 Okay, so we already, so yeah, let's get started. So, orderly so, it's only to finally meet you in person. So I'm Shin Murakami, lives in Japan's country manager with an engineering background. Since COVID-19, so you have appeared a lot of Japanese media. I think that it's your humor and gentle smile during such a tough time, so we know that has made you such a hit with us. So today I'd like to introduce you to more people with our friends from around the world at the business inside the first ever global conference. Yes, of course, I'm happy to answer any and all of your questions. I heard that the Taiwanese government's implementation towards COVID-19 attacks the world attention. I think the key to the Taiwanese model success was about being open throughout and open development environment and open platform, similarized by Gov.0 and the attitude on the open government itself, even before COVID-19. So I also heard that anyone can visit your minister's office every Wednesday. So why is it so important for you to be so open? So thank you for the great question. I think a very important one, which is why open is so important to my philosophy. Actually, I'm here not only Wednesdays. Although I have to go to cabinet meeting every Thursday, I'm usually in the cabinet on Mondays. Well, the other days people can just visit me when I'm here. And the only thing I ask is that we publish everything online as either transcript or a video recording. And the reason is that the radical transparency makes sure that people when they lobby me, lobby only on the basis of public interest and not their selfish interest because they know everybody else is watching. And the reason behind this philosophy is what we learned during open source development. There's a saying that says, and I quote, when there are enough eyes, all bugs are shallow. I quote, that is to say, when you get people from various different positions looking at an idea together, the problems, the inconsistencies and so on in the idea, there's bound to be somebody discovering it. So it serves like a collective intelligence system. So I don't have to rely on my own pairs of eyes to look at all the possible problems with any proposal. Rather, people in different positions can help to soothe out the problems in any proposal and build common values because people trust each other to only add to the conversation without attacking each other because it's all public. Very interesting. So it's a famous story of V-Taiwan, so a platform for dialogue between citizens and the government. So what do you say are critical role of IT and digital in building this platform? And what role does the open source committee play there? And what are some of the things that can only be possible offline? Yeah, I think the question about why is digital so important is that digital allows us to transcend the boundaries of space and time. For example, we are not in the space now, right? But through digital technology, we can still meet face to face and see each other very clearly, actually more clearly than we have to face to face meetings because we have to wear a mask if we're actually face to face. And so this breaks the space boundary. And also if people are in different time zone and they cannot wake up to participate in a live streaming, they can watch the recording and do a asynchronous way of maybe comment and reply to nevertheless voice their opinions without having to stay awake regardless of their time zone. So it also makes asynchronous communication possible that breaks the time boundary. So that's why digital is important. On the other hand, all of this goes through intermediation. And if the intermediation is biased, for example, if sometimes people don't have the bandwidth required to participate in live streaming or they don't have access to such devices or if the live streaming platform only favors certain operating systems or devices and excludes other operating system or devices and so on, then it creates an imbalance in the right of participation, which is why broadband as a human right and also vendor neutrality is so important when making demographic innovations. And finally, what are the things that can only be done face to face? Well, definitely enjoy food and drink together. Even though we can enjoy the same music together now, it's very easy actually. The food and drink is actually much harder. But when I work with Silicon Valley companies before becoming digital minister, they will send me, for example, wine, red wine from the Napa Valley. So we will in a video conference open this name photo of wine and drink together or they go to their Golden Beers and I go to the Golden Beers in Taipei and so on. So nevertheless, enjoy some sort of familiarity but it's not a substitute for the actual food and drink in face to face settings. So let's talk about the technology. So AI has become a huge part of our everyday life. So regarding data utilization and how and where to utilize such a powerful technology is key for us. So I know the Taiwanese government achieved a huge success of the tech and the politics. So usually it don't mix well, right? So where do you think the area for tech to shine in the future? How should we set the agenda to tackle the issue? Yeah, I always call AI assisted intelligence. So to your question of why AI works well with democracy in Taiwan, that's because just like any assistant, you have to make sure that assistant that you hire works according to your best interests. It's called value alignment. And also whenever they make a decision that you're not comfortable with, you will demand an explanation from the assistant that's called accountability. So if there's value alignment and accountability that the entire society can shape the norm upon which that the AI enters the society, then we can trust the AI as we trust some of our assistants. But on the other hand, if they fail to provide the account or fail to align for value, then that AI will not be symbiotic. It will be parasitic with the society. Then of course the society will just say no to that particular use of AI because it's not assisted anymore. So thinking AI not as artificial but as assistive is very important. Great. Okay, let's move on to the next question. So the current Taiwanese government is actively hiring the younger people. So you are 35 years old, when you became the Minister of Digital Affairs in 2016. So I also read about the Taiwan reverse mentorship in which Kevin, the Minister at that point, entrepreneur and social innovator under the age of 35 as the reverse mentors. So yeah, I'm very surprised with that. So what are your thoughts on the importance of incorporating the power of young people into organization both in politics and in business? Yeah, if you are under 35 years old, that means that you are a digital native. By the time that you learn to read and write, it's already reading and writing on your computer. I am a digital immigrant. I'm not a digital native. I learned about internet when I was 12 years old. So I'm a young immigrant, but I'm still an immigrant. And for digital natives, the solution set is not something that is tough down. They always think about working in crowdfunding and crowdsourcing and just getting people interested in a hashtag. And they very quickly trust each other. It's called Swift Trust. With just a single hashtag, people can mobilize and start doing very useful social productions without having to spend a lot of time meeting face to face. So it's a radically different way of social organization as compared to people who are digital migrants. And because of that, the younger people see more possibilities to get the social, the environmental, and the business sectors working together while the people who are not digital natives tend to think in a more styled way. And so for me, I think younger people need to point the directions of future where the society is evolving and the people who are older need to support them with the resources that they need. It is different. So what's the potential of millennials and the generation Z for society? And how do you manage to rally their support? Yeah, I think it's the other way around. I support them. They don't have to support me because they are the future. They point out the direction. And in Taiwan, even for people who are just 16 years old who campaign, for example, to ban the plastic straw for bubble tea because they don't want the plastic to pollute the sea, the ocean. Even without the right to vote, they can get many people into this e-petition and start a social movement. And it's not just in Taiwan. You see that in other European countries, the students refuse to go to school on Fridays because they care about climate change because they will suffer more from climate change than either of us will because they will live to a more climate changed future. And so I think a more important thing is that even before they have the right to vote, we need to enable them with, for example, participatory budgeting rights, deliberation rights on policymaking, proposing sandbox regulations and laws and engaging in presidential hackathon, starting e-petitions and so on, which are all empowering disenfranchised people. That's to say people who couldn't vote because they were not yet at the voting age. And so the more that they are included in the decision-making process, especially when it concerns to their own welfare, the more that they will participate in the democracy when they actually become 18 or 20 years old. And if they don't have a good experience participating, then by the time they're 18 or 20, they wouldn't care about politics anyway. And so we start even when they're like six years old or five years old, there's some kindergartener in Taiwan working with their parents to petition and also to campaign for diversifying the parks so that it's more inclusive with people with varying abilities and so on. And that is also a very nice social movement. Back when I was 13 or so, I also went to the streets to campaign for education reform and all that reinforces that participation really makes a difference. And so it's also part of education. Great. So what do you think is important when it becomes the leadership in this era? Yeah, I think, as I said, value alignment and accountability is not only important for AI developers but also for leaders as well. A leader needs to prove in real time that we are accountable to all the decisions that we're making, that we're really answering the people's common values and not just hiding behind, for example, quarterly reports and so on. So a very responsive accountability is important. And also when I say value alignment, nowadays, even for businesses, the value is not just shareholder value but also stakeholder value. That is to say one needs to take care of the environment for the next generation or the social configuration because even if your shareholder earns a lot of money, if the planet gets destroyed two generations down the line, that money means nothing. And so sustainability, inclusion, all are very important value to be aligned for a leader today. Thank you so much. So yeah, alignment is so important for everyone. So let's move on to the next topic. So we'll touch a little bit about inclusion and thinking as it hurts. So diversity and inclusion are an essential piece for modern management. So would you be able to elaborate on that through your experiences? Yeah, certainly. There's a saying just as, and I quote, nothing about us without us, unquote. So I already talk about the very young people in the kindergartners. Now I'm going to talk about very old people. My own grandmother is 87 years old and she still works with me. We talk every week. I visited her every other week to work on policy issues. For example, Taiwan was able to save of coronavirus, largely because we get three quarter of population wearing masks in a very short time, as soon as end of February. When we start mask rationing in early February, we understand that many elderly people may not be able to queue in front of the pharmacy for such a long time if they're really old. So starting in March, we started working on ways for them to pre-order the mask from the kiosk in the convenience store. And so my grandma not only helped reviewing this plan but also introduced her younger friends who are like 77 years old, so younger to her, but not to me, to work as focus group to make sure that, for example, we initially designed when you're going to the convenience store, you will use the ATM, the automated telemachine to both pay for the mask and also confer your identity. But then the 70-year-old grandmother Yang told me, told me that she isn't comfortable because she had to type her bank card passport. And so she was afraid that this would transfer not only like 52 NT dollars, but actually 50,000 NT dollars to some other accounts. So we eventually decoupled the authentication and the payment. So she will authenticate without having to enter a password using her health insurance card and then she can pay with cash over the counter. And initially we designed for a mobile phone scanner but she actually has a difficulty in seeing and so she used a very large tablet. And so we also worked so that the scanner works with large tablets as well. So the more you include the elderly into the public service design, the more likely that those services will actually be used. And once they learn about it, they can also teach other younger people like the 70-year-old can then teach 60-year-olds, right? And so that becomes a social mobilization. So by the time of April, more than 95% of Taiwanese people not only have access to masks, but know how to use it properly. And that's when our value went below one. Yeah, conversation and taking care of others is so important. So yeah, grandma is a struggle to use something. So yeah, we know. So then we quickly fix the issue, right? Like open source community or engineering community. Yes, yes. The point is the short iteration. It's not how good your decision is. It's how quickly you can pivot if it's not. Great. So yeah, we both have the engineering background, right? So but we know there is a noticeable gender gap in the tech world especially, so including the lack of women in the industry. What do you think can be done to make the industry more diverse? And how do you think women and minorities can be promoted in the tech industry? Well, in Taiwan, software engineering is very gender balanced. And it has been that way since I was a teenager. So we don't actually suffer from that problem. But we can say that it's also because we have other engineering fields and there are gender imbalance in those engineering fields but not in software engineering. And I think one of the reasons is that we don't call software engineering engineering. In Taiwan, it's called program design. And so the programmers are designers. They are not engineers. And designers are gender balanced. And actually, if you are a LGBTQ plus person as a designer, you're actually seeing things from an even more empathetic perspective. So it's a plus for a designer but not necessarily so for an engineer. And so by calling programmer designers instead of engineers, it also works with this AI age because in AI, it's not about writing code to produce data. It's about curating data to produce code. And that makes the data collection that is to say interfacing with people, more important than interfacing with machines. And so that's more of a design thinking mindset. And so I think reshaping the field as a design field as something that's closer to humans can actually increase the diversity and also inclusion of participants. You had two adolescents. So how has having two adolescents and being the transgendered affect you? How did you manage to break free from what society expected one to be held? Yes, I went through two puberties and I think this enabled me to go through these puberties in a way that empathizes with more people. If you only go through one puberty, you will think half of the population shares some experience with you, but the other half of the population doesn't share the experience with you. But having gone through puberty, I don't have this mindset. So for me, everybody shares some experience with me. I don't think half of population is different from me. And so it enabled me to take all the sides much more readily. And it's not just about gender. For example, I don't belong to any political party. So I don't think that people of certain political party are my comrades and the other ones are my enemies. I don't think that way either. And the same is for nationality, for pretty much anything, right? So in my mind, there is an intersectionality going on. Whenever people feel that they can see the world through some perspective, I'm willing to learn from that perspective. And I think being transgender also helped me to be transnational, transcultural, and so on. I think that is a very good positive effect. And as for what society expects me to be, I think whatever other people portray me, that's their creation, right? That's their remix. And so I see it as their creative output, but I don't identify with other people's label of me. And that's it. I think it's a very simple idea in open source development that if somebody forked your project, that become their project, you don't identify with their fork. And I treat the societal portrayal of me the same. I'm in Japan. So Japan is the world's fastest aging society and the infamous for lacking the diversity in leadership, so especially the gender. So how would we create open oneness communication beyond the differences of age and the gender? So are there any tips that you could suggest overcoming these barriers? Yeah, in Taiwan, we have more than 40% of our members of parliament as women. And we didn't get to this point overnight. We took 12 years of gender mainstreaming making sure that in each and every government project that are one year or longer, or any draft law proposed by the government, they have to do a gender impact assessment with a gender equality committee that is guaranteed to be inclusive and diverse and also have 18 civil society organization seats and 17 ministerial seats. So when they have to vote, the civil society always wins the vote. And so because of this, all the levels of the government eventually learned the importance of gender mainstreaming in their lines of work. And so when the referendum came, for example, on the marriage of gay and lesbian people, it makes sure that we legalize all the same rights and duties, the bylaws, but also the family to family wedding, that is to say the in-laws relationship does not change. And so they managed to find this innovative solution that take care of the older generation that see marriage as more a family to family thing, which is not touched by same sex marriage. And then the younger generation, which sees wedding as more individual to individual thing, and they create a hyperlink act that take care of both sides of the society. So I think it's important to think beyond the binary differences and focus on the common value, which is the importance of marriage. Okay, so and we are talking about diversity and inclusion. So I heard that. So now we are talking in English, right? So but English is my second language. So yeah, I mainly speak Japanese. So yeah. Yeah, in my language. Yeah, in my Chinese. So yeah. Yeah, but I heard that. I'm surprised that the Taiwanese government set the law in maybe two years ago. So I called the national languages. So yeah, developing the act. So yeah, please share the background or context of that. Yes, in Taiwan, we now have more than 20 national languages and most of which are indigenous because Taiwan is part of the Austronesian linguistic family. In fact, most of the Austronesian coaches can trace their lineage back to Taiwan. That's all the way throughout Polynesia, all the way to New Zealand, to the Maori people. And so because of that, on the east side of Taiwan, there's many, many cultures that are like orally transmitted, meaning that there's no written history, but people care about preserving the history. And so now they're more putting them into letting off of it and so on. But because they were Austronesian family of languages, it's difficult, if not impossible, to use kanji to express it. And so they have to use the Latin characters. And because of that, nowadays in these indigenous nations, the public service is required. If there's, for example, more than half of people in that township speaks Amis or Bunun or Atayalda, or think that the public service need to be provided in that local language as well, to show not only respect, but also a transcultural willingness to communicate so that they don't have to express their ideas in kanji, which is very unnatural for their native languages. On the west side of Taiwan, of course, there's also the Taiwanese holo, Taiwanese haka, and also Taiwanese sign language, very important for people who cannot hear. And so on. So all these are national languages because we believe that the more inclusive a democracy is, the less likely that we will be polarized and get into very income-measurable kind of culture was the more inclusive we are, the better the democracy become. So let's move on to the next topic. So let's talk about your career. You have a very unique career. So tell us about your career and your life decisions. So you dropped out of junior high school and you started your own business at 16 years old, right? So serve as an advisor to Apple while still in Taiwan and retired from the business world at the age of 33. So in one interview, you mentioned that your income is a half of what it used to be. So you became a cabinet minister. So what have you based your career choices on? So it's clear. So it's not about money. But in the outline you sent me, you already gave me the answer, right? You draw a colon and a parenthesis, which is a smiley. And that's my career choice. I'm optimizing for fun. The more fun there is, the more likely that I will work on it. Fun is about the enjoyment, right? Taking pleasure in knowing that what you work on is beneficial not only to yourself, but also to people who are looking at the similar problems. And also another thing is that if you can save other people time, right? Larry Wall, one of my mentors, said that laziness is the main virtue of a programmer. We're lazy, so we write programs to save our self time. And now if we share this program, then we save everybody time. And that's more fun because we get more time to spend for doing other things, more creative than automated work, which is what the programs are designed to do, right? And so fun, both personal and also social, and also now global, because we now understand in the social media, if you provide a fun picture, for example, how to wear a mask to protect you from your own unwashed hands, this is very cute and a lot of fun. And then this is our communication material to link mask use and soap use together. And this fun actually travels even faster than conspiracy theories and other anger and outrage based messages on social media. Fun is actually what travels the quickest in terms of viral marketing. And so our central epidemic amongst us always bets on fun to get their messages across. And so it's not only individual and communal, but it's also now global idea of using fun to make sure that everybody understood the science of epidemiology, for example. You look so happy and so gender-smiling. And so I feel that you have a sense of humor. So yeah, and the fun is the essential part for you. So what is your secret to this? So how do you keep this positive attitude? So how do you enjoy working every day? So what motivates you? So yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I don't work during the day. I'm just having fun during the day. I don't pass judgments or make decisions during the day. I always take these ideas and then go to sleep. And I work in my sleep and I wake up with a common value or a decision. So I usually sleep eight hours a day. But if there is a very difficult problem, I have to work overtime and sleep nine hours that day. And so because I work only in my sleep, when I'm waking up, I'm always having fun. From the, you are young, so yeah, three to eight hours, nine hours. So yeah, it's always like that. Yes, because otherwise I will have to work during the day and I cannot have that much fun anymore. And so, you know, eight hour workday to me is eight hour work night, but it's the same principle. Okay, so yeah, I usually sleep six or seven hours. So yeah, yeah, I will try. Yeah, maybe you have work then I can. Okay, thank you for your advice. So let's talk about Japan. So we are on the barge, big shift in Japan. So we got in work lifestyle. So yeah, we need to sleep more, so clearly. So one of the biggest issue is that many people are confident. So LinkedIn did the world-wide research and Japan was the least confident among 22 countries. So we are so used to this old norm, relying on the companies and then not taking charge of our own life choices. So I agree with your opinion that everybody should feel like a minority sometimes. So but it's hard to accept your own vulnerability as well. So it's especially in the workplace. So how could we get away from such a negative source and the behavior just come from this Sanctuary and the chaos? Yeah, I think one of the great way is to just join communities on LinkedIn. For example, there are many communities based on shared interests. And then you can discover more people, not necessarily your colleagues or your vendors or your customers. Maybe they are unrelated to you by business by your similar ideas. And so you can join such communities and look at them sharing what they learned on their posts on LinkedIn. Of course, it doesn't have to be LinkedIn. I know many people who use Medium, for example, for this purpose or Twitter, for this purpose, although Twitter is harder to write longer messages. But in the end, it's all about developing a camaraderie so that people don't feel alone in facing the uncertainty and chaos, but rather they can see that people across the spectrum, everybody feel uncertainty and chaos on some of the topics that one cares about. For example, if you are the only one in your community or in your department, in your business, to care about climate change, then you can feel very lonely. But if you join such online communities of SDGs, of mitigating against climate change, even if you work in a seemingly difficult situation, you can also learn from the social innovators to, for example, turn your production cycle to use more eco-friendly material or to redesign your work environment so that it generates less waste. Or you can, for example, find new ways to reduce carbon emissions by refilling your water bottle instead of buying plastic bottle and so on. You can encounter many, many ideas that you can then take back to your workplace to use without feeling that you have to be alone in making those changes. And so just solidarity, finding a community, the most important thing. I think you are on LinkedIn. So yeah, thank you for using our platform. So yeah, it has been helpful to you. So how does it influence your actual work? Yeah, I think it's useful in two different ways. One is that as I mentioned, I get to share what I learned on the LinkedIn community and also find people who are interested in similar things and so on. I think that is as good as pretty much any other social media platform, except there's less cute cat pictures. Maybe you can work on that. But so even though it's not as fun as other, more fun-oriented social media platforms, I think the knowledge sharing and the learning part, of course, is there. And it's as helpful to me as other learning-based social media platforms, such as Medium. And then the other thing is that it also enables me to receive emails from other people. And after each conference and so on, I will usually receive many email from people. And it enabled me to very quickly check their credentials and check whether they are the person they claim to be. And also whether we have common friends so who can do a referral and things like that. And so it saves me a little bit of time every time everybody send an email because I don't have to spend as much time to check their credentials and their bona fide. But on the other hand, of course, I also receive many invitations from many other channels as well. So email is maybe just 5% of all my incoming. But for those 5%, I don't have to spend that much time to do due diligence checks. And so thank you for providing that. Lastly, please share any thoughts to the global audience. Yeah, sure. I think nowadays, as we are looking for the physical vaccine that is to say the mask, finally being accepted as the common thing that everybody needs to do, my main message is still the message of this dog, which is very important that is to say wear a mask to protect yourself from your own unwashed hands. Because wearing a mask and not washing your hands is actually not very useful at all. A mask is only useful if you wash your hands and this applies regardless of the material of the mask. It could be medical mask or from a T-shirt or N95 or whatever. Just every time you touch your mask, remember to wash your hands with soap and alcohol, like hand sanitizers. And if everybody do that, then we already have a vaccine. It's a physical vaccine. And the world can go into a post-coronavirus state much sooner than biological vaccines. So that's my main message for now. I may have a different message when the biological vaccine becomes generally available. Okay, thank you so much. So yeah, wash your hand and sanitize your hand and then wearing a mask. So yeah, we got your messages. Thank you so much. So yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation today. Me too. Me too. Thank you. See you next time. Live long and prospering. Thank you. Thank you.