Thank you so much. Thank you for meeting with us.

Well, we’ll definitely keep in touch around what next steps look like for us. We’re doing a lot of decision-making and hoping to come to a decision pretty quickly. But I think, yeah, it would be great to have more conversations about what a potential partnership could look like.

Well, and that aligns so much with the mission that we have with RightsCon. So it’s just, yeah, it’s really refreshing to experience that. It’s wonderful.

[laughter] Yeah, every year we go to a lot of different governments to talk about RightsCon, and it’s been a really refreshing day of having so much really– sort of seeing the mutual value of a space like RightsCon.

Yeah, that’s great. That’s really great. I think we’re all a bit taken aback because we’ve never seen a government come in with so much support.

Oh, wow, that’s great.

But yeah, I think that that kind of practical output of an advocacy effort is exactly the kind of things that we want to do by bringing RightsCon to particular places. So I think that there’s a lot of alignment there.

Wow, yeah, that’s great. I feel like there’s a lot of opportunities for that long-term collaboration with RightsCon and people within the RightsCon network, but also with Access Now because we’re expanding especially lots of our work in East Asia in particular.

Which was an outcome of RightsCon in 2019.

Yeah!

Yeah, exactly. What would an ideal partnership be?

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s great to hear. I mean, as you know, like Freedom Online Coalition, they usually do their annual meetings around RightsCon and Open Government Partnership as well. So for us, I think making sure that all of our partners would be comfortable with wherever we host RightsCon, I think ...

And I’m curious with the Freedom Online Coalition, have you seen a lot of those sort of multilateral organizations wanting to come to Taiwan and be a part of meetings here?

Yeah, that’s really helpful to hear. It sounds like based on our conversation with MoFA this morning, that there’s a few different avenues that we could potentially explore to make sure that people can access RightsCon, which is really encouraging because I think that we’re – yeah, for us that’s ...

So that is a barrier we’ve come across because with immigration laws tightening and everything, it’s been very difficult for these people who need to be setting the agenda to actually even fly and attend the RightsCon. So that’s been at the top of our list.

Yes, I think we have seen not just with what’s going on, but just convenings like IGF. It’s been very challenging for people from the African continent, the Middle East region. And, of course, a lot of our community are human rights defenders who are at the forefront of the ...

Wow, that’s incredible. Yeah, that’s great.

Yeah, we had a meeting with MOFA this morning, and they were really encouraging around what it might look like to bring people to Taipei for a RightsCon. So, yeah, hearing that is really encouraging, and just hearing about the opportunities for partnership I think is, yeah, is really helpful ...

We had a lot of challenges at our last event in person, so we’re really thinking about what does an accessible RightsCon look like in East Asia, and where should we host that to make sure that as many people from our community, probably about 150, 60 countries, can come. ...

Yeah, I mean, I think right now we’re trying to, you know, and I think, you know, the RightsCon community is really diverse, and one thing that we’re really thinking a lot about is, like, the accessibility of RightsCon and, like, how do we host a RightsCon amidst, like, very ...

Yeah, that’s really great.

Jason LiuWe are co-hosting the summit this year in May.

Yeah, it was great to have the FOC at RightsCon last year, too, and we hosted our first ever cyber ambassador. So, yeah, I think we actually met with folks from g0v today to talk about, and I think both Vakau and Reetz will be at the summit in May ...

So, just trying to give a longer lead time to be able to plan for that. So, yeah, really excited to think about what a partnership with Taiwan and moda could look like.

And, yeah, we’re using this site visit as a way to really think of, you know, we’ve been planning RightsCon for East Asia since 2019. And so, really trying to use this site visit to really confirm what that RightsCon is going to look like for 2025. We’re taking a ...

Okay, great. Yeah, we’re looking forward to it. We’re not really sure what it’ll look like, but we’re looking forward to it.

We’re leaving to go back to Korea to go to the Summit for Democracy.

Thank you so much.

That’s very funny because Brett, our executive director is currently in Taiwan on vacation.

Oh, wow.

Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us. This has been really helpful. We’ll definitely follow up with more information and invitations to Costa Rica, and keep you updated. As Raman mentioned, we’re hoping to make a decision by March.

It’s a hard time for…

When is that?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that would be amazing.

Exactly.

Sometimes we can offer space to that, but other times we offer resources to help direct people into where they should host that. It’s turned into be quite an ecosystem of events that happen around the main programming that we host.

It’s like an ecosystem. There’s the programming that we put on that we control, and then there’s the programming alongside that the others do.

It’s four days, but there are a lot of events that happen on the Monday and the weekends, and it builds of the amount of people that come to RightsCon and take advantage of that, too.

Yeah.

Unless I get pressured into a five-day event.

Yeah.

May or June 2021, depending on the venue that we select and availability.

That’s helpful for us to know. If there’s anything else that you think we would be thinking of as we make the decision between South Korea and Taiwan?

You know what? I think that this was really helpful. As we mentioned, as it grows, it’s really important to get government support wherever we decide to go. It seems like it would a positive contribution to bring RightsCon here, so that’s helpful.

Great.

Absolutely.