Ivan Linn: …be quite casual and relaxing. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: OK, that is fine. I was checking out your website.

Ivan Linn: OK, I see. A little bit of introduction about me and why we got to schedule this meeting. Pretty much, I was talking to Douglas Hsu. We met in Boston a few years ago and at the time I was focusing on music career. I was from music and entertainment background. Video games, classical that was where I was from. Then, I started to do this technology project and now I’m visiting Taipei and catching up with Douglas. As soon as we started to talk about our new project, about tech he immediately suggests me to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of great things about you, and friends told me that you’re one of the smartest guys…

Audrey Tang: Nah, just popular.

Ivan Linn: I was classically trained pianist before. I went to school here, then I moved to Germany when I was around seven years old. I started classical piano at the time, and later, I moved to the US, pretty much Boston, and I started to do a lot of projects for video games such as Final Fantasy, to play for video games.

Ivan Linn: You probably heard me playing piano in the video game. I started to work on music productions for Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Zelda, and more recently, Assassin’s Creed.

Ivan Linn: I was surrounded by communities of people and everything that’s related to communities. It surprised me that what we can do in the future for platforms, for media. It inspired me to create this platform of Folkspaper.

Ivan Linn: It came from a little joke, and the timing was right. People were right. We decided to create this platform with the hope of giving a platform where people’s voices can be heard anywhere. We also titled and called this platform 無國界版的爆料公社…

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Ivan Linn: …or personalized WikiLeaks. I guess, when I talk about those to Douglas, he mentioned you right away because you were pretty much around PTT. That’s the form and platform here.

Ivan Linn: I was wondering, I have a few questions here in terms of future media, and for a product like 爆料公社 and in terms of UGC platforms and open media platforms, how is it in Taiwan so far?

Ivan Linn: Because a few days before I met the founder of The News Lens, which pretty much got excluded from Sunflower movements. I was wondering, what do you see the open media and UGC platform and future media, not necessarily limited to Taiwan, but pretty much like global scope and what we can do in the future?

Audrey Tang: When you said getting their voices heard, what I see mostly on your website is writing and photography. That’s the modalities that you currently work with, instead of say podcasts and something. Because in Taiwan, we’ve seen a resurgence of mainly voice based UGC content.

Audrey Tang: That’s number one, because people screen time has saturated. They do not want to spend more time interfacing with a screen. In Taiwan, we’ve had it better, I guess, with no lockdowns and so on, so that there’s actual time to attend the Pride Parade or whatever.

Audrey Tang: In other jurisdictions, fatigue is a real thing and people do not want to spend more time looking at screens anymore, because most of their day to day like learning or even health requests are now being fulfilled online. I think a lot of it will move to the ambience, when people talk about, for example, augmented and virtual reality.

Audrey Tang: Sound is actually a better AR medium. Of course, maybe, you’ve had experience interfacing with Siri or some other AR assistance, and it could do so much more because it gives a feeling of co presence much more easily than the two dimensional screen which is actually very difficult to walk past this uncanny valley.

Audrey Tang: It’s not so much as prediction as observation. First, people are spending more time on the more immersive, more envious part of themselves as to you see, like sharing the soundscapes of where they are essentially.

Audrey Tang: Also, the popularization of 5G technology brings us out from the offices. Before, if we are looking to communicate in a low latency way, pretty much both sides need to be in a office or in a room with fiber optic connections.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, these two VR headsets, if you put it on, I mean, this is 5G built in and it doesn’t even need a controller so you can scan the surrounding and drove us into the Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland or whatever and enjoy cool presence. That’s mostly motivated by the need of sharing sound and gestures, not so much as the kind of video footage, and so on. That’s outdoor experience sharing.

Audrey Tang: That’s also something that we’re seeing a lot more.

Ivan Linn: Is something like ambient computing that Google pretty much mentioned in the last year. When they mentioned Indians computing connected to Google home or those devices…

Ivan Linn: …that surrounding us.

Audrey Tang: It’s easiest form. It could be just a project that brings another connected to this room. This is why we do all the time. It is more complex. Of course, it could be like synchronized whiteboards. It could be those ambient light. We use slider a lot, which allows people watching in live stream to still participate in agenda setting.

Audrey Tang: We use spatial audio along to making sure that people can feel a sense of presence even if they are in some other parts of the world.

Audrey Tang: If they close their eyes, they could feel that they are in the same room just like that. These from a more, I guess, in prosocial social media as opposed to fragmented anti social social media, which is what tend to happen if all you have to go is a small screen on the phone.

Ivan Linn: Apparently, now, we are so much used to smartphones and we are used to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Medium, and we’ve got TikTok coming. We have got…

Audrey Tang: Apparently, it’s very saturated.

Ivan Linn: Exactly. Now that we have some choices and we are not limited to Facebook friends list. I have friends who wouldn’t use Facebook just because their parents are using Facebook.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Ivan Linn: [laughs] Exactly that’s happening right now. We’re so much used to the usual social media that we’ve been using throughout the past few years.

Ivan Linn: Folkspaper is such a start up and the product was launched pretty much 12 months ago, so it’s still pretty young. We’re trying to find a new and a niche to sort of go. Well, in the email I briefly mentioned about Parler, which is now removed and banned from the App Store and Parler, the Web version probably was removed due to its service from AWS.

Audrey Tang: They’re seeking new infrastructure…

Ivan Linn: Exactly. I don’t think it’s going to be permanent. It’s going to be a temporary banned instead of like Parler is going down.

Ivan Linn: We are not very much different from Parler in terms of the concept and philosophy, because we already provide free space, open space. In return, we also wanted to provide a better censorship in terms of for those publishers to take responsibility for the content they…

Audrey Tang: Are you truly censorship resistant? Even from your own technology providers. If AWS pull…AWS to you. Would you be able to continue like the Pirate Bay or Sci Hub before you?

Ivan Linn: Oh, we use Google.

Audrey Tang: You’re bound by the Google cloud.

Ivan Linn: Exactly. Just a few minutes ago, we actually received the notification from Google that one pieces of our content has been violating regulations. This is an ongoing problem going on.

Ivan Linn: The thing is that looking at Parler, which is a platform focusing on political perspective and seeing Folkspaper, which is pretty much the platform focusing on social impact content and e sports gaming.

Ivan Linn: We’re looking into finding a niche and unique category in order to put out content that would be able to attract more users. Pretty much because around the first year of a product and the most important thing for a new product, especially for a media platform, is that we need people to come to Folkspaper and it’s growing at the moment.

Ivan Linn: We started to see some significant increase in traffic when social impact related topics are brought to the platform.

Ivan Linn: I was wondering what is your feedback or thought about platforms like this UGC focused platform or for instance 爆料公社, it’s so popular in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: It makes a impact, it has a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream news. Right? People who share there basically are looking to prevent something wrong from happening again.

Audrey Tang: That’s a very powerful channel for outreach to collect collaborative perspectives about a particular social issue and the joy of delivering some new mechanism that could be, I don’t know, locking down the cars of people who drunk drive. [laughs] Right? They have to brace into their car in order to drive. Now, that’s a actual result of this kind of social movements.

Audrey Tang: People could say, “Let’s ban plastic straws from bubble teas” – which is actually realized.

Audrey Tang: These actual actions are translating into policy, not necessarily government policy, it could be also Facebook policy. To disclose real time advertisement during elections and ban foreign interference or sponsorship during the elections. That’s also something that’s happening out of this social norm setting, by the social sector and so on.

Audrey Tang: As long as it has a norm setting impact I think it will draw people.

Ivan Linn: Do you think we’re living in a grey area where…? We’ve been asking questions about ourselves, “If you did platforms where news related, open platforms can be successful in say the next 3 or 5 or even 10 years…?”

Ivan Linn: We’ve been asking ourselves, “Are news stations, the existence of news station, is it necessary or it’s actually going to be shifted?” What is your point of view on this, in terms of future perspective for existence of news stations?

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan news, 新聞 literally had the same word root as journalists, 新聞工作 or 新聞業. We don’t quite make a distinction between journalism and news work. Journalism is literally news work.

Ivan Linn: Traditional media and social media.

Audrey Tang: That’s right, exactly. Our focus more is not on the media literacy part off education but rather on the media competency part. Meaning that each and every primary scholar is a “news worker” if they could, for example, fact check the presidential debates. If they could, for example, reveal the water or air pollutions around a vicinity.

Audrey Tang: Their collaboration with their local college and community colleges, university social responsibility projects and so on. All of these makes them not just journalists but also investigative journalists. They are [inaudible 13:14] journalists with the people, right?

Ivan Linn: Individually, right? Not necessarily centralized or agency?

Audrey Tang: Exactly, if you call yourself a journalism platform which you do, there’s a standard above which it warrants that journalism. Which is kind of source checking, bias checking things like that. Investigative journalism, of course, feels a lot like detective work. There’s also the thrill of doing detective work but if it doesn’t satisfy those standards, then it’s probably not journalism and it’s probably not news work.

Ivan Linn: Exactly and that’s exactly where we’re facing the challenges right now. For start up companies, we need to always raise funds. We need to meet investors and a lot of them, it is part of like when I meet investors, especially in the media field…

Ivan Linn: It was as though meeting classical musicians [laughs] and I put it metaphorically this way it’s because I started to do a lot of gaming music. At the time when I talked to classical musicians, they never believed that video gaming music can be such a huge impact, as what it is today.

Ivan Linn: I started gaming music production around eight years ago, at the time we were told we were never going to be successful. What is gaming music and that’s not a necessary thing to do? Now, we’re seeing that, in terms of gaming music industry…It’s larger than motion picture, larger than films.

Ivan Linn: When we meet investors these days they also said, “Well, media company fine. Media start up, it’s fine.” We keep emphasizing that we’re a platform, we’re not necessarily a news station. We provide a platform.

Audrey Tang: I see that.

Ivan Linn: Users take responsibility to offer content and they’re published. They always told us that, “Now, that we have Facebook, now that we have Twitter and we have everything that we’ve got. Why the new media platform?” The way we see is that there’s so much indentation about Facebook that they can do and they wanted to change the culture.

Ivan Linn: As the matter of fact, culture is probably the hardest thing to change when the larger size of enterprise like Facebook or Twitter. It creates opportunities for new companies to come on board and see what we can do, in order to create a better community and a better world.

Ivan Linn: In terms of communications or in terms of the concept between the so called traditional media and the new media, that we probably didn’t even know what that is going to be in the future, do you have any suggestions in terms of communicating with people or to have them believe in what we do?

Audrey Tang: Why would you need traditional start up investor at this stage? I mean, the maintenance costs of this platform is minimal, I’ve been there. Nowadays, it’s literally cents [laughs] per person, right?

Audrey Tang: If you want to develop new features and so on, the traditional way of going to investors explain the feature instead of costs, that’s a very long alliteration, it’s likely to even lose the most empathetic investors.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, a lot people actually even musicians like Peter Houlands is working with the Patreon community and essentially crowdfunding all his work, including actually who to invite and what to make.

Audrey Tang: Many people on the Patreon community is in there not to make a return on investment, they are there to make a return in terms of governance, by in terms of the genocide and power and things like this. Have you considered this kind of subscription based or even one time based? The virtual choir guy, Eric Whitacre also did some Patreon projects.

Ivan Linn: Song library.

Audrey Tang: The latest was called, “Sing gently.” That was last year.

Audrey Tang: He keeps doing this.

Ivan Linn: He’s now on Patreon?

Audrey Tang: Working with Patreon…

Ivan Linn: Wow, OK.

Audrey Tang: ….on specific projects. Christopher Tin also work with another Patreon worker, per project basis, not like Peter Houlands where essentially all his [laughs] work is funded by crowdfunding.

Audrey Tang: Whether it is project based crowdfunding or whether it is just no investor scroll founders entity, there is a larger community. If they fund you, they don’t want to see you fail. Instead of just focusing on three or five investors, why don’t you work with 300.

Ivan Linn: Right, we’re learning our lesson because I was pretty much from an entertainment and music background, I’m pretty much…I started a tech career like two or three years ago and hard lesson learned, like fundraising and going through all the necessary steps for start ups, just how Elon Musk would describe doing start ups is choking glasses in your mouth and trying to go forward very slowly.

Ivan Linn: That’s what we’re going through right now. The team is quite solid and is strong. We have the faith in terms of UGC. In the future, we hope to see newspaper or even centralized media, that will be a co working environment between traditional and new media. Why do we always need to go to CN just to see news?

Ivan Linn: If we can get Anderson Cooper to Folkspaper and create his personal channel. If we can get Audrey to create a personal channel on Folkspaper, then why a centralized…

Audrey Tang: I’d probably deliver it in a video game format, but yes. [laughs]

Ivan Linn: Exactly.

Audrey Tang: Truly interactive with my avatar and all.

Ivan Linn: Exactly. Video games, future media and UGC. This is what we’re seeing right now. I’ve been talking to media people but it’s sort of going nowhere because they have a lot of barriers and limitations different than themselves. In the meantime, the platform is free for anyone to post anything on the platform.

Ivan Linn: There’s a censorship, we developed a technology called data anchoring which is a co working partnership with Etherian. Meaning, all the asset that you published, your content including text, image, videos, audio can always be bundled to a series of signatures and there will be uploaded to the public transactions with Etherian.

Ivan Linn: Meaning, whenever there is someone publishing a piece of content on Folkspaper, if he chooses to or if she chooses to then the content once it’s published it cannot be changed, it cannot be deleted. In a way, for readers, it provides a credibility for them to see verified content because knowing that creators won’t be able to change or shift the content. Once they publish, it’s always there, it cannot be deleted.

Audrey Tang: Surely there could be revisions, like edits or no? There’s no revisions?

Ivan Linn: No.

Audrey Tang: OK, it’s frozen in time.

Ivan Linn: No, no revisions. I was talking to probably one of your friends as well, James Fong from Business Next. He also mentioned that, in terms of the censorship, probably we can start monitoring the process as soon as they started writing content, so that all the consideration starts.

Ivan Linn: We think the composer will be able to be tracked, as well. That one is a little bit extreme, but we were hoping to…

Audrey Tang: You can still do livestreaming rights, right? Watch the authors as they write.

Ivan Linn: Yeah, exactly, but that’s the technology block chain that we co work for now. As you can see, in the future, we hope to create some kind of ecosystem. Folkspaper provides a totally free space for them to create and publish content. In return, you need to take responsibility for the content and the words that you put out on a Folkspaper.

Ivan Linn: This is the concept and the framework that we are seeing for Folkspaper, but we’re still early. Right now, we’ve got 12 people, 50 percent for sales and growth, three developers, three measurement team. In terms of traffic, it’s reaching to around 1.1 million active users, for now. It’s quite overwhelming.

Ivan Linn: Because last year in the US we were pretty much isolated in our home, working from home and we won’t be able to go to the office, no one dared to go the office. I was advised, “So, why don’t you come back to Taipei and meet people?” There are so many great people, tech people from Silicon Valley. They are COVID refugee, including… [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I know, we’ve got almost 2,000 Gold Card issued. I can tell it’s because of COVID.

Ivan Linn: Exactly, so that becomes our advantage that we’ll be able to use. I was wondering, in terms of the tech community, especially in Taiwan, do you think Folkspaper can be…? We’re also looking into a business development locally in Taiwan.

Ivan Linn: Right now, the US is probably the largest, followed by India, then all those English speaking countries, like Australia, Norway, Netherlands. Do you see this kind of platform being operative in Taiwanese community?

Audrey Tang: There’s quite a few choices for the Taiwanese community for this particular niche. A lot of them have also visited me and the transcript is online.

Audrey Tang: You can compare notes. For example, there’s this Matters stock news, which probably have exactly the same value proposition as you do, but it’s focused, of course, on Mandarin. It’s called Matters and it works with the LikeCoin.

Ivan Linn: OK, another crypto.

Audrey Tang: You probably have heard of this before. It helps, especially conversations around Hong Kong because the co founder, Annie Zhang Jie Ping, is based in Hong Kong. A censorship resistant distribution network is very important to them, not because of media censorship, but rather from individual’s censorship.

Ivan Linn: OK, individual censorship. In what ways, by the way?

Audrey Tang: For example, the people who want to write about the experience after the newest security laws in Hong Kong, they need a entire ecosystem, including the payment platform.

Audrey Tang: For example, they care a lot about Patreon, not revealing, to any of its payment suppliers, the actual address, and not working with anyone in the PRC who could, theoretically, discover their whereabouts or their real identity when they write under a pseudonym. This is just one example. The personal security of people still physically in Hong Kong is very important to the Matters community.

Audrey Tang: That’s one niche, and probably not your original targets.

Audrey Tang: If you look at structurally, it’s actually very similar. This is a adversarial environment, and people want to write about something that could have a social impact without suffering from the traditional review process, which always, in Hong Kong now, have someone trying to… Just look at Apple Daily News.

Ivan Linn: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: There’s many others. Taiwan reporters at twreporter.org chose a funding model that’s entirely by donation, and also by syndication rights. They still managed to fund quite a bit of investigative reporting, as well as gamified, interactive, game delivered reporting, things like that.

Ivan Linn: Those reporters and journalists, they don’t belong to a centralized media agents. They work for themselves, where…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, they work with individual correspondents, but they also have full time staff. On the other hand, of course, the reporter or metrics for that matter, were started by professional journalists, so they already have some clout in their community of holding the content to a journalistic standard.

Ivan Linn: That’s a good strategy.

Audrey Tang: Which is what I’m trying to point out, is that you call yourself a social journalism platform, the social part, no problem at all. You explain it very well, but the journalism part, because you probably do not have, currently, a journalist co founder. That part is a…

Ivan Linn: OK, right. Our CEO is from Twitter.

Audrey Tang: Right, and more shaky.

Ivan Linn: Yeah, exactly. We’re seeing differences and, in terms of innovation in journalism between the US, Europe and Asia and it seems…I believe there is so much doing in the future.

Ivan Linn: One of the questions that I wanted to bring up is that I’ve been advised to maintain all the management operation, marketing, growth, sales, pretty much everything in the US, but shift at the IT developing technical department in Taiwan. Knowing that that’s one of our advantage, what is the best way to start in Taiwan, locally?

Ivan Linn: Of course, we can we can found a company, we can register the company, we can get some offices, but I believe it’s not that simple. Did you have any suggestions in terms of initiating the entire process? Working with the level…

Audrey Tang: By shifting, do you mean physically moving your developers to Taiwan?

Ivan Linn: Right now, we don’t have that problem…

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Ivan Linn: …because the team is rather small. We’ve only three developers, two of them in Taiwan, one in Singapore. Already the base is here, but the problem is that our Twitter guy, he’s from San Francisco. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I see.

Ivan Linn: We don’t have much of a resource in terms of initiating or starting this stuff in Taiwan. Do you have opinions or advice…

Audrey Tang: Usually, teams this size, people meet at co working spaces, or cafes, or things like that. I personally have my office in an incubator, in a social innovation lab.

Ivan Linn: OK.

Audrey Tang: It’s quite usual that people go to a social innovation lab or any of the co working spaces. I was just visiting the Taiwan Tech Arena…

Ivan Linn: I was there yesterday. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Right. There was another one in Linkou. The Startup Terrace.

Ivan Linn: What is it called?

Audrey Tang: The Startup Terrace. T E R R A …

Ivan Linn: Like the terrace?

Audrey Tang: …C E. Yes, Startup Terrace. There’s also one setting up in Tainan. The food is better, I will concede to that.

Audrey Tang: Like much better.

Ivan Linn: That’s a good point.

Audrey Tang: The Shaolin community. Now they’re setting up another one in Kaohsiung as well. At least Taipei, New Taipei, Taiyuan, which is the original site for Asia Silicon Valley, Tainan and Kaohsiung, and they all have this for three to five people size. You can use the facility there and save a lot of capital investment.

Ivan Linn: Is there a particular place within Taiwan in terms of establishing such office, or it doesn’t matter?

Audrey Tang: Depending on whether you like hiking or surfing more?

Ivan Linn: It doesn’t matter.

Audrey Tang: [laughs] I’m speaking truthfully, or whether you prefer Tainan food or Kaohsiung food, I guess? [laughs]

Ivan Linn: Taiwan is quite small after all.

Audrey Tang: Yes. Within the high speed rails, it’s all one hour and a half…

Ivan Linn: Exactly.

Audrey Tang: …anyway.

Ivan Linn: OK. I see. One of the other things that I’ve been observing, including investment or infrastructure and all that, is that we are seeing a bunch of investments in Taiwan going around for hardware companies.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Ivan Linn: For biotech.

Audrey Tang: The buzzword is AIoT. [laughs]

Ivan Linn: Yes. AI and IoT.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Ivan Linn: What about software? It’s not as strong as hardware investments in Taiwan, and we’re seeing a bunch of strong software investments going on? Is it the trend? Or this is improving?

Audrey Tang: There’s also a peer. There’s Trent Micro, there’s Whoscall . It’s not like we don’t have a software field. On the other hand, of course, the semiconductor supply chain and the so called AIoT industry do gets most of that talent. I would say maybe 80 percent.

Audrey Tang: This is a pattern that we say that people work first with TSMC or other semiconductor industry, MediaTek, or whatever until they are at their 30s, late 30s. Then they go and found a start up because, in Taiwan, everybody wants to found a start up at some point, I don’t know why.

Ivan Linn: Really?

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Even for people who work in the semiconductor industry, or a hardware oriented field, always there looking for…Maybe they’ll design a shoe or scooter based company as a professional designer.

Ivan Linn: But only when they’re older.

Audrey Tang: Yes. They say the late 30s or 40s. That’s the time when they are looking for co founders, and also as a slash. Sometimes they retain their communities in the hardware industry, and they sometimes…Most of them work in a nearby software field, that could then add value back to their community.

Audrey Tang: It grows a lot but by the pace of hardware sector. It grows by iteration cycle of maybe half a year or a quarter because that’s where the hardware industry people feel comfortable. Very high quality, but very steady pace. But in your case…

Ivan Linn: [laughs] Yes.

Audrey Tang: …which is a mobile app, it literally iterates every day. Yeah. That’s a very different pace. It’s not about investment or talent. It’s about pace, and the pace is quite different here in Taiwan when it comes to software. As long as your software needs to work in conjunction with any hardware ecosystem, that pace is the default pace.

Ivan Linn: A few days before, I was looking at a few photos talking about Top 10 US companies, those CEOs and Top 10 companies in Taiwan, and those chairmen and CEOs. For the US, you see Warren Buffett. He’s not young, but if you look at…

Audrey Tang: Not exactly young.

Ivan Linn: But when you look at other founders whilst he was there, they’re so young. But when you look at the picture about [inaudible 32:51] Taiwan, all of them, their hair is gray, white and silver and there is no young found…

Audrey Tang: The real work is done by young people, by the way.

Ivan Linn: I know what you mean. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: There’s this Asian tradition where we respect the seniority and put them in group pictures, but the real work is done by young people and the “real work” people is much more gender balanced than you see on the photos.

Ivan Linn: I see. That’s another story. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: It’s a culture thing. We honor our elders, filial piety , and all that.

Ivan Linn: That’s something we hope to work on. I’ve been meeting a bunch of new founders. I’ve been meeting the founders of the News Lens. I’ve been meeting the founder of Vocus. They are young and passionate, and they wanted to change what we see…

Audrey Tang: I’ve met with them, too.

Ivan Linn: Oh, you’ve met with them, too. All of us, we wanted to change what is today, even though I was away from Taiwan for 15 years. The blood is Taiwanese and I always wanted to do something that can be of greater and better for Taiwan.

Ivan Linn: I’ve been talking to a bunch of people, but the thing is that it’s either lack of resource or the bridge isn’t established between Taiwan and cultured people outside this comfort box. I’ve been living in Germany. I’ve been living in Switzerland. I’ve been living in the US and I was born in Taiwan. Do you have any advice or anything that we could contribute to the Taiwanese community in a way that could improve or optimize the so called culture globally?

Audrey Tang: There’s a team that I’m more familiar with. It’s the Verse team. That’s verse.com.tw, and this is their website.

Ivan Linn: What’s it about?

Audrey Tang: What they’re doing is essentially crowdfunding a paper magazine, which is definitely a niche because people don’t do paper magazines anymore. An entirely paper based magazine, almost like a souvenir, like a book with various artists and crafting, and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Nevertheless, it’s got record numbers of people supporting them in crowdfunding and their value proposition is making Taiwan seen in the world. Making Taiwan seen in the world, as well as deepening our democracy — democracy as a technology. These two are the main ideas that unites the various different cultural people together.

Audrey Tang: Indeed, the week before the presidential election of last year, one of my friend’s media did a poll to the largest campaign gatherings of president candidate Han Kuo yu, president candidate Tsai Ing wen, supports and much to our surprise, they all agree on the importance of deepening democracy as the technology, and making Taiwan more seen in the world.

Audrey Tang: They just accuse the other side of not doing things good enough, but those two values are common. I think like Verse, they explicitly choose this main trends as the value propositions.

Audrey Tang: Even for a paper based magazine media, they got sufficient support in terms of not just user generated content. They run a competition of translating Verse to Mandarin, which is not easy. [laughs] Also, I’m delivering their content to people previously are not reading paper anymore.

Audrey Tang: I would suggest if you want to cater to a local culture community, deepening democracy, connecting to international stage, these are the two things that can also get resource from the more senior generation.

Ivan Linn: Because I was so surprised when I talked to a bunch of people here this time when I’m back in Taiwan, because I didn’t quit my job in music. I still play the piano. I still write music. I still…

Audrey Tang: You’ve got a day job.

Ivan Linn: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Ivan Linn: Exactly. I’m a musician or a producer during the night, but during the day I do Folkspaper.

Ivan Linn: One of the Taiwanese TV programs that was released on Netflix a few weeks ago, it’s called Futmalls. It’s abbreviation of Future Malls, F U T M A L L S.com, Futmalls.com is the title on Netflix and produced by Taiwanese company I understand. I wrote the music for them.

Audrey Tang: Nice.

Ivan Linn: When I talked to the producer, I said, “Well, of course it’s the first season, and there’s a lot that we can optimize in terms of storytelling, music producing, and pretty much everything.” I asked them…Sorry.

Audrey Tang: It’s fine.

Ivan Linn: I asked them if they ever thought about applying for any awards. The response that I got from them was, “What? Can we do this? Are we able to do it?” I was like “Yes, and you don’t need to be a member of the academy. You can submit the program to the US.”

Ivan Linn: First of all, out of this response, they’re not aware that the quality of the program can be submitted to any awards, which is such a pity.

Ivan Linn: Second, they don’t know there is a way to connect Taiwanese work to the international stage, because myself, I’m a member to the Recording Academy, which is the academy that runs Grammy Awards. I was there last year. When I talk to music producers here in town, they were like, “Really? Can we do this?” “Yes, why not?”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, why not?

Ivan Linn: We can jump onto the international stage by creating a qualified product, and we can do this by being brave. Just to throw the work to the academy and have them nominate it. What I found out in observing the stance, that they’re not aware of this. Is it usual? Is it common?

Audrey Tang: It’s quite usual. Previously, we did not have these dedicated agencies like the K pop agencies, that could connect international resources and stage to the local creators. Taiwan Creative Content Agency or the TAICCA, just established. Actually, that’s their job to do such connections.

Audrey Tang: Of course, language play a large part. If you worked primarily in Mandarin, then you’re going to connect mostly to Mandarin speaking folks. To think bilingually, I think the younger generation in Taiwan who in Kaohsiung start ups are by default bilingual, as we connect to the international community when we’re very young.

Ivan Linn: It’s a must.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s a must. It’s the default mode of operation. Before the mobile Web or before the Wide Web, that’s not so easy. Usually, in a large content agency, there’s maybe one or two people connected to the English speaking community, while the rest of them speak Mandarin.

Audrey Tang: I’m talking about the ‘90s and before. The market for Mandarin speaking community is so large. They dominate most of the revenues for the cultural makers.

Ivan Linn: They are satisfied, which is really bad.

Audrey Tang: That’s the thing that we’re adjusting now — the bilingual nation and have found of the National Council, the Gold Card for talent circulation, and things like that. It’s essentially about thinking in a more bilingual fashion. I don’t just mean two languages, but, simultaneously, two languages.

Ivan Linn: Exactly, for instance, for me personally, I’m so used to working in an environment that I’m the only Asian guy. I’ve been working with French guys, with Japanese guys and people from the US. I was so surprised to have learned that this kind of circumstance, or situation, where I stand at, it’s not common for Taiwanese people.

Ivan Linn: Sometimes, they can be too shy, they think this might be offensive, or this can be not a polite way to work with colleagues. I’m pretty much shameless, [laughs] but I love to work with people and talking with people. I’m so much used to it. A few years ago, when I wrote music for a film called 樓下的房客 , by 九把刀, I wrote the music for them.

Ivan Linn: That was first time that we brought the production over from Hollywood. We were particulary working with Thomas Newman’s team. Thomas Newman is the composer who wrote a music for “Finding Nemo,” “WALL E” and all those classic motion picture titles. For that project in particular, the tenants downstairs, it was very much like a bridge serving for Taiwanese community and Hollywood.

Ivan Linn: Surprisingly, as much as we know that there are so many people who wanted to work with Hollywood people, they don’t know how to reach out to them first. When I talked to the team of Thomas Newman, they also think that, “Hey, we’re in Hollywood. Yes, we’re in Hollywood. But we also wanted to work on projects outside Hollywood. We don’t always wanted to work in this closed environment. The thing is that we don’t know the way to go out.” You see that there is a conflict.

Audrey Tang: I see that.

Ivan Linn: There is no way to go in. People in there, there’s no way to go out. Of course, then when we started to connect both environments. That’s also one of the opportunities that I’m looking into this time in terms of connecting really great, talented people from the best of the Hollywood and Taiwanese community. For instance, 軒轅劍, this video game…

Audrey Tang: I played when I was a child.

Ivan Linn: There was a new title…

Audrey Tang: I know.

Ivan Linn: “Transfer Seven” coming out a few months ago. We’re produced one of the trailer music for Tencent. Tencent is the developer for this title this time. We work with Yoko Shimomura, who is the composer to “Street Fighter,” 快打旋風, “Final Fantasy XV,” “XV Kingdom Hearts.” We have the programmer from Hans Zimmer’s team.

Ivan Linn: Hans Zimmer is the composer for “Lion King,” for “Interstellar,” “Inception” and all that. We had Hans Zimmer’s programmer program the entire symphony orchestra sounding like music. We work with another super talented Taiwanese mixer, who is now working for Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, who is also not in Taiwan. We built up this dreaming team and create this music.

Ivan Linn: The thing is that when I talk to Tencent or when I talk to developer, Softstar developer to…

Audrey Tang: The DOMO team.

Ivan Linn: Yeah, yeah. They don’t know how to reach out to the outside community. Let me show you this because the music that we created…

Ivan Linn: This is probably something that you probably have been seeing that.

Ivan Linn: That part music is not from us.

Ivan Linn: This is this is from us. Let me show you. No, not that one. We only worked on one trailer music this time.

Audrey Tang: This is the second trailer?

Ivan Linn: Ours is third.

Audrey Tang: You’re the third trailer? [laughs]

Ivan Linn: Third, third, third because they gave us two weeks to produce the music. They wanted us to work with them more.

Ivan Linn: Yeah, this is from…

Audrey Tang: OK, sorry for the transcriber. That was in Mandarin.

Ivan Linn: The music is programmed. It’s not from real human, for instance, like this part.

Ivan Linn: It sounds like a symphonic presentation, but it’s all programmed by computer.

Audrey Tang: I’m aware of that. I’ve done a music video with that technology.

Ivan Linn: A programmed…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, like synthesized melodies.

Ivan Linn: Exactly. It sounds like a real symphony orchestra. Surprisingly, there’s no technology that can fulfill this kind of music in Taiwan. There’s no door to be connected to the team of high seamer to work on projects like this.

Ivan Linn: Both sides wanted to reach out to the communities outside their comfort zone in Taipei. At this time, I’m pretty much on a business trip and trying to make new friends. Is there any organizations or anyone that you think I can further talk to in terms of optimize the industry and to make this entertainment use better? We’re not copying in a bunch of content.

Audrey Tang: Definitely TAICCA.

Ivan Linn: TAICCA?

Audrey Tang: That’s the main connector. Four years ago, when I joined the Cabinet, there was this then new plan called the Asian Silicon Valley. I thought it was silly and changed that into a dot. Now it’s, “Asia.Silicon Valley.”

Audrey Tang: The dot represents the connection, as you said, between the two communities previously isolated. There’s many, what we call arm’s length agencies set up ever since then to serve as the main connectors. For the creative industry, TAICCA is the go to place.

Ivan Linn: Are they looking into expanding talents to the US territory or Europe?

Audrey Tang: They definitely are.

Ivan Linn: Jeez, I’ve never heard of it. It’s called TAICCA.

Audrey Tang: T A I C C A, it’s quite close to here.

Ivan Linn: T A I C C A. It stands for?

Audrey Tang: The Taiwan Creative Content Agency. The TAI is just Taiwan and then Creative Content Agency. It’s supervised by the Ministry of Culture. It’s intermediary organization.

Audrey Tang: It’s responsible for their own curation, film, television, pop music, publishing ACG fashion, artwork, culture, technologies, and all that. It has its own international distribution channel partnerships. It’s about promoting the so called brand of Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, it’s also about getting the newest immersive content technologies or, as you said, the synthetic technologies for music making and connecting the talents to make sure that Taiwanese people who are more interested in co productions, joint ventures, and so on.

Audrey Tang: TAICCA has a bunch of fund for that particular part as well. Previously, the administrative coach is more limited on the grant based approach, which limits people who already know them. TAICCA is about reaching out to strange new horizons and communities.

Ivan Linn: Got it. That’s good to know. I’ve never heard of this one.

Audrey Tang: It’s very new.

Ivan Linn: By the way, just a random question. I was pretty much from music background. Now I’m in the tech world. One of the challenges that I’ve been facing, not for myself but for people outside the world, and especially when they don’t understand what we do or about us, is that there’s some suspicious element going on.

Ivan Linn: You were a musician. You were in a creative community. You write music. You play piano. Great. Do you understand business? Do you understand tech? This is the suspicion that I’ve been receiving during the past few years. It’s been quite frustrating, not for myself because I believe in myself.

Ivan Linn: I know what I have and what I notice about the power to the community. It’s the same, whether it’s a gaming community, it’s a music community, or it’s Internet cyber community.

Ivan Linn: We’re talking about communities. Facing the doubts from outside the community where they would see you as a previous musician, now transitioning to a CEO/businessman, any advice in terms of communicating or processing these doubts?

Audrey Tang: There’s a lot to be said about the structure of your organization. Jimmy Wales wasn’t a journalist. He’s a financial trader, if I recall correctly.

Audrey Tang: When he worked on Nupedia, which is a for profit company, there’s a lot of doubts about the credentials of how they are going to take on Encyclopedia Britannica, which is maybe not a journalism output but it’s subject to a higher standard in journalism eventually.

Audrey Tang: When he restructured the project to become a not for profit foundation, and the Wikimedia Foundation, and worked on Wikipedia instead, then people see the initial board conversation that maybe they don’t have a lot of journalism experts or whatever.

Audrey Tang: Then people are more willing to contribute to become part of the advisory board or the governing board, because it now serves a common purpose, not just the purpose of the shareholders of Nupedia.

Audrey Tang: I bring this up because we see this time and again, in Taiwan especially, when you launch a crowdfunding project. If this is for a common purpose, then you can’t afford to fail. You will make your failures proud if you pivot.

Ivan Linn: If we pivot.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we call it 軸轉, meaning that you first find a central pillar, and then you rotate alongside that. That’s a central pillar. It’s important. That’s your social mission or social purpose.

Ivan Linn: Also advantage.

Audrey Tang: Also advantage, because that could recruit more people who are in it not just for the money. Having a social purpose in your organization…Don’t take me wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t incorporate it as a corporate company. I’m not saying that you should start a charity tomorrow.

Ivan Linn: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Communicate strongly as of the social mission and social purpose is very important and organize like a social sector person would, like starting a new charity, starting a new co operative. Then you’re going to find the community elders on your advisory board. That’s a very different board as compared to other traditional VC Angel board.

Ivan Linn: I wish everyone would be able to think the way you do. The world would be so much better. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: We’re working on that. We’re spreading.

Ivan Linn: When you talk to people, their thought, their thinking, a lot of times can be limited by themselves.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Ivan Linn: It’s such a pity.

Audrey Tang: To the next quarter.

Ivan Linn: Exactly. We’re reaching to almost the end.

Audrey Tang: It’s fine. What I’m suggesting concretely is to talk to the social sector here.

Ivan Linn: Social sector.

Audrey Tang: That includes the Taiwan reporter and many other journalistic outlets. TAICCA, especially, is connecting the business sector and the social sector together by amplifying the CSR, that’s company’s social responsibility into business development opportunities.

Audrey Tang: The CSR people are now also looking to do more BD because the financial supervising community in Taiwan has launched this sustainability based, SDG based, GRI based accounting principles.

Audrey Tang: Basically, if you’re a small company, but you are willing to adhere to the same disclosure for social and environmental impact as a public listed company would, then that connects you to even more BD community than previous miss miss group could. That’s the social innovation landscape in Taiwan. That will then make your crowdsourcing, crowdfunding much more easy if you can articulate clearly, like protecting the Hong Kong activists.

Audrey Tang: That’s one value proposition from Better News. If you can find a similar proposition, that’s going to help you much more to find not necessarily a co founder, but a advisor, or someone that want to lend their social sector credentials to your work.

Ivan Linn: I see. Is there anyone in particular that you think I should be in touch with, TAICCA, anyone you think?

Audrey Tang: No, I think just TAICCA in general. Frances probably has the main contact.

Frances Feng: Yes, let me check…

Ivan Linn: If there’s a contact , I’m more than happy to connect with them…

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Ivan Linn: By the way, last question, back to music. During the stay in Taiwan at this time, I’ve been asked many times if AI will replace music, replace musicians especially when you listen to the music that was programmed by human. Pretty much, there was no musician, it was programmed by engineers.

Ivan Linn: What do you see the creative industry co working with artificial intelligence where we’re risking their future working with AI? What is the point of them, out of curiosity?

Audrey Tang: Well, AI, to me, is assisted intelligence. It helps people to convey their ideas. Autotune is one part of AI, right? It’s also AI…

Audrey Tang: Then, enabled people of all different experiences with singing to nevertheless fulfill their ideas of singing and so on. I guess this is not a bad thing. It democratizes music production, just as the personal mobile phones democratized photography, without which, probably, there is no platform to share everything. Now, we are all carrying pretty professional cameras around, if not microphone. That still needs to be solved.

Audrey Tang: The point is, once you democratize that, then a new layer of value appears. People do not spend that much time, of course, on analog photo like Rolleiflex, Perfection and things like that. There are still people doing that, but as a hobby, I guess. [laughs] Most people move on to the next part of the value chain.

Audrey Tang: We take pictures mostly to communicate our life, to build new social connections and things like that. We don’t take picture for picture’s sake. Whereas previously, only very professional photographer can afford to create photos that touches people, nowadays, everybody could. That moves the community upward in the value chain, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

Ivan Linn: What is the best way to move the chain? That’s probably the most challenging things for start up companies and new founders, entrepreneurs.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. I usually do a very simple thing, which is crowdsource that with the persons that are already on your platform. You already have daily challenges of writing competition or whatever, so it could be a meta challenge to crowdsource new challenges.

Audrey Tang: It’s a way to do governance within your own community, which for the social sector is the default mode operation or the cooperatives. If the leader does not consult with the people, then they get voted out just like presidents.

Audrey Tang: Of course, a traditional start up doesn’t necessarily engage with their citizens. They don’t tend to think users as citizens, mostly because there’s no structural way for that feedback to adhere to the shareholders’ set values, which is why I think equity based crowdfunding in any of these different variations works pretty well. Everybody, then, has also a stake in the future of your company.

Ivan Linn: They’ve got a choice, options.

Audrey Tang: They’ve got a choice, right.

Ivan Linn: Got it. Thank you very much. Any questions for me?

Audrey Tang: No, it’s fine. I really enjoyed the music you shared.

Ivan Linn: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Ivan Linn: Thank you so much for taking time. It’s a pleasure to meet you and talk to you.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. It’s a real pleasure.

Ivan Linn: You gave me pretty much inside everything outside the box, which is great because you’re not doing start ups it’s really not a human job.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Ivan Linn: It’s fine but sometimes we just had to be inspired by people like you to think outside the box and to keep the faith and persistent and everything. Well, the main goal is still to follow the singularity and to make this world a better place. We have a very strong faith about that.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, you also connect singularity to plurality because we call our social sector the plurality.

Ivan Linn: I never expected to meet you in Taipei because first of all, I didn’t expect any connection between you and me but when I was talking to Douglas, and Douglas likes music very much. He was like, “Oh, no. You should talk to Audrey.” Let me call him right away.

Audrey Tang: Very accessible.

Ivan Linn: Thank you very much.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. OK.

Ivan Linn: Can we take a picture just for memory sake?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Ivan Linn: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Frances, can you take the photo, maybe?

Frances Feng: Sure.

Audrey Tang: OK. Thank you very much.

Ivan Linn: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Nice meeting you and talking to you. Thank you so much.

Ivan Linn: Keep up the good work.