 Hello there Hello, can you hear me? Can you hear me okay? Yes, I can hear you just fine Right, and let me introduce Yushan. She's a researcher also working on V-Taiwan at the moment Hi, great to meet you Okay Very excited It's going quite well. Yes. I mean so we're recording this right? Yes, and I'll send you a video And if you like the video to be published as is we'll just do that. Otherwise, we can do a transcript too Yeah, I think it's a good idea to publish the video the more transparency the better in life So it's great to meet you I'm a big fan of your work both on the outside and then and then having gone into government And I think we have a few mutual friends like Jeff Bulgan and Colin and others So I'll give you just the very sort of top line of the situation and what we're thinking of doing and then it would just be good to get your Advice any reflections from your own experience things that you learned along the way and Things that didn't work as well as things that did work So You know the situation is as follows The the Labour Party is the principal opposition party in the UK I'm a long-standing member. I was a candidate previously to be general secretary of the party on a sort of outsider Manifesto democracy and movement organizing and that sort of thing Obviously got knocked out in 2011 But now I am one of the probably the main contenders There is Unresolved tension in the Labour movement as a whole There are sort of historic splits and divisions which have been pretty effectively papered over After a very impressive movement driven performance by Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in the snap general election last year But now there is sort of stagnation in the polls for the most part So and you know, obviously there is a bureaucracy and there are You know factions and there are all sorts of those sorts of things going on people aren't really having constructive Discussions or arguments. They aren't always saying what they really think or feel They are using categories to define each other which don't really reflect the the underlying complexities So, you know, I'm somebody who's been passionate about deep democracy and deliberation for, you know, 20 plus years more or less since I saw the internet and I've been trying various different things and following various different innovations and it seems to me that what you've done With VTaiwan is one of the more interesting examples. It's particularly for being able to represent a Diversity of views and then to start to move towards loose consensus and then to be practical as well So, so that's why I'm excited and yet we're looking at launching a bottom-up digital democracy and deliberation platform for the Labour movement in the next 24 hours here in the UK under the banner of Labour democracy.net and We want to use Polis and I'd love your advice about how to go about this So what's the people you're going to reach with LabourDemocracy.net? Is it restricted to party members or pretty much anyone? Well, we're an MVP initially so we weren't restrict access the distribution the sort of Driving of people into the platform will be primarily through Labour related networks So it would be mostly I think people who are either members or supporters of Labour Party Although there will be a little more diversity in the mix and probably a bit of racking behavior Binding mechanism, I mean if you have a like outstanding Controversies or outstanding consensus who will be bound to go over them one by one presumably in the live stream fashion That's interesting and I Can you expand on what you mean there because I don't quite understand the way VTaiwan use Polis It is not representative it is more of a representation Yes, what people care about and allow us to serve as the minority Opinions that nevertheless should have been more amplified or discussed Yes among the general populace it also let people see that there are broad consensus Whereas in other online forums that the most controversial or the most as you said a categorical Or labeling part tend to needlessly use people's attention so In our experience the way to reward consensus so to speak of is just to promise to Give a binding discussion Where the agenda is set by the global consensus as well as the within Intergroup consensus and so that's for example the I don't know party People will use that as the debate platform or whether yes, we'll go over it in a sort of synthetic Document or whatever that that is what I mean by a binding mechanism. I understand I understand you're basically talking about how the outcome of the process is landed into decision-making Which I agree is very important Let me answer that question indirectly and then directly So the indirect answer is as follows. There has been a long process over, you know, more than a year of a sort of a working group linked to the party around Digital democracy and discussion on pilots Related to the economic agenda and various other things which would be sponsored by the party and by its political leadership These Discussions have thus far come to nothing Through for a variety of reasons Principally, I believe inertia rather than any sort of malice But you know inertia is an iron law in institutions, so So obviously, you know, I know all about that and I know the people who've been involved and and this is a sort of a different approach Attempting to assemble in the square initially and then bring the process into the center of power One route for that is that I am currently one of the prominent candidates for general secretary of the party there is a Application an interview process which is ongoing will be live for the next five days And Through that process, we will be having an open public conversation with anybody in the lay of movement who wants to get involved and I will report back on the outcome of the conversation at the conclusion of the Process which will determine the next general secretary of the party and we will have the opportunity then to carry the process of engaging forwards my own belief is that There are both formal and informal sources of power So, you know, for instance, if we were to manage to engage the principal opinion forces opinion formers many of the elected representatives In such a process Then it starts to build up its own kind of social power Although, you know, my intention is to offer to the party a Kind of formal Engagement between it and this But my expectation is that the inertia of the party will mean that there will have to be a process of exploration about the relationship For instance between the National Executive Committee of the party its National Policy Forum and this rather more free-flowing space So that's the thought process. Does that make sense to you? Yes So there's a short-term binding process where you essentially crowdsource your interview content for over the next five days I'm respecting the interview process, but we're going to have an open conversation along the way But amplifying right making makes it clear and I imagine that you will put as your seed comments, right as the initial Polish Statements the statements that you either care very deeply about or the statement that you feel that will be controversial enough to warrant a Discussion, right? So so I mean that this is the short-term use of Polish But what what we've learned so far is that it really takes a few weeks Two to three weeks at least for people to come up with really innovative Statements that resonates with a large group of people So what you're essentially saying is that by the time people do that and hopefully reach Sufficient number of people it will form by itself as soft power that lets the party engage with the top consensus or the most controversial items With whatever way that you cannot promise in advance, but we'll probably materialize if the consultation goes well Exactly, so awesome Does it sound like a good plan to you? Well, well you shine is a researcher specializing in the use of the Taiwan and Polish and By the way, it's flying back to the UK. Yeah, so I'm a PhD student study at Dora University Jersey Department, so my Embedded I've taken Ethnographic approach to to understand what's going on in B. Taiwan. I know so I'm a reading my dreams So from what I've heard of what I learned from Audrey who is a master here. I do I do agree the It's important to have a Binding at this binding or more promise resolved to the participants Because it's it's kind of like a feedback for them so that they will There will be if they will gain the same achievement through through the participating otherwise, they would just say oh It's just participate, but they got nothing back. So what I've heard here they They they did they did all the participants know how they're going to deal with the consensus that collected from police and After that, yes, they'll make sure the to some degree the legislation or the related law will be amended So I do I do think this is Somehow quite important Yeah, I think I think you can successfully get people to to vote yes or no to any of your statements really but to Engage people sufficiently so that they really proposed something innovative That that requires a sense of purpose So yes, so that's the the main observation However, you're going to to accomplish it is of course your domain knowledge. Yeah Well, well the purpose is to collectively build a healthy and successful labor party and movement For the next century Which is a goal which is already shared among many people Although they may have different versions of how to reach that goal I Think what you're saying about incentives is very important and and I really agree with you about giving some sort of Forgotten your phrase binding or hard element to the to the outcome of the process I think that there are other incentives Uh, you know, one is the the incentive of basic, you know Yeah, there's a sort of very superficial thing that the Silicon Valley talk about a lot Which is around engagement and delight and uh, it seems to me bollis has attributes of engagement and delight which is helpful Uh, and I certainly know from my own work that people like answering questions But it is the process of sort of Seeking those compromise solutions not simply uh temperature check and reflection of the existing system But how do you transform the system? Uh, which is the piece of this which is particularly interesting to me? Uh, I think that there is also an unmet need and a pain point. Um, that lots of people have in the labor party in the labor movement That the party is not, um Living up to their hopes and dreams in terms of their lived experience of it the level of Suppressed or open conflict with it and its success in the electoral or the social context and so, um My my my thought process uh to begin this conversation I take what you're saying that this will take weeks to uh to take it to somewhere really interesting But my thought process to begin is to ask a simple question Which might be something along the line feeling this question Actually because feelings are something that people have trouble with in labor at the moment Um, uh, which might be something like what do we feel about our labor party and movement today? What's good and what's more difficult? Um, and then get people to surface their feelings about what's good and what's more difficult Uh, and then see where that leaves us. We will it will we will find ourselves in tribes immediately And then and then what do we do with that? Yeah, that's that's uh, I think it makes a lot of sense. Have uh, have collin Showed you um the new uh reporting mechanism of the police system where they automatically generate um a Plot diagram of this shape where you can see the most controversial the most diverse ones at the tail end As well as the most consensus making one which was this large group at the other end as well I've heard about this, but I haven't seen it. That's that looks beautiful. Right. So so Right, exactly. Yeah, so so I think that's part of the delight Yeah If you can show at the beginning of the protest conversation that what what your contribution will end up looking like this And uh, so that we can discover each other better and so on then I think that's very interesting of its own But I think only if you make it very clear that it will become such a pretty picture of of the collective intelligence Yes, yes, um And um, you know, and I think the thought process that's a really good idea I'm definitely going to do that And then the thought process is that we basically try and pull people in from right across the movement from its many different traditions I'm in the unusual position of not having Mades or many stroke any maybe one enemy And um You know, I don't believe in permanent entities anyway, so um Uh, I I I will be engaging all of my different friends and old acquaintances from the different strands of the movement So try and pull them into this conversation and and and get them to articulate their Feelings, uh, and then we will start trying to talk about solutions. Well, that's right. Uh, I think we share your non-belief. Yeah Good, I mean, it's the only way to go. Um, very good Uh, yeah, is there anything you would like to talk about? Yeah, and and and at the philosophical level, um, I was reading some of the case studies stuff and and there seemed to be some Uh, some Confucius stuff in there or some Lao Tzu. I wasn't entirely sure what what's how do you think about this when you sort of zoom out from the concrete Uh specifics of it and and think about the the broader context of governance in the 21st century Actually just having a discussion about that of how how eagle is really is the dub zero movement And v taiwan by extension that grow out the dub zero movement Um, you know our preferred license, uh, the copyright license is called the creative commons zero Which means that we give away even the right to attribution or academic citation So you can take v taiwan and say you made it and I I won't see you And then I think that's a a uh, yusheng was just saying that is a it's a quite a philosophical thing Thinking that we as individuals are having to just be be vehicles, uh, who? Those ideas or those consensus inhabit Right, so so we're not the the the heroes or protagonists It is through this process that consensus or rough consensus In habits us Through this process in this vehicle. And so I think this is of course very Taoism right very very lauzu And and I think this really informs our decision of not Fixating to any particular mechanism process or tool but rather focusing on a community that can continuously improve The process itself and even the community itself the structure The code of conduct and and everything so so this recursive public quote unquote I think is the core of the dig up zero movement and by extension v taiwan Yeah, that's really interesting and and um Can I ask that there is clearly a very significant role for The kind of leadership which opens the space by framing the right questions and Tight choosing timings and all that sort of thing How do you approach that? What do you think the best practice is in relation to how these conversations are opened and facilitated? Oh, yeah, how how does a a leader lead without ruling? The people did it themselves Yeah, there's this ancient tradition of describing how you do it like water All right, you go to the the low lows and places and solve everybody's problems, but let them think that they did it So so um, I think they did Maybe yeah, maybe they did So so yeah, I think in my work as the minister in charge of social entrepreneurship and social innovation My position is always that we're we're solving the problems of the problem solvers But we're not solving the social problems directly because the government apparatus is not the most efficient way of doing this And I understand you shared a history of social entrepreneurship So so the idea is that the government is always in the facilitating role always in a Role where it observes what is in need what kind of regulation Maybe made sense, but it's now causing trouble and so on and then have a fast like a weak Iteration cycle where we just look at all the pain points and all the feedbacks from the community and stay out in the way and Help resolve in a role box along the way. So that's my main leadership quote-unquote mechanism Okay, that's very helpful. And can I just ask you to step back and tell me In terms of your own kind of journey with this stuff I mean you you were part of cup zero and then there was the sunflower student movement and and then there was government Taiwan Can you tell me very briefly the story of that from your perspective in terms of the key junctures? Sure, I think the one of the very key juncture is that during the sampler movement People saw with their their Eyes that it is possible to scale The experience of listening to each other it used to Be a traditional thought that the politic or the hierarchies is the way it is because In the room of more than 20 people it's very difficult to form any useful decision at all And and so we have to be structured in a hierarchy because that's just how human communication how the wetwear Works, right? But but with the sampler People saw that they can just randomly draw by the occupied parliament join any of the 20 NGOs Facilitating their their talk on a particular aspect and magically have their opinion not just heard But amplified through a online mechanism that somehow become binding for tomorrow's Synthetics and deliberation And so as time goes by people see that their ideas Sworn into a consensus rather than just lost in the representative Letters and what wants to help that experience is very very difficult to go back and personally like since 1994 95 I was involved in the internet standard making community like ietf or W3c and in that world this kind of open multi stakeholder Deliberation where anybody gets to enter just by saying okay. I have a stake in it It isn't the norm right? It's normal and and people manage to Get a consensus out of hundreds or thousands of participants through the use of ICT tools So for me, it's like a indigenous Knowledge and for me the democracy representative one is something that I learned much later So for me, it's always just to get people into a state of mind Where they can listen to each other in the way that people did in the and still do in the internet society Yes Great That was really great We need to talk more at some point, but I will let you know how this goes as it unfolds And I may need to ask you a question if we have a crisis or something like that For your advice, but thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Um, can we can we also I've forgotten your name. I'm sorry Why Yes, if we can be in touch that would be great. I'm seeing palace of burdo later today I'm keen for us to plug in academics and researchers to whatever it is we do here so that It can be studied and Understood and reflected upon So, yeah, we want to do this open From beginning to end wherever the end is wherever the end is We we're we're just, you know vehicles we're just processing habits. Yeah, yeah Exactly. All right. Thank you. This is great. That was really really helpful Let me know when you have the video as well because I want to share it with your people. You will be ready In a few minutes. All right Take care. Thank you so much. Bye