Jim Poisant: First of all, thanks for your time. I have the best job in the world. Next to yours, because she’s the chairperson, so everybody has to follow her, but outside of that, I’ve got the best job in the world.

Jim Poisant: As I travel extensively, when I find a person in a high government that’s responsible for digital, the first thing I think about is how wonderful that is number one, and number two, how mature and with wisdom the government has to do this, because it’s required.

Jim Poisant: Someone needs to be watching the digital transformation going on in society that knows what they’re talking about. Congratulations to you and your government for this. Let me just tell you a little bit about WITSA and then the World Congress. WITSA’s been around since 1978 which makes us almost...what? 40 years.

Yvonne Chiu: I don’t know how to count. [laughs]

Jim Poisant: 40 years. [laughs]

Jim Poisant: The organization grew along the lines of the revolution in technology. We didn’t really start to mushroom until the late ’90s if you look back in history. You find that time where the Internet was coming more pervasive, and more people were getting computers, and it became a household name, and then it exploded as you know with social media much later on.

Jim Poisant: In the beginning there were, I don’t know, 5, 10, 12 countries that got together and said, "You know, as this thing’s maybe we ought to talk to each other." They formed the World Information Technology and Services Alliance. It’s a bigger alliance, and in order to belong to the alliance you needed to be the leading ICT association in your country.

Jim Poisant: We’ve grown now, CISA from Taiwan. We’ve grown now to 82 members, 82 countries. We represent about 90 percent of the ICT industry, and that’s a big responsibility, because it’s our job to lead the effort in terms of development of ICT around the globe because we’re the industry.

Jim Poisant: If you had to pick the major responsibility that we have is to make sure more people get connected and get more people enjoying the benefits of ICT. Audrey, we have a lot of different ways to promote the message in terms of getting more people connected, but there’s two major ways we do that.

Jim Poisant: There’s policy papers and policy work that is critical for us to share with governments. As you’re looking at taxation, as you’re looking at regulations, as you’re looking at things, what does the industry say about these things? It’s important to note that we don’t demand anything. We don’t stand on stages that we’re the authority. We don’t do that.

Jim Poisant: What we say is that if you agree that ICT is a good thing and that people can benefit from it, and you’re willing to develop in your country, then you may want to look to best practices from other countries with the industry. We can share those best practices with you.

Jim Poisant: What we do is we’re creating worth of five to seven major policy papers every year. We call it principal papers. We say, "OK, if the subject is women in IT, we’re not telling you to hire women. We are telling you, based on our experience, that it’s a really good thing to do that, and that they’re underrepresented in the market, and they’re wonderful in working in any industry.

Jim Poisant: "Do what you need to do. Work with universities and so on to get more women into the workforce, and here’s why," and we list the statistics of what the benefits are. We then turn that over to our member in 82 countries and say, "Take this paper, go sit down with the governments, and show them this."

Jim Poisant: Hopefully, they’ll learn something and say, "This is probably a good thing. Maybe we ought to have a special emphasis on training women in STEM and technology." That’s what we do. We produce papers.

Jim Poisant: Now, the other thing we do, and the reason I’m here, is we have the honor of producing a World Congress where we now bring the world together. For many years, this was kind of a ship without a direction.

Jim Poisant: For example, in 2010, we were in the midst of a recession. We did the event in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, even though the event was rated the best event in Europe in 2010, it had little to do with moving the ball. It had everything to do with the recession.

Yvonne Chiu: [laughs]

Jim Poisant: We didn’t have the focus. As the years went by, we now, as you well know, we have a vision of what this world could look like in a digital world, what a smart city would look like, what a smart classroom would look like, what a smart hospital would look like, what would democracy look like.

Jim Poisant: We know this, because we see it over and over again. We have prime examples. We have the World Economic Forum produces this Networked Readiness Report. We know the benefits of being at the top of that list. You’re 13 on the list this year.

Audrey Tang: The readiness pillar is number one or two, but their regulation is 40 or 37.

Jim Poisant: Point is that if you’re 40, you know what to do to get up to 30 and 20. We didn’t have that measurement before. We didn’t have a sense of, "OK, if I did this, I can move up."

Jim Poisant: The World Congress began to focus really in 2014 on a one theme, period. The theme in ’14, ’16, ’17, and from now on, this is as long as I’m in charge, it will be fulfilling the promise of the digital age.

Jim Poisant: Everybody get together and now talk about how do we get more people connected. Instead of talking about in the past when we talk about broadband connectivity, we’d bring in the standards people talk about how do you standardize.

Yvonne Chiu: Different direction.

Jim Poisant: They can come in, but they better be talking about...

Audrey Tang: That’s the readiness pillar now is number one.

Jim Poisant: Yeah, I understand you.

Audrey Tang: It doesn’t really translate to impact though.

Jim Poisant: Exactly. What now? How are we going to get connected to the next generation? Who’s going to do it? How are we doing it? What are the best practices?

Jim Poisant: Every year, we create these recommendations from one session to another. We use those recommendations as a platform to begin the next session. This is what we said in 2014, ’15, ’16, ’17.

Jim Poisant: The idea is we have now a pretty well-structured approach to having one place every year that the world can go to that they can learn about what’s going on in terms of developing ICT best practices, broadband connectivity, security so that the subject matter doesn’t change a lot. We’re trying to build those blocks, continue to build the blocks.

Yvonne Chiu: They’re down there.

Jim Poisant: When we can rest, and this includes yourself, is when everybody in this world is connected and everybody is benefiting from ICT. The promise of the digital age actually came true. Let me just conclude by saying that there’s no guarantee that that’s going to happen.

Yvonne Chiu: At least we will put the effort to work on it.

Jim Poisant: If you take a look at it, and as long as North Korea is North Korea, it’s not going to happen. As long as China is China, it’s not going to happen in terms of the way they’re setting out. They’re not going to allow that development of ICT in those countries or in Iran.

Jim Poisant: Any of these desperate operations around the world. However, if we were to do our job properly, the power of the benefits of a digital technology and society would eventually erode the dictatorships because of knowledge.

Jim Poisant: Now, my concluding remark is that, where we need your help desperately is we have an event where we’re trying to attract about 2,000 people or more to Taipei for this purpose in terms of moving the ball...

Yvonne Chiu: The WCIT.

Jim Poisant: WCIT, but at the same time highlight Taiwan as a prime example. We’ve just changed our logo to WCIT 2017, Living the Digital Dream in Taiwan.

Jim Poisant: I will be frank with you because I don’t know any other way. We need to spread the good word about this event and we need to do it as rapidly as possible. I say you, as a society, is way behind in terms of marketing the event.

Jim Poisant: I’m not going to talk about why that’s the case. I am telling you you have 100 days. We need to get this information out to everyone on earth about what we’re going to have here so we sell this thing out and you can be proud of what you did.

Jim Poisant: Here’s what we’re doing. We have a very limited capability in the project’s office in terms of marketing. I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just saying that the capabilities of the project office is not globally oriented, that they don’t understand how to market globally.

Audrey Tang: If the message is going to reach the International Space Station they probably...

Jim Poisant: They don’t know how to do that, that’s great. I’d say they don’t know how to reach to the Philippines, never mind...

Jim Poisant: That’s one thing. What we’re doing at WITSA, we have 82 countries, but we’re not taking the chance of thinking these 82 countries is going to bring us 800 people, because we’re mostly in the developing countries. What we just did is we purchased 130,000 email addresses, every CEO, every CIO in the Fortune 500, every minister.

Jim Poisant: We got 350 ministers we’re putting on this list, and every week we’re going to send out one or two messages to them, and that’s going to be very limited. It’s going to make people aware of Taiwan by the time we’re done in the World Congress, but will it drive registrations? I don’t know.

Audrey Tang: I don’t think so.

Jim Poisant: I don’t think so, no. Having done this for many years my...It’s more than theory. It’s based on fact, but unless you hit people about 12 times with a message they’re not going to buy, and even that has to be divided into stages. You need to make them aware, and you need to drive them to a value, and then you have to push them to register.

Yvonne Chiu: Now you feel, you good to talk with Audrey.

Audrey Tang: I worked in publishing. My parents were journalists. I am well aware of this.

Jim Poisant: That’s what you got to do, and as you well know you have to hit them from different angles. It’s not a brochure. It’s not a radio program. It’s all the above and even then you’re taking a risk that they will forget. I give an example of I’m encouraging the group here to really do a telephone campaign, and what they’re going to find out is as much work as we do...

Jim Poisant: Let’s say we give them 50 messages. When you pick up the phone and talk to the chief marketing officer at some company anywhere, "Have you ever heard of WCIT?" They have no idea what you’re talking about.

Jim Poisant: Even with all that. Based on that scenario that we’re six months behind even doing this...

Audrey Tang: Right even start with calling it’s six months.

Jim Poisant: We were six months behind that...

Yvonne Chiu: Already very...

Jim Poisant: We desperately need to pull the resources together particularly in your office and whatever you can do with us and anyone else that can help and get this message out every way, shape or form. We’ve got a fairly strong program, but more importantly it’s what this program is doing. It’s advancing the use of ICT around the globe.

Jim Poisant: Finally, the benefit that you have by doing this is in the past a country would say, "This is great. We’re going to tell everybody what we’re doing, and boy oh boy we’re going bring people in and we’re going to sell products and services." That’s the worst thing you can do.

Audrey Tang: I’m appalled that you even mentioned that.

Jim Poisant: That’s exactly right, but I think some countries...

Yvonne Chiu: Very good.

Jim Poisant: Yeah. Some countries think this is a great opportunity, so they load the program with local people. What happens is they get killed, and people walk out. What is much better is for you to take the global lead of inviting people to your home and to be able to present the world to them, and let them figure out if they want to come back and do business with you.

Audrey Tang: That’s exactly right.

Jim Poisant: Then you get better. That’s right.

Audrey Tang: It builds connections.

Jim Poisant: Exactly, that’s how it works. We need your help to get the right people in the room.

Audrey Tang: I’ll be in one of the panels, and my office is probably going to also put out a proposal to one of the civic tech fest track which is going on right now. We’ll have two sessions from our office.

Audrey Tang: Then you see here is a partnership between one of the local civic tech movements called g0v (gov zero), which is a sustained effort of taking all the government websites which all end in gov that they do online and fork.

Audrey Tang: That is to say change the website to something that’s more inclusive and more about the data and more transparent and change the website address from gov.tw to g0v.tw so that it literally only takes one bit of change on the browser bar to be able to shadow one’s the website.

Audrey Tang: We’ve been doing that for at least 17 different services and many of them they’ve incorporated changes back to the original website. It’s a sustained community effort between the civil society and the government.

Audrey Tang: The g0v movement built connections overseas, in particular with mySociety in the UK, which is the people who did the same thing with the government’s digital service.

Audrey Tang: They run this pretty good festival for the impact civic technology in Europe for a few years now, and they’re running it in Taipei this time concurrent with WCIT. The latest news I heard was that it would be considered official as one of the tracks in the WCIT Taipei.

Audrey Tang: We’ve been meeting those speakers all over world, hundreds of them by now. [laughs] At least these relatively young people really want to come to Taiwan, because they really need something that’s after certain presidential elections and certain exits that that shows ICT can still have a proactive role in driving the democratic institutions, as part of the social-media invention.

Audrey Tang: That’s why I said we’ll tackle these issues here, and there’s already dozens of talks to that of recruiting and people will come. That’s a relatively small track, one quarter or one fifth of the complete program. I don’t have a very detailed review of the other corporate of the program.

Yvonne Chiu: Chia-Liang, he was attending our evals in the program then one of his friend and they came, but when Mr. Kao mentioned something, we really accept him. We accept him right away, but only thing is right now lots of speakers is entering the call.

Yvonne Chiu: They tried to have so many because right now they will mention about 90 some of the speakers for three days. We cannot worry, because speech is very different, and then we can put more time in there, but not like stir-fried rice, everything is put in there.

Audrey Tang: That’s a nice metaphor. [laughs]

Yvonne Chiu: Yeah, that’s what I worry about, because also me and Jim keep talking about. We don’t need that many speakers, because we really need to get things done in a genius, specialist each time. This last month, he and I went to Geneva, and then because WITSA has a seat in a UN panel , so we can go into United Nations, and he’s one of the panelists there, and he’s really good.

Yvonne Chiu: When we go in there, and he sits on the stage, and I would sit down there, and he even points out, "WITSA chairman is sitting there. Stand up and say hi to everybody." Trying to promote, everybody look at me. They won’t say I’m American, they won’t say I’m, but I just stand up and say hi to everyone.

Yvonne Chiu: He try to put a lot of effort to try to promote Taiwan, and he told me next time he want to be Taiwanese, too.

Audrey Tang: We have a foreign talent act coming up.

Yvonne Chiu: Another thing is that we were there, and we found that one of his friends is a WTO, a lady, and we invited her to come to Taiwan to do a speech. Finally, she said OK.

Yvonne Chiu: It’s just that we try to promote Taiwan. The reason for me to be a chairman, purposely, I just want to help Taiwan to promote, and to get some more friends, besides Taiwan’s friend. Not Yvonne’s friends. Yvonne can do different things.

Yvonne Chiu: The purpose is we both have the pattern, and we also have the mission saying we want to promote Taiwan. I can tell you about the United Nations in New York, tell you about, because last year when he left, he told me that, "Yvonne, you managed to come to New York to do the speech in the United Nations." I said, "For what?" and he said because...go ahead you say it.

Jim Poisant: When we applied, keep in mind that we represent the ICT industry, so the United Nations, when you listen to anything they say, every speech they give has something to do with ICT, because it’s a name on every one of their goals. There’s a factor in it.

Jim Poisant: I’ve been associated with them for many years, and they said to me, "You need to join ECOSOC. You need to be part of the ECOSOC group," and I said, "Fine." We filled out a long application, and waited a year and they said, "Well, you missed the deadline." "What do you mean, deadline?" "Well, you know, we have a deadline."

Jim Poisant: I had to resubmit, and I knew something was wrong. Finally, I couldn’t get any answer. I kept on calling the office and said, "Listen, you guys invited me. What are you doing?" I found out that one of the guys on the selection committee, former selection committee guys, was an ambassador that I know, he’s at Belarus.

Jim Poisant: I called him and I said, "Sergei, go find out what’s going on in your old group there." He called me back and said, "I don’t know how to tell you this, but you got to get rid of Taiwan." "Excuse me?"

Jim Poisant: He said, "Now, China says if you agree to put Taiwan a province of China, then you will let you in." I said, "You tell China, OK, that first of all I resent being bullied, number one. Number two, we don’t want to belong to your organization belong. This is where I belong. If you are that stupid to not want the industry in because you got a bully in the room, we want nothing to do with you."

Jim Poisant: I said, "Don’t call me, and tell them don’t even call me. Unless this changes, we don’t want to belong. No, we are not a political organization. If you are interested in ICT development, forget politics for a minute, and think about how you’re going to work together."

Jim Poisant: Of course, China is not...They have their own game, but they’re not playing with us. I’m playing really hard ball with those guys and they come back again and want me to join.

Yvonne Chiu: That’s good. I give you an applause. [laughs]

Jim Poisant: Yeah.

Yvonne Chiu: One other thing is that when I was in the United Nations, Geneva, one of the 1,000 attending for the meeting, and one of the meeting is very, very important for calling people as VIPs. He supposed to attend that.

Yvonne Chiu: The day before, he said, "Yvonne, I would like to have you experience that." I was literally shaking. "Oh, no, no, no, I don’t want to go." but he had already sent my name. He said, "I cannot go there for you now." OK, but I didn’t know he cannot go with me. I said, "Then why don’t you go with me?" "Oh, no, no, no, you go yourself." [laughs]

Yvonne Chiu: That’s a challenge. I really feel like he’s supporting me, because he has some experience for quite some years, and I’m a new president, just for six months. I’m really scared, but that morning he told me, "Listen, Yvonne, you just need to go." so I did.

Yvonne Chiu: When I went there, I see that the secretarial staff, and I saw him and I said, "Hey, you know, welcome to Taiwan September 2014." because he was in Brazil. You know what he told me? "Oh, we belong to United Nations."

Yvonne Chiu: Then right away I told him, "Forget about politics, we are helping people." Then he looked at me like that for 30 seconds, everybody was looking at me, and then he said, "Oh, maybe sometime we’ll go to Taiwan." I went to sit down on the table. We have a full table there.

Yvonne Chiu: Each table had some subject to talk about. This meeting is for the third world e-commerce. How we can help third world. When I was sitting there, I tell them, I said, "I’m an 82 countries chairman, but I’m from Taiwan. I know Taiwan has a lot of solution, can we help the third world?" Everybody didn’t heard of Taiwan and kind of, "Hmm."

Jim Poisant: See, not everybody in that room...Many people in the room, the world economic forum don’t care.

Yvonne Chiu: Yeah, they don’t care, but one of the ambassador, and he look at me and he said, "You need help?" He was saying that before, but end up finally answer what I’m talking and he said, "Yes, we do walk with Taiwan." I think he supervised work on for the service of third world. I think maybe it is one of the countries...

Jim Poisant: Even China was with Taiwan.

Yvonne Chiu: I know, but they say, "Yes, we are working with Taiwan so that..." The conversation on that, because I feel like everybody think about Taiwan as a disease, I really snapped.

Yvonne Chiu: It’s just that I felt, but because they’re kind of running from the United Nations, they have to follow their rules, so that when I say that, "Oh," and they open up, "Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yes." Something like that. I think we need to train our countries foreign affair, our countries’ people.

Yvonne Chiu: Anybody going out, don’t feel like every time when you think about China, you have to step down yourself. You don’t need to. I told them, "Even though I’m very short, but my guts is really high." We came to supporting Taiwan that much and I feel really proud.

Yvonne Chiu: Even our investor in Geneva and their staff, they say, "Oh, you’re somebody else, you can go to the United Nations. You’re not..." I didn’t know they cannot go in there. Then can neither walk in there.

Yvonne Chiu: I think just everybody need to work together, because nothing can make me ashamed of, because we are proud of ourselves. The way I am. "Yeah, I’m from Taiwan, so what? You’re going to kill me? No."

Jim Poisant: I’m very proud of Taiwan. You guys are giants in the industry. I don’t even think about politics. I’m always on your side, because you’re so strong in the ICT industry, and you’re so progressive. That’s what I think. I don’t think about...

Yvonne Chiu: Yeah, especially this time we were in there, we met a WTO lady, and we invited her to come over. This is only last month, and she agreed within the three weeks and say, "Yes, I will come to Taiwan. Yes." I really feel great.

Yvonne Chiu: Also, another thing is, we invite some other minister from other country. We focus Nigeria, and maybe Mexico. Nigeria, Mexico...

Jim Poisant: Armenia.

Yvonne Chiu: Armenia, Bangladesh, what else?

Jim Poisant: India.

Yvonne Chiu: India. We are working on that, but few have already say yes. Right now in our program, some of the executives, they’re working on...they say, "Oh, when they come we cannot show on the website, cannot tell anybody they’re coming because they were afraid of China." [laughs] We need to have a closed-door meeting.

Yvonne Chiu: Yesterday, we were fighting for the meeting we already say, "If you don’t put them on the website, OK, nobody will come." No minister will come here and say, "Hey, I’m coming here in a closed room and talking to you, that’s all." No.

Yvonne Chiu: We tell them, because we start holding the WCITs around the world, happen this year it’s in Taiwan. They want to come to Taiwan, because they are facing 2,000 people, 80 some country people here, they want to be on the stage to speak of what they want, or what they’re looking for. Yes.

Audrey Tang: Yes, that is what this is all about.

Yvonne Chiu: Yeah, that’s all about it. The team disagreed.

Audrey Tang: Which team? The minister of foreign affairs and his staff? Did he...?

Yvonne Chiu: The project team.

Audrey Tang: The project team. Because I hadn’t heard of that message before. [laughs]

Yvonne Chiu: No. We were fighting with them yesterday, and when he told me that, "I think I feel very confident, because this is WCIT," and he said, "How about WITSA. WITSA owned by 82 countries, the members, and happen this year here, and next year will be in India, the year after it will be Armenia, and there will be Malaysia, and there will be one in Bangladesh."

Yvonne Chiu: Everybody is moving around the different countries, so don’t put the politics on top of that, our team, right away. Our foreign affair governor asked us, he said, "Hey, could you invite a minister?" and we said, "Yes, we will try to do our best to help." because we use the WITSA, no problem...

Yvonne Chiu: Later, they come back, and they said, "Oh, we’re going to close the door, not anticipate a lunch meeting or dinner meeting. That’s all." When he heard that... [laughs]

Jim Poisant: The bottom line is, I’m not inviting him if it’s just close door meetings.

Jim Poisant: No senior minister of a country’s going to come to another country for a major event, and be locked in a room with five other people. You don’t have any stage.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Jim Poisant: Let’s go back on the economy. As you know, there’s several layers to the marketing here. One of them is, of course, we’re trying to drive registration. This is even our opportunity to shine Taiwan around the globe through the medium of WITSA, through the fact that you’re hosting.

Jim Poisant: This gives you that opportunity to put that name out. We have several messages that have already been developed, and we’re starting to put them on email, and...

Jim Poisant: One of them I’m asking for pretty quickly is the, "Why Taiwan? Did you know Taiwan is ranked this, and this, and this?" That message should be going out all over the world, regardless of whether they come here or not.

Jim Poisant: You never know how that’s going to benefit you a year from now, when people...If you can use those messages, we’ve got four or five already printed, done.

Yvonne Chiu: We will send you the information.

Jim Poisant: Every week, we’ll have another one or two. We need to get press released. We need to get it to a couple PR companies on Friday.

Yvonne Chiu: Up until now, they’ll not come, still not coming here. I tell you what, we sign a contract 2014, when we was in Mexico. I tell you what, those people don’t want to move. I don’t know.

Yvonne Chiu: Right now, we are really worried, because when Simon... when he was in the office then, I told him got to move back. We had to do an incorporation, because Taiwan’s situation, position, and we have this kind of opportunity.

Yvonne Chiu: We need to work on them, to try to light up Taiwan for the world to see. Simon knows. They say, "Oh, I’ve got a," whatever. When Simon stepped down, and had to wait, I think it’s tough, because the new government on the ball and it’s that.

Audrey Tang: Things had to wait for four months during the transition.

Yvonne Chiu: That’s why when Simon was around, they are worried, already worried. I told Simon, I said, "You better take this opportunity." He said he knows. He knows. I don’t care about new government, old government.

Yvonne Chiu: When you have a project of around the world, you want to show off Taiwan’s muscle, you need to plan on the work from that administration office. You keep going, not say, "I have to wait." Nothing happens.

Yvonne Chiu: I think if you wait for the top company what to do, I think if you wait for them, you don’t know what to do. No, that’s not right, because of the attitude. Because we promote in Taiwan, it’s not promoting old government or promoting new government. We need to promote Taiwan. This opportunity, 17 years ago, we did it once, and this time, we got it.

Yvonne Chiu: Because he came to Taiwan, since we already signed a contract with WCIT. For at least year and a half, he came here six times. Last time was in March that he came over. He still feel like, "Yvonne, should we tell them, forget about it?" because the action was taking it so slow.

Audrey Tang: I think that’s one option. That’s always an option. [laughs]

Yvonne Chiu: Now, I just feel like he was so proud. He’s the secretary general. I told him, we already got initial fee. Don’t care. We already have money. If you really want to do good, do good, don’t do good, don’t do good.

Yvonne Chiu: We are joking. We’re teasing. Even though I said, "Don’t do it," but I felt he had to work hard. One way, I say, "Don’t do it." another way that I tell him, " Let’s do it." He really helped us a lot. I really appreciate what he’s been doing.

Yvonne Chiu: With his spirit, I think we need to take his spirit into the execution. Right now, he asked me why are we coming here. I said, "You are the person to broadcast." He got a little bit more excited.

Jim Poisant: Very excited.

Audrey Tang: A few things. I was invited to the World Economic Forum as one of the future of computing council members last year.

Audrey Tang: As soon as I become the digital minister, I changed my public profile title to reflect that. Then they just tell me, "You can’t stay because of your new job."

Audrey Tang: What I’m saying is that it’s not about Taiwan. It’s about the Taiwanese government. This government is, internationally speaking, as you have already observed, I wouldn’t say a turn-off, but that it’s definitely something that warrants much heavier scrutiny -- let’s say that -- when anyone says government.

Audrey Tang: Sometimes it’s easier to participate as a non-governmental organization calling itself Taiwan with the title in the NGO.

Audrey Tang: As an anarchist, actually that’s to my preference, but I won’t say that for all our other ministers. I am the exception here. Then I’ve developed a lot of different ways to work around these multilateral, bilateral restrictions.

Audrey Tang: For example, there is no rule in multilateral rules that says other ministers can’t see a robot or a robotic avatar of Taiwan’s digital minister, so that’s what I’ve done. Also, in virtual reality and holograms, in all sort of different space that doesn’t require my bodily presence, even though I am just in the next door, and so on.

Audrey Tang: The other governments are pretty appreciative of this flexibility in working with the so-called diplomatic norms, so much so that now, when I’m invited I just say, instead of an airplane that would damage the carbon and whatever, just do a robotic double of me.

Audrey Tang: I’ve done this in Madrid, we have conversations this way. To me, a silicon body is much more predictable also.

Audrey Tang: There are people fighting for that very, very heavily, and I respect their effort, but as an anarchist, not really my priority.

Audrey Tang: Back to WCIT, I am very happy that you are announcing messages forward.

Audrey Tang: I am being kept aware of the progress ever since I became a digital minister, because I attend the weekly Board of Science and Technology meetings. I was also told that I’m more involved in the civic tech track, and the other tracks.

Audrey Tang: They don’t have a reporting structure with me. That was just copy of their programs. There’s very little I can do to ask them to do anything, but I am willing to help to send messages out.

Audrey Tang: A few things, if you’re inviting the other ministers, and if the project office requires advice or communications, about the proper treatment of the appearance of this ministry or of guests, that’s something that I can help communicate.

Audrey Tang: Also, as far as I understand, the CEO of the project office, or the deputy CEO, I think, is looking for a live stream solution for the gathering, so that people who can’t attend the meeting in person, either for political or other reasons, they can nevertheless also participate from afar.

Audrey Tang: At least it raises awareness that there is something interesting happening in Taiwan, and some of these really high quality debates and forums going on. Also, there’s archive for future people to discuss about. If that plan is still part of the program -- which I am not sure of that -- if that part of the expensive experience, technological, and...

Jim Poisant: We should be live streaming, absolutely.

Audrey Tang: Right, but also framing the live streaming as, by itself, an international event, not something that’s just concurrent to the physical narrative. It also brings online participation.

Audrey Tang: That’s what we did in most of the Internet Society, most of their forums, is just to give people who participate from the forums the same input into the things that they talked about as people who are there.

Audrey Tang: I think that the whole point is smart, but at this point, it’s no longer, this is something very interesting going on. As you say, it requires multiple messages, and we don’t have time for that. I think the main message would have to be there’s something that you can contribute to, or you can influence the world’s top thinkers, policy leaders, or whatever in some way, even though you are not flying in.

Audrey Tang: I think that’s a much more short term message that we can spread. That, I can also help. What else? As for the speaker and the program arrangement, you voiced some concern about too many parallel tracks. I don’t actually understand the concern. Would you like to explain that?

Jim Poisant: Actually, there’s not too many parallel tracks, there’s too many people. You’ve got basically a two and half day program with 90, almost 100 speakers. It doesn’t fit. The shoe does not fit. You just can’t do that.

Jim Poisant: Now, they do have three simultaneous breakouts twice, which occupies about 30 people. If you take that away, you’re looking about 60, which is fine, which is OK. We can work with that.

Jim Poisant: One of the reasons we’re concerned about there’s too many people is that these people, they need to be hand-picked. If you go back this vision and mission of what we’re trying to do, they need to be talked to, researched, hand-picked, talked to before, and agree that they’ll come in.

Audrey Tang: There’s a coherent message.

Jim Poisant: Absolutely. I’ve gotten about 12 of them with 100 in. The rest of them have been just flying in.

Yvonne Chiu: Also, tell him about year 2000. You were talking about Bill Gates, and some other...

Jim Poisant: We don’t have marquis speakers. In 2000, we had Gates, Fiorina, Chambers.

Yvonne Chiu: Year 2000 really did a great job. One other thing you were talking about, you send a letter to everyone. Don’t talk about their merchandise. Bill Gates was talking about their merchandise.

Jim Poisant: Don’t talk about your company. This is an internal thing, and I have to now work out of it. I need to talk to each one of these people that are coming in from all over the place, a lot of professors. It was put together in a way that I’m not sure that was the most intelligent way to put to together.

Jim Poisant: Anyway, we’ll face it. By the way, I have a very good friend coming in and actually doing the opening speech here, Alan Marcus from the World Economic Forum.

Jim Poisant: Do you know Alan?

Audrey Tang: Not personally.

Jim Poisant: You need to meet him, and see if he can help you. He’s the head of the ITC. When I said Taiwan, again, just to give you, I don’t care about China. I know you’ve got to deal with them.

Jim Poisant: When Alan heard about Taiwan, "Oh, Taiwan." what you’re known for in his business is you’re a giant in the business. He definitely wants to find out more about Taiwan. I hope that they’re not that political, but you’re saying they are, and the Davos thing.

Jim Poisant: We’ll talk to Alan. He’s smart enough to know.

Yvonne Chiu: These three days, we really want to use this time in a maximum, working with Alan, for sure.

Yvonne Chiu: No, for us. We really, really bottom of heart, it’s the message of Taiwan. Anyone come here, we want to give them really good impression of Taiwan. That’s it. If somebody, you look, see there, you think about, very important.

Yvonne Chiu: We need to arrange to meet, relate to you, meet with you, relate to whoever. We like arrange to meet with other. I think it’s so hard, because in the year 2000, we have 20 or 40 people working full-time, right now.

Yvonne Chiu: That’s why we want to get all the support we can from our staff. That’s why we are working on that. He’s going to be here until Friday night. Saturday morning, he’s going to leave. Every time coming here, we start working early in the morning until late in the night.

Yvonne Chiu: We really feel like everybody should put their efforts in.

Audrey Tang: At the end of the event, what people will remember is just the highlight and the ending. [laughs] If we had some plan, we can still...

Yvonne Chiu: Look at our website. Only six, seven people have been a speaker here.

Audrey Tang: I mean if there’s one highlight, or a few highlights. What about a holographic projection?

Jim Poisant: We could ask.

Audrey Tang: It’s actually cheap to do that. With recording and everything.

Yvonne Chiu: Maybe we can see.

Audrey Tang: I did a lot of this kind of PR, holographic projections.

Jim Poisant: How does that set up? Do you bring the cameras to a speaker, and then you do the interview?

Audrey Tang: The speaker prerecords a message, and then we recreate their likeness with holographic projectors.

Audrey Tang: Then people maybe can ask them some questions. We have a system where people can compete for the best questions by liking each other’s questions. It’s called Slido. Maybe they promised to answer three of them, and that’s it.

Jim Poisant: Can you do me a favor, Audrey? Can you give me just a half a paragraph of what I would ask the Speaker’s Bureau to ask them, please?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Jim Poisant: I’ll do that right away.

Jim Poisant: In the hologram, do they go to a studio? Do you bring the cameras to them? How do you do that?

Audrey Tang: It’s really easy. Basically, you bring a cylinder-shaped camera setting. At least three cameras, but it’s usually more cameras. Then in middle of it, somebody speaks, just do a speaking.

Audrey Tang: Then you record all this message, and you bring this digital message to here, into Taiwan. Then arrange for projectors to produce a holographic message. If you turn the whole room dark, you actually just need one projector, because then there is a projector screen that’s entirely black.

Audrey Tang: If you project on top of it, then it just looks like someone, it’s called gauze projection. It’s the cheapest way. People don’t have to wear 3D movie glasses.

Jim Poisant: Now is there a studio, he goes to, or do you bring the cameras?

Audrey Tang: It could be arranged in many different fashions. It’s tendered for movie making. It’s called motion capture. There’s many studios that can do this, and I’m very familiar with the technology because that’s how I build my talks.

Audrey Tang: I can send you...

Jim Poisant: Give me some background so I can get that over to the bureau.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Jim Poisant: Excellent.

Audrey Tang: With holographic or telepresence messaging, the cost is small. It’s zero, literally. You’re just looking for a good time. If they agree to answer one of the top questions, you can always prepare them with prepared answers, so there’s no risk for this person.

Audrey Tang: It’s not like traveling here and getting asked by random journalists. There’s no political risk, but whether there’s interest in participating in this...

Yvonne Chiu: ...something very different than any other of the...

Audrey Tang: That’s one of the technical solutions. As for other things, for example not giving people an impression of a very scattered program, I think that’s up for the project meeting, there’s very little I can do...

Jim Poisant: I’m going to get every one of those people on the phone. We’re going to go over...we’re going to have meetings with...

Yvonne Chiu: Right now, I think you still can have the bureau experience of telling what to do. The government staff, they invited many, many professors.

Audrey Tang: You do have the right to veto though?

Jim Poisant: Oh, yeah.

Jim Poisant: I don’t have any problem calling people and saying a profile just does not fit what we’re trying to do here.

Audrey Tang: That’s awesome.

Yvonne Chiu: OK. It’s just I feel bad because last month he was here. We wanted to celebrate for 70 years, happy birthday, but he willing to work that hard, I really appreciate it. I hope we can have a successful event, because we are looking for.

Yvonne Chiu: Even though I say we want a really successful one but another way. If we don’t do good, we might as well don’t do it.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s about quality control.

Yvonne Chiu: Yeah, quality.

Yvonne Chiu: It’s very important because you say...

Jim Poisant: You have my phone number, and we can communicate over Skype more. Anything that I can do to help you in terms of feeding you with any of the information about the program, any of the messages that are coming out from the PR company that would be greatly appreciated.

Yvonne Chiu: He was working in Disney with the marketing person.

Yvonne Chiu: Marketing, yeah.

Yvonne Chiu: He’s really, really good.

Audrey Tang: Imagineer, right?

Yvonne Chiu: Yeah, imagineer and he’s really grateful, and more I know him the more I appreciate him, because before I even on board and everybody talk about it , but I changed a lot. One other thing is WCIT used to be every two years, and this I am so proud, too.

Yvonne Chiu: Every two years, and our government asked me to submit a paper to challenge it for 2018, but 2018 already, but 2018 India already got it because Taiwan submit the papers the last, the last one and then France and Armenia.

Yvonne Chiu: He told me, "Hold on, you know, Taiwan can 2022." Before I was the chairman 2022 I don’t know where I am then. Right away in front of 60 or 80 people in the room first time I walk in there and I tell them, "We need to change everywhere regulation." Everybody look at me like this crazy lady.

Yvonne Chiu: They say, "Why?" I tell them, "You know, because ICT changes every single day, not every year not every two years. You cannot afford to waste your time." Everybody clapping, "Oh, yes, yes, yes." OK, we taking away regulations so it can either be odd years or even years. Now he came to me. He said, "Can I get to 2019?" Remember?

Yvonne Chiu: No. I’m the one proposing for 2017. Everybody said, "No, not enough the message. We cannot let you do it for 2017." Right way, think about something else, right now our government has the money to support a 2019. I don’t know, where the money goes.

Yvonne Chiu: ’17 Taiwan. Right away.

Audrey Tang: Priority override.

Yvonne Chiu: I feel like in my moment I can see, I just really proud because I had to say something to let everybody at 2017 that I want to do it. Right away they tell everybody, "That lady, she is something else." Right away, and then I flood over their economy because WITSA used to be every two years they only receive initial fee for $750,000 for two years.

Yvonne Chiu: WITSA’s expenses are a lot, and also we need to do the paperwork. We need to do this and we need to do that. We have to spend lots of money, and no board member willing to donate any money. I flood the economy because every year they were having $750,000 come in, and now every year. Now we have money to operate, and then we can do more things. Economy’s so important.

Audrey Tang: We will see more high quality principal...

Yvonne Chiu: Yes, and then they were even saying when we were in PC that year, we were been saying, "Oh, maybe we need to cut the staff off, and maybe we need to cut the salary off." I said, "No way." I tell them, "No way. If you cut their salary in half they walk out. If you cut the people off, they don’t work. So nothing would be good."

Yvonne Chiu: I tell them no. He really appreciate it, and he come to me "Yvonne, are you going to insist on this?" I said, "Yes. I will." I told him like that. What I’m trying to say is economy is most important in we need to do with, and we don’t have money, no money no talk. Last time we was on the meeting. We asked him for what, $50,000 for?

Jim Poisant: We get another $50,000 for marketing, $100,000 to support you here as delegates and the bigger expenses coming in.

Yvonne Chiu: The hotel and all the expenses. I asked for money back to support Taiwan, but not only for Taiwan, later on every single country I was chair too, but beginning from Taiwan because when I see the money maybe not enough, maybe this not enough.

Yvonne Chiu: We’re working on that, and even though we’re paying the money for initial fee I still bring them back, and now we will have more money to try to do the policy. We want to be leading the world for ICT. That’s how our goal is. If we don’t have money how can we lead in the world? It’s so important. I really feel proud of myself.

Audrey Tang: It’s really good work.

Yvonne Chiu: Among other things I hope because of my position, I’m the chairman. We’re going to Armenia to see the minister of the ICT.

Audrey Tang: Prime minister.

Yvonne Chiu: Prime Minister. I would like to see if later on our government people will follow, not follow, go with me because of the opportunity because our government cannot go see the minister, cannot go see the Prime Minister because they don’t have any relationship with Taiwan. I hope this position only two years.

Yvonne Chiu: It’s already six months gone, and maybe if I’m reelected it will still have three and a half years. I hope government can use me maximum to do something together. It’s so important, and that’s our goal. We want to promote Taiwan, and while I’m on board for the chairman I would like to see our government can too.

Audrey Tang: I just checked the WCIT 2016...

Yvonne Chiu: In Brazil.

Audrey Tang: In Brazil. There’s almost no web presence, there’s no live streaming and not to mention photographic, but the whole...

Yvonne Chiu: It’s completely different.

Audrey Tang: I hear a lot of the baseline comparing this one to the 2001 because it was only in Taiwan, but compared with the previous year we could probably do better.

Jim Poisant: First of all, you absolutely can do better and you need to do better. Keep in mind that when this was going on in that country, they were under impeachment. They impeached the president.

Jim Poisant: Their economy’s in the tank. They’re even worse off now, and so you have a society, a cultural thing, which is really a strange thing to describe. For example, there were 2,000 tickets sold. Once the opening ceremony was over, I don’t think there was a hundred people in either of the sessions.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s the impression I got from the Twitter coverage.

Jim Poisant: It’s a societal thing. We did our best. We had probably the strongest program we’ve ever had down there. We had...

Yvonne Chiu: When a press come to me, ask me, "What do you think about the Brazil’s WCIT," but I was elected to be chairman. I had to tell them, "They are first time doing this and I feel like it’s doing a great job." They said, "Compared to Taiwan?" I said, "No, you cannot compare."

Yvonne Chiu: I told them you cannot compare to Taiwan, because Taiwan is a different kind of environment. They were so happy, because Yvonne said, "Oh, you get did a big job. Taiwan can’t do better than you." I’ll probably get killed. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: That sounds reasonable. Let’s just compare with ourselves. If we maximized the elements that are not there in the year 2000, for example the year 2000 doesn’t have live streaming, there’s no mobile app or mobile interaction to speak of, and there’s no virtual reality or anything that can enhance the immersive experience of people, either here or watching from afar.

Audrey Tang: So we maximize the highlights based on the technology that’s not there in the 2000s. Then everybody will remember it is different. If we compare ourselves to 2000 using exactly the same methods, we’d probably fall short, because of the lack of relative political and the other buy-ins. So let’s do that..

Jim Poisant: OK.

Yvonne Chiu: That’ll be great today. Yes.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, let’s do it.

Yvonne Chiu: I feel better, yeah.

Audrey Tang: I’ll send you all the details.

Jim Poisant: Also, I’d like you to remember WITSA, please. It doesn’t spell well, but outside of that...

Audrey Tang: Our team’s PDIS. It also doesn’t....

Audrey Tang: ...get easily pronounced.

Jim Poisant: What were you working on? What is this?

Audrey Tang: This one?

Jim Poisant: Yes.

Audrey Tang: It’s a stylus and tablet. I’m trying to get everybody off paper, so I’m to offer them a considerable alternative. Then there’s a projector here also that I use in meetings. This is how I record these meetings, and just project everybody’s thoughts on a projector, so that with maybe a hundred people in the room, they can still be on the same page as the projector’s focus.

Jim Poisant: What’s the name brand?

Audrey Tang: This is an iPad Pro.

Jim Poisant: It’s an Apple?

Audrey Tang: It’s an Apple.

Yvonne Chiu: Also, you can connect it with your phone, correct?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Jim Poisant: Sync.

Audrey Tang: They sync very easily, and then you can import PowerPoint or whatever onto here and do annotations.

Jim Poisant: Excellent. Thank you.

Yvonne Chiu: The team is great. How do you say? PDIS.

Audrey Tang: The Public Digital Innovation Space.