Yeonmi Park as well, who’s a well-known North Korean author. Her book has sold a lot of copies here in Taiwan, so hopefully, she can join. We’ll have North Korea in ...

I think the conference, in many ways, is meant to push the boundaries of what you’re comfortable within different areas. She says, basically, that the rest of the same-sex marriage movement doesn’t really do enough for her and her folks in her country. It’s an interesting conversation that she’ll have ...

One of our speakers who’s coming will be an interesting addition to that conversation. She actually has a challenge for the same-sex marriage movement. She spoke at our event in Norway a few weeks ago in late May. From Kenya, her name’s Audrey Mbugua, and she’s a transgender activist.

Then the other building will be the theater. This is where we’ll have the presentations, the talks, the panels, and then also breakouts. There’ll be a range of different programming throughout the day.

We’ll have a café that has some exhibits on different projects that we work on around in the world in various places, like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, etc. It’ll be just a general networking space where we’ll also serve lunch later in the day.

When you walk in, there will be two buildings. One will be registration and expo. Wikimedia Taiwan will have an area where people can edit Wikipedia pages. We need more contributors for a lot of these topics in different languages.

We just did the tour today.

Yeah, it’s ripe to do different collaborations and side effects, possibly with the universities. Last year, we did some things with different schools and colleges. There’s a lot of young people who attend these events, which is really fun for us.

We will see if they’re interested in a dialog, of sorts. What would be interesting is to have this conversation, either on the outskirts or in the middle of the program, on how can we ensure that the smart cities here and elsewhere in Asia are built with citizens in ...

Unless it’s a human city.

...and challenging the surveillance state would be some key themes. One of the things we discussed with the city of Taipei, who’s also one of our supporters, is this idea of a smart city that they’re trying to build. Too often, people don’t realize that a smart city is a ...

We’re going to focus on our mission, which is civil liberties, privacy...

Obviously, Tech for Good could mean a lot of things.

We want to work with them to collaborate on a Tech for Good event the day before, which hopefully can engage some of the startup community. That’s a big goal of ours, so that’s something we’ll look at as well.

...Karen’s office. What’s interesting is Karen’s office was talking about how she leads the social innovation group in Parliament.

We also met...

Right, Jenny?