Isn’t that the summer?

Pretty good.

That would be great.

You said some of our civil society people already expressed interest.

Wow.

There’s no shortage of highlights if we want to make policy highlights the point. More likely is just to get officials in those ministries to see that this is also important internationally, and this is not just something that’s domestic.

Essentially, all the high schools will have not just computation or design thinking, but also their own design courses for possibly Maker education, so that’s the MOE. Then the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Economy Affairs all have Maker‑related projects going on.

There are, actually, upcoming policies, and Ricky already checked the complete upcoming list when he visited me. Obviously, one is from the Ministry of Education, because next year we are having this completely rewritten curriculum which will put a lot more emphasis on the independence of each schools.

That’s right. If you look for WCIT, there’s quite a few promotional material already for September.

The world will know it. [laughs]

Our dialogue will be public in 10 days anyway.

Two weeks before that?

When is the deadline for registration virtually?

I agree. It’s very important.

Sure. The Board of Science and Technology is already in charge of it.

We can do both. They are not mutually exclusive, but I’ve thought about it a little bit after the previous visit, and these are two more obvious venues coming forward.

The people we would invite or to send to France would be a different sort of people. It would be people already in the industry. They may not even need me to encourage them. [laughs] They just need to see the new regulation include this signal, and then they will ...

That would be in the form of subsidies and investments, of course. It will not be that focus on secular or social responsibilities, but that will mean more private sector people will be interested because there is obviously benefits in this.

It is one of the major focus of our Ministry of Economy Affairs, is to reform the SME plan at the moment. We can try to include more Maker and more FabLab‑like thing in the thing that we want to reward in the SME plan.

The other way, not so socially minded, is the economically minded way, which would be combining the what we call SME promotion plan here.

We can have some similar activity here after I identify the stakeholders here and maybe have some workshops or studio. That’s one way.

We did the same for deliberative democracy in the past few years, having the French experts visiting Taiwan, Yves Sintomer, and the Paris Participatory Budget Team and so on, Julian Antelin visiting Taiwan to share their experience in getting those diverse Dakota groups together for the participatory budget and deliberative ...

...to be more aware of each other, and then maybe send a more coherent message with the French counterparts, or even learn from their French counterparts.

One is saying that it is important for the circular economy, for the social enterprises, for the corporate social responsibility. Because this is also my job in addition to open government, I can try spreading the message when I was going to tour around Taiwan, and try to get the ...

Figures who feature in the film are from private sectors, people letting the world know that there is a very complete vertically integrated chain here. If we are to integrate the Maker ecosystem into this chain, there’s two, broadly speaking, strategies.

There’s also a teaser. If you Google for WCIT Taiwan, you’ll see the trailer, and you’ll see, although our officials like NCC Commissioner or the MOEA Minister did feature in it, the main focus were spent on the life experience of everyday citizens.

For one, previously in March when they came, the FabLab Taipei people talk about the possibilities of sending not only officials, but also private sectors, like people already on the manufacturing value chain to there. This is the same strategy we use for the WCIT, which is the World Congress ...

OK then. That sounds like a plan. If you need any help to get to any of the mayors, or for them to follow up their commitments, you already mentioned Mayor Cheng has expressed interest, just let me know and then we’ll work with the cities. On the national government ...

Awesome.

Exactly. We can have the same arrangement here between two or even three cities.

I saw that in the video. It’s like a coordinated program. One for the substance and one for the visibility, so to speak. [laughs]

If you are working with any part of Ministry of Economy Affairs, they will be very receptive of the inter‑generational idea.

You can Google for it. It is a series of events like TED talks, where they put one young entrepreneur, usually of the software kind, and one successful large company, heads of company, usually of the hardware kind, and also academician from AI together. The three of them make speeches ...

Taiwan’s got a lot of software and designers in the young generation and a lot of manufacturer of hardware and designer of heavy chips in the older generation. Ministry of Economy has, in this year, the main theme, they call it Mix Taiwan.

...for the civil society exchange.

Those are exactly the right people...

Sure. He’s very active now.

To show the diversity.

Tell me a little bit about the FabLab Festival. Taipei City is going?

Because I don’t have to get the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to approve my robots. [laughs] If you can rent a robot I’ll be happy to telepresent at the conference. Or send a video message, if that helps, but no obligations.

I need to plan my trips. Quite a few miles to France. Now it’s very inconvenient, which is why I drive a robot all the time.

That’s next month?

They say it’s also important to make a video, as you say, for a certain Neil Gershenfeld to preview it. That’s the extent of discussion.

It makes sense to me, because a lot of VR or AR‑related performance here happened after one of the key officials went to South by Southwest, and really saw their performance and applications first‑hand. I did ask the Board of Science and Technology to help arrange any official visit. That’s ...

Their main ask in addition to the letter from the Premier is whether it’s possible for officials to also accompany them to Chile so that they can get some first‑hand experience.

( Link: https://sayit.pdis.nat.gov.tw/2017-03-21-%E8%88%87fablab%E5%B0%8D%E8%AB%87 )

Because we put everything on the record. It was back in around March. I can send the link to you afterwards, you can see some context.

Yeah. Also, Ying-Zuo Lin. Our entire conversation is actually recorded. [laughs]

Right.

That’s right.