Yeah. Thank you very much.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll definitely go in.

I’m still planning it around. I have some free time, so I can stay a few more days.

That’s so nice. I have a lot of inspiration now to start doing more stuff like that.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Yeah, I’ll definitely look it up. I wasn’t aware of that one. That’s super cool. Because I work, basically I facilitate discussions and do things like that as my job. I would be interested in what is the model of discussion that you are using in the final part that ...

Of course.

Wow. That is still the most impressive part for me. That is what I take the most of. If we were to implement that in X country, what will be the main challenges in implementing it?

The co-creation workshops.

That was the most impressive, so far. [laughs] That is amazing. I see challenges in that, mostly in the sense that if the state wants to implement that, then that also takes money, effort, people. Well worth it…

There is live feedback.

Yeah.

So they adapt automatically.

Yeah.

There must be better ways. [laughs]

The petitioner was like, “OK, so these are the facts,” but they want to share their feelings, their feelings that they want people coming from Beijing or Shanghai who landed in Taiwan to have to change their watch to show Taiwan’s uniqueness around the world. [laughs]

We actually calculated how much it will affect energy use, and the change is negligible. The ministry of economy said it will not increase tourism unless everybody breaks labor law, which is not going to happen, and so on. [laughs] We have numeric models.

Lots of fun, and the +9 said that, like daylight saving, it will save energy, it will improve trade, it would improve tourism, it will improve a lot of the things, traffic. And then we get the ministries of interior, of economy, and finance, and all sort of different ways ...

Good, I guess. [laughs]

How does it work in practice, in the sense of, if you get a lot of opinions from the citizens, do they end up being implemented here in the end?

Yeah, I guess that helps as well. What I’m thinking now is that, in Europe, in Switzerland for example, you have very frequent occasions where citizens decide, especially on their local issues, in their municipal issues, and still the participation is low, except when it’s a very pressing issue.

Then my next question will be, how do you motivate more people to participate, in the end?

Ok, that helps.

How do you prevent such an example from happening, even if everything else is like content?

I’m still focusing on this majority/minority issue. I’m thinking, for example, a very provocative question. You have a very conservative area, and you have a small minority. Somebody asks in a petition to drive them out, and most agree because they’re in the majority, so you have a minority that ...

I’m still thinking of where this could face even more challenges.

Well, that’s a good answer. [laughs]

This quote that is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, although I think he never said it, but democracy as having two wolves and one sheep deciding what’s for dinner. [laughs] How can you prevent that?

The final challenge that I see there is democracy as the will of the majority. So the main issue that I have here is, somebody who is in the minority and has an unpopular opinion but has to do, for example, with human rights. How do you protect that?

How can you prevent that?

That’s nice. The other challenge I see is that, people who are already famous and have a big reach can easily rise to the top regardless of whether the idea is good, but just because they have a large fan base or whatever you want to call it.

For sure.

…don’t have the same access to…Yeah.

Cause we’re talking about a petition system here, so the person who is more tech-savvy or the person who can physically use a device. People that are disabled according to what device they can use have less access, or people that are less educated, or people that may be using ...

I see several challenges there. The first one I want to ask is, who can ask a question?

As long as you were in the elite, you could have a say.

Clay. [laughs]

And how does technology help in that, especially when it comes to enabling a large number of people to have a say?

I should be.

Just linguistically. [laughs]

For me, democracy is basically the way that the citizens make the decisions.

I do come from Greece. [laughs]

Definitions. [laughs]

That’s a good question to begin with.

That would be… Yeah, I’m looking to the future as well. [laughs]

I try to keep it more sustainable, so I try to prefer buses, trains, or whatever, but in some caces flights are inevitable, so I fly a lot, yeah…

I’m here for a conference – the general assembly of one of the largest student organizations. It’s the largest medical students’ organization. I worked as a soft skills trainer.

I’m good. I’m Antonios and I’m from Greece. I’m involved as a political activist/social innovator/educator now. I just wanted to get some inspiration. My question in the email was, how do we make democracy more inclusive?

Cool. So, Hi! [laughs]