I’m sensing all the time that stakeholders is who you’re looking to engage, both in your information generation and in your evaluation of that information. The public in general doesn’t show up in a visible, explicit way. I don’t know if that’s part of your whole approach or if you’re ...

There’s something, when working with the multi-sector, multi-stakeholder emerging governance group that I’m part of, I learned that this ordinary citizen perspective is place-based. You are a citizen of a place. That’s the way the society is organized, with the mayor or the president or whoever in the legislature at ...

The fact is everybody is a stakeholder in everything, but they’re not self-aware, self-defined, organized in that way.

Stakeholders are usually, in the circles that I go in, people who have an explicit interest. They will be impacted in a way that they’re very aware of in the outcome of whatever the issue is, and that either they or representatives of them, like representatives of the union are ...

I’m curious to what extent, I know you have a sense of stakeholders, and I’m fascinated by your division of the stake and the whole stake as the "Here are the issues involved, the interests involved." Then, there’s the holders of the stake, the people who are identified with one ...

It doesn’t use diversity in a sophisticated way. It’s just saying, "Do you have the right to participate? Are you a member of the community?" Then, you’re stuck into a process which uses you as one data point in the whole thing.

I’m curious, also, because my roots are more in the "One person, one vote" kind of democracy, the sense that we’re all equal citizens, which is a very...

Whatever kind of diversity you use, if you can have some way of having it interact creatively, you’ll end up with something better than you started...

Then, there’s perspectives, opinions. People are for or against this or that. That’s a different kind of diversity. Then, there’s demographic diversity. There’s all these different kinds of diversity you can deal with. In my general theory, as I think you already know, Audrey, is that the sense of diversity...

Right, but there’s many different ways to cut the pie as they say. There’s functional roles that people have in the dynamics of the system. When the people say get the whole system in the room, they’re usually looking at the different functional parts of how things are unfolding.

Then there’s a question of increasing the people who use those platforms as stakeholders or ordinary public citizens who come. You want to have more numbers and more diversity of those.

There’s different branches of participation I’m sensing, that some of it are the people who are part of the geek-skill community, or the people who are actually creating the platform for people to engage in these different ways on. You would like to have diverse skill sets in that.

Shuyang talked about challenges at the end of your presentation, Shuyang. I don’t know if that’s something you want to address with Audrey. Curious what’s the content of those four items that you put out.

I had this funny impression that within the last couple of days, somebody was communicating to me from Watch Out, and I didn’t recognize it and threw in the trash. I’ll have to go and dig around my trash, [laughs] see if I can find out what it was to ...

In itself is an example of vTaiwan was modeling something. They’ve picked up that to adapt to their scene, and then their scene was picked up and adapted by the government. There’s a whole evolutionary pollination kind of activity.

This is another example of piloting, prototyping something, because it worked successfully and there’s a mixture of public support, plus pressure, plus the willingness of the politicians to go along with it, suddenly a version of it has taken up and adopted by the government.

The government may or might not listen to it at all, but there may be some ambitious politicians who recognize a wave to ride when they see it, and say, "Hey, we’re going to pledge to do what the people say," and that gradually infects the government that way.

That that’s an ongoing thing, and there’s a way in which in some contexts where the government was not particularly receptive, but there was a lot of grassroots energy to try something like this, it could be sold to grassroots supporters as we’re going to show that we can do ...

That’s why it’s a part of the story of the Sunflower Movement was that you guys demonstrated you could do it better than the...

That’s one of the interesting places because one of my...There’s ways in which one of the images, narratives, metaphors I use is of you guys creating a demonstration parallel government. Not one that necessarily is implementing things, but the decision making dimensions of government, you say, "We can do this."

You’re basically playing a role of briefing the parliamentarians on here as what a lot of people think, and here’s a lot of the issues that are involved, here’s what they think should be done over to you. It doesn’t have the same feedback loop that POs have.

Is it in our group or is that something that’s done by legislature officers?

You say the outcome of the conversation can then be used to make a draft bill. Is there a group within vTaiwan that does a let’s translate all this material into a draft bill?

They have managed to garner a particular attention, but that’s just because they garnered a particular attention. They don’t have any consensus or official role.

They decide who they want to interview, and when and all that. It’s not as if they are the key players. They’re a group. They’re just in the group. They’re not an official channel organized like a business or something. They’re just a group of people who have certain competencies ...

Then there is the talking to Taiwan which I gather is just one of the many players that can convene a conversation.

I think if you can give me a sec to look. I got what that is. It’s funny how well you’ve covered all this. I would like to poke all that. It was a breakthrough for me to see the parallels to Wikipedia which again, I haven’t engaged in detail, ...

Part of me wants to make sure I’m getting whatever I can from Audrey before he goes.

We’re going to...

I have a lot of questions, but there’s some questions that are popping in my mind, and then fade into the distance. I have ones written, too, to ask, but go ahead. You can stay on a little bit longer, right Shuyang?

Something is just dancing. I wish I had more sleep to be able to be more zippy in my responses, but I’m getting the...

I can understand the theoretical level, but I have never been in a geek group doing this kind of thing. I can feel what it’s like, and go, "Wow." It’s definitely a growing evolving ecosystem, and I know ecosystems well enough to go, "OK, this is what’s happening here."

...Seattle.

The tools just appear, and get talked about, and after a while, they start getting used more, and more, and that’s the evolution of the system.

That’s an example, the expansion of toolset that g0v is always poking around in, and trying out.

You are just providing space for people to do these, and presumably people who aren’t being paid attention to because they’re incompetent will also ultimately drop out. They’re not getting anything out of it.

It’s not like there are standards that are required in order to either facilitate, or convene a conversation, but part of the transparency is this is the nature of the person who facilitated it. This is the nature of the person who convened it. These are the stakeholders that were ...

Anybody can do it, and anybody can view it. This is the way for people in the public, or the government to take action in the ways that...You provide a whole pile of ways to take action to reflect on this issue, and try and make decisions, and all the ...

[laughs] I picked that up out of the field. It’s not like there’s going to be the stakeholder conversation which is somehow decisive. All these things are overlapping, and with the...Again, anybody can do it. OK, I could see how it’s organized to allow that.

I talk to my friend, Joe, and he’s a facilitator, and he’s going to facilitate that. I’m going to pick seven people out of this, and pull them in, and we’re going to have a conversation. That could happen 17 times and it’s all grist for the mill, and I ...

This is where we’ve gotten to, this is where we’ve gotten to, and this is where we’ve gotten to, and any time along that where somebody goes, "I feel we have enough for me, and the stakeholders," I have in mind to go ahead, and do a facilitated conversation.

At any time you’re doing the survey, and the results are being compiled as you go, there’s not a stopping point board?

Identifies the stakes and the holders, interesting way to put it. When is it decided to do the face-to-face and who decides that?

There’s like two separate...

...one of the processes that you’re also gathering information in the survey. The information from the survey is going to be given to a number of the stakeholders for a face-to-face, or if there’s lots of people there’s going to be a pol.is, and the results of the pol.is will ...

Now I’m understanding a thing about it being efficient. There’s going to be some kind of reflection on what has unfolded, and what they could unfold through the rolling survey. I had the rolling survey as something that is used to identify stakeholders, and that is...

OK. I had imagined a pol.is thing in here after the snowballing, but you’re saying...

Find facilitators for what?

It’s not just that they were participating, but they’re going to be participating in the next stage also, and their ability to network out, and reach people is as important as how ready the informational material is.

...involved in doing this particular process.