 and then Steve Puchev mentioned I lose a whole piece of program and I went to the whole process myself thought it was a terrible process I mean and that that's what prompted the crossroads the energy was kind of like oh the process is like crazy I need to do something about it and so it became a full-time job for me and then that's when Steve decided to connect all of us and then one thing led to another we discovered that each gold piece of holder and other people who are also gold piece of holders were already doing their own thing like let's combine our powers that's right like that's not reinvent the wheels and here we are today yes yeah I think Steve oh I'm just gonna check I mean you're probably signed off from the foreign talent act so you're quite familiar with the car I'm not super okay I'm not super briefed on the details but the but the main idea of course I participate in the initial brainstorming and the public consultation and that was the first public consultation I joined platform that we got so many English yeah which is a really promising okay well just to give you the brief context about what this visa actually is so it's a four-in-one visa so you get an open work residence permit and the visa like residence card you apply entirely online and it's based on your skills as a person you don't need sponsorship from a time it's coming so basically you can be an amazing technologist in Silicon Valley go on the website that much cool excellent what we found is that it's been like unexpectedly popular with digital moments of freelancers tech professionals and artists so we kind of that there was what we designed for so yeah it's working yeah yeah unexpected value yeah definitely cool so you know all of the context which is great I don't know shell if you wanted me to launch into this community so I'm I'm the good cop Steve Chen and shelly has all of the constructive criticism partially because of the process and you know I was one of the first 50 people to Eric was quite early on as well we found that kind of community was forming out of gold card holders helping people apply and also helping them integrate with life in Taiwan so that community has been running for a few years now and it's got all of the traits you'd expect in a nice open source community and so we decided to get together and work out how can we actually contribute back to Taiwan so one of the things that we've done is we started open source projects made a website which is under a patchy to and creative commons basically I took a whole bunch of forum posts I've written over the past few years turn them to lockdown and Eric grab Q go what's the entrance Taiwan gold card dot com yeah and yeah so it's written in Hugo the static site generator and the idea was basically to share our experience step new applicants through from what the program is how do people qualify how to actually work the online portal and deal with its various errors and then what they should do when they move to Taiwan in a tax getting family visas health insurance that kind of thing so I think in general as a headline we're trying to mobilize this gold card community as a force for good in Taiwan because a lot of very passionate people who care a lot and want to really promote Taiwan is an awesome place to live work and invest yeah so we've got six contributors on GitHub and from war really inspired by gov zero and I think Eric last night put in a proposal to have a session at the gov zero summit yeah I know right yeah cultural and food yeah but that's that's my spiel so I don't know if you wanted to talk further about the process where we think things need to be proved anyone else is it context I mean originally the meeting you scheduled today was originally to introduce Steve to you and eventually ball this is something which we are all working on something so actually be much more productive and constructive if we focus on this whole card yeah everybody to kind of meet together we it's I mean from our aspect from Crossroads aspect we believe the gold card is actually very very important yeah and changing things yeah the open work permit leads to very interesting possible is changing the whole ecosystem and how people work together here so kudos to you know and I sent a poor request to you right on the website yeah just you know factor authentication so I think that you're actually inside the owner that's what I mean crossroads in our role right now is we're just supporting and seeing how we can help you know especially since we've been working on similar issues you know in the past yes still working on similar things but just wanted to kind of you to meet the group yeah if you're free to use this venue for your future gatherings yeah this is a free venue yeah yeah yeah right the basement is also pretty good for for like if you wanted quite a meeting because it kind of loudish because it's a park after all right but the basement is really nice so you can also check it out so I'm Jonathan I'm from Futurewood so we read a court in space in Taiwan we've been taking up seeing a lot of foreigners myself and Daniel and I think one thing is that we want to also help find more opportunities for the foreign workers in Taiwan what we can do besides the community itself and what are the opportunities so we've been talking to any see a lot about how we can help one thing that I think always we as a being gentle so you know how do we work with the government right it's the best way this community website in a sense obviously it's not an official how what is the best way of any suggestion how it being unofficially it's the best random officials to simple requests farther the other way yeah I totally agree so this was interesting was that before I met Tom and Eric we were mean Steve we were just like oh you know how are we going to tackle this whole process and obviously we thought we felt like working with the government might take a long time and so we were like screw it you know let's just do like a Wikipedia thing you have everyone to contribute to it and and then that's when Tom was like already working on a similar effort and what was interesting guys when we all came together I feel like we all had individual skill sets for example I think Jonathan and David they definitely tackled the more official side with the government because they are just a lot more they have a lot more experience going that direction and then obviously I'm more of a stronger proponent of open source community and somewhat of a hybrid but I think you know tackling the open source side and the open community is also good because that will also allow things to flow more organically and then maybe in conjunction the government will be inspired by that process as well so very much so so I think we've come together Jonathan here and had done a really great job in like form you know making sure that we made this more official and you know the group of us come together and said okay let's go tackle this from all fronts and see what happens yeah I'm pretty excited yeah you know the three suggestions I would make it so I got Jonathan David introduced me to a couple people really awesome people and you know one of the suggestions that I made that I think can be implemented within one hour of their time is one let's see if I can do it in half an hour Steve said he could do it in 15 minutes I'll just email Steve he says that maybe his kid can do it in like an hour but basically the three suggestions would be one fixing the English on the all the notification emails all the notification emails that Goldbees have received are not that formative and confusing and it doesn't really describe the next steps and so that's a MLI thing is the interior thing yeah the NIA is the agency that I understand operates the pool yeah and I think that's something very easy I that's something that I'm willing to take off-time work just to like flush all out one thing and then the second thing is automatically compressing photos on the books okay I've read it so many times but right now just from not being able to compress photos automatically has caused a lot of people to use like third-party software especially if they're not technically savvy they had just personally helped an applicant resize their photo for their application exactly and that that cost maybe like you know ten minutes of our time an hour someone else's time I think so sure if you're saying that compressing in the browser yeah in the browser in the browser so they can upload any file format and then the browser I think that would actually solve a lot of pain points and then making it more clear that you can upload more supplement documents because right now the UI and UX design for websites confusing but anyway that's obviously further down the road and then the third proposed proposed change is making sure that there's a source of truth so currently officially all the data is separated onto different websites and so the information on which category that you qualify for is on a different site on which you apply and having all the information aggregated down to one website would also immensely help people so they have to go to you know Tom and Eric's website to full most of this information but I think this is something that could be easy saw they hadn't just aggregated it right I think that's part of a conflict between different ministries we saw that in a few recent websites there's hike that I want the GOV that he did there's ocean that I want that's the two main things that we didn't take away any existing websites but rather made a new one that has a unified front and talks via open API to the back ends and the back ends are still there so people who are very much veteran mountaineers wouldn't complain that they have to learn something too simple right but like it's like you know hiking is an inherent challenge but everybody else who have not filed these applications before it's very hard to explain why climbing a mountain in Taiwan require you to talk to the national parks the forestry barrier and also the indigenous council well it's easy to explain indigenous part but but the other three it's not very well integrated so so we did a single website and you know it's amazing about Tom and Eric's website is that like one of the features of their website is that you can go in there select kind of your your your situation so you can be if you have a time at least national parents if you're off of a certain category they they actually recommend other visas that could be available to you which has been immensely helpful I've heard from a lot of our friends back in the Silicon Valley loved that feature on their website but anyway that's not part of the easy things to implement so and then one of the things that Steve had mentioned was you know a lot of our our friends at Silicon Valley they can't apply for technology because for some reason I don't know if it's I feel like I'm being recorded but can I speak freely okay so basically a lot of our friends had been forced to apply in economy and then I suspect maybe because of the the ease of you know I mean you just the qualifications is a income restriction and that's it right and so what are people doing are people are not applying for the category they're supposed to be applying for there's they're they're applying from it's easy and a lot of them you know they have sort of their own principles and so they're like you know I'm gonna do technology because I belong this category the ones that happen is that ends up taking twice to two months at most yeah and and then they ask for all this technology requirements this is something that happened to even poon for example and he he mentioned that they asked for so much so many credentials so much press articles yeah in the end they were like hey we're just gonna put you in technology so we can get you a visa and it was like if I had no economy yeah yeah there's more economy visa given anything like everything that's right the reason for that is as you know how the qualification process works is it first goes through ministry labor and then they send it down to a ministry and that the MST yeah actually they mostly work with graduate level universities so that's why they asked for more because they know there's more to ask yeah the issue is I think they're not really transparent about it because the top-level information the regulations for qualifying from special professionals in science and technology article one says you can qualify based on your salary but if you click through a few links and actually find a deeper implementation they say if you're qualifying for article one you also need to provide all the documents for article two or three and that's not clear anywhere on the official government website so this one of the reasons for the air tonight but together made it kind of like a wizard for working out how people qualify because with was waiting to fly into each of the regulations and recommend that people go for economy instead of science and tech even if they're in that industry because it's it's very difficult to qualify and I know a lot of amazing people who are like high-level folks who can't qualify inside that wizard you mean the application process page on your website or so actually was it with yeah you take boxes to answer questions and it will tell you which regulations okay yes paperclip yeah where we've renamed that didn't we what's it called now it's called the gold card qualification check it's no it's not on the website that that's on the website do I qualify and then click on just qualification check it's a little bit yeah I don't see a chance anyway I'll send you okay right we use the qualification check are you a lawyer that's actually another one to bring up you know no one no lawyer who's made it through the gold card process yeah okay so if you buy check are you a lawyer you say it's not for you you know there's a whole business that spawned around this thing right like people that I mean Tom doesn't charge for his time but there are people who would charge up to 2,000 USD and the way of death yeah to go through this process and so it's like you know the system just feels really backwards because now people are kind of gaming the system they're applying for things that they're not supposed to be applying for and it's just flooding you know it's difficult to really make this program a success and make sure that the mission and values of this program is fulfilled when people are just coming here to like they could manage of it right if that happens yeah I see that yeah so is there anything we can do well it will help to to just talk to you for me to talk to the NIA and fix the website so that it can actually we talk about this a long time ago right about turning this into a open API kind of sign we're pushing so people can can't do their own front-end yeah and therefore you know if you prefer to talk to a lawyer you can yeah I don't know only VR mask or something I have actually tried talking with the NIA but I suspect that the website was implemented by a contractor or something because for instance the main application portal has a robot store text that disallows search engines yeah but but in the procurement regulation that's kind of the first thing I did as the show is that if a contractor refused to provide open API that would enable the same kind of access as they would for the human beings then they're basically we copy this language about accessibility like universal access yes so if you are not providing open API or you're providing it but at like double the price there's something that you're discriminating against robots so I mean and but as with any procurement regulation it's only as good as the agencies willing to use it right so so that the fact that they can use this language that we put in to extract the API from their contractor for free they still need to you know the mistress interior still have to sound of course right so so I think so you've made some progress you say or not pushing along with caring about pushing for open source API one way this was back for the immigration visa the immigration portal as well as the back then is like actually I think there's another team that's pushing for a ARC check website yeah if it was open source API I leave it to the private sector to create some really interesting tools so for government websites open source tooling open API as it's promoted and expected it's part of our procurement and that's that's how we built hype that I want because the existing side of websites we all kind of just extract open API out of it using the procurement rule that we have and then each individual is just a very small procurement because they cannot be large if they charge like two times three times for providing open API they could be disqualified as vendors it's just like a vendor saying you know providing our website to people with blindness is beyond our capability if you want us to pass WCAG or something you have to pay us five times and they get disqualified for that if they dare to say so so that's already pushed very much and we have a project where we work with around 30 interns every year to systemically look at the kind of pain points and they using of an API redesign a process without sacrificing the process yeah so so they did something like the hiking one is kind of popular now they did the National Palace Museum ticketing process they did last year because we allowed the students to choose their favorite topics so last year a lot people did NCC the National Communication Commission flag TV channel as biased website which was not a very popular part of their website but because there was some TV channels that are even less popular I guess so people use that a lot so so it depends on what they're interested in I mean like I've got a vision some of the content that's been created from our contributors like Philip Burkist from Sweden has written all this information about this particular health insurance like corner case which is nowhere else written up and it would be amazing to see that on an open API pool that have government websites actually to look at citizen content and potentially say instead of writing it ourselves we'll just take this yeah that's supposedly in DC highlights of the bilingual nation program right a lot of bilingual nation program have deliverables maybe ten years down the road like officially fine more right but but the accessible services and websites I think they listed as a kind of one year or two year deliverable so I think that's a that's very much a DC thing so and you say you've been talking with NDC yeah I mean I'm one of the questions today is I mean give it some great examples for the websites yeah okay so you talk with which department I really true right the HR department yeah okay yeah they're they're in charge of that okay yeah as far as I know I think because Minister Gorminsen was deputy commissioner in the NDC around when this go-kart thing what was being brainstormed so yeah I think he very passionately believes that that's the direction to go and so I think it's politically I think it's very possible that that he will want a few highlights that could be delivered within the fiscal year without waiting for next year's budget and friendly accessible government services man might just be one yeah so yeah if you talk to really true also feel free to copy my office and see what we can help because we've done quite a bit of like integration of the various government services right now but so if you're you think that going through forward last to complete one process it's a lot we we had like 10 just to do this very simple thing starting a new company was that what the case to create a new company review literally had to go through 10 different websites yeah yeah yes you know about it right so so we're cautious with optimistic like if we can help integrating that we can do pretty much everything right so so that's that and and then I think the NIA part especially about compressing the photos that's a very long-hanging fruit yeah and then there's probably code already that can do this in the client side right so if you have a link to a certain github project that does that then then I can probably talk to the contractor to integrate it in yeah and if that does become become like a project and if it's and there are low other low-hanging friends can we communicate that to you guys sure sure the thing is that we we work through this conference so my office have circumference from I think around 12 different ministries to my office so it is not me personally is that that our MLI circumference or if it's about diplomacy or foreign service we'll be the window through which that you can reach the MLI folks okay that would be great because it'd be interesting to kind of guide them through sort of the UX and UI experience and then I mean obviously there's a lot more I think can be improved but those are the basic ones I think that would probably increase like efficiency yeah they are low-hanging fruits and once we have a working relationship I think they will be much more receptive about the idea of an API yeah because previously they would think you know this is doing pretty well unless you're translating in 12 different languages oh wait you are I wish it was a little bit of a hoarse well you were anyway yes that was it that was the original thing we talked about yes like the English website is pretty good but he wanted to be in 12 different languages anyway so sorry I was teasing you but I think I think even an English website can make quite a few improvement from your side and then I think they will be much more open to integrate your wizard and their website in whatever way possible and then the Ministry of Interior will then be able to point out that's one or two front ends that you guys are already working on and saying that these are the kind of immediate benefits if we extract all the Navy out of the vendors otherwise the vendor would ask okay but who are our front ends who do I talk to right and then and then yeah if there's no answer it's hot to make that book yeah and then what about the notification something that you guys can collaborate with Cosmos or or or I can volunteer I'm happy to volunteer is much easier it's much easier if you do this back and we do the implementation okay we won't charge you though you're ready to pay your taxes yeah but that's how we did for example the mask map okay the mask map was done by volunteer and the only thing we did is to talk to Google to waive the API usage fees yeah but the entire specification is it's driven by the social sector by in the Gov0 Slack channel and all we did is just to talk to the system integrators in the National Health Insurance Agency saying okay there's already quite a few front ends they rely on people to update the stock levels of the pharmacies by by themselves and that's not scalable right so so we really need to provide them with real-time information every 30 seconds and that's literally the only thing we did because everything else including the chatbot or whatever is already not there in the social sector right so it really was reverse procurement and in this situation that we can maybe have a 24-hour or 72-hour turnaround buying in traditional procurement it's easily three months yeah yeah yeah no I'm happy to both volunteer at the support teams because we're support teams and then I've been in QAL so I know how to like do step-by-step instructions even our mothers can follow it so I think I'm up for the challenge okay yeah for sure that's great that's great right so so the action item would they do have those corrected notification email ready even just one oh I have screenshots of other people's notifications but I think what I'd like to see is all the notifications available and when they're triggered yeah and then and then I can just go through each one yeah but we need a we need a pilot right so it's just just one one would be okay I could say like one one horrible the most horrible one the one that just gives you a three-character Chinese status it's a secondary process okay right maybe it's in big five and you cannot even read it's like pixel so I think if you have a horrible one and I like before after it's easier for me to then talk to our MO is this is actually speaking English right and then if there's a github link to something that can press photo on the browser that that's great as well yeah because Dan for the vendor is just a drop-in replacement and then based on these two then we can read what I read that is okay awesome and then what would you like for me to send like these excellent thank you I shall do that okay so more than one out of ten it's pretty good good convention yeah and what we notice is like many people come here like I'm around for maybe one year and what you're thinking we try to give them some visibility yeah yeah so I'm thinking about I mean what you want to help you decide how we can like have like more activity on how foreigners can help we'll just getting more additional nomads to move to Taiwan it's immensely right and in since we're talking minister of interior they in their kind of police section there's this idea called genting the right the rate upon which you can see a police randomly on the street and this makes people feel safer this is like science evidence backs it up even though it may or may not have anything to do with was actually because just just seeing people on the street makes people feel safer yeah and so seeing random people who don't look like mentoring is their you know native language on the street promotes this kind of transcultural norm right like like instead of assuming that people read big five well read yeah maybe one should not assume maybe providing bilingual science and instructions is generally a good idea and things like that but if you are not reminded of that fact like in their daily lives then it's very easy to to go back into this memory only mindset and so just just getting more people visible in all walks of life and also just promoting the idea that there's more than one thousand like super talented superpower people in Taiwan now I think it's generally a good idea in itself and especially now because now it is safer than most other jurisdictions and so if you're here doing pretty much whatever you're already doing but in a safer place right that that alone is a pretty good call to action to many people who can work remotely yeah and if they're in a valley many of them can work remotely like forever many many many companies started adopting that as their HR policy so instead of saying you know we're contributing to I don't know the sustainability of goals participating in the presidential hackathon which is all good and well but that's I think if I'm a bill card like person arriving to a foreign country I think first I was just think about how to migrate my lifestyle how to work with the communities of one I probably wouldn't think about you know how to solve systemic issues such as I don't know marine debris or change within the first year right arrived to a foreign country that that that takes maybe when I start feeling secure in maybe reapplying maybe naturalization right if you reapply on the 50 year and you get to naturalize without giving up your original citizenship right so so this also Taiwanese takes effect on the around the force of 50 year and that's when you can say okay so this person has contributed significantly to the country because to qualify for dual citizenship you still have to prove that right but but that's probably not for the first year or not even for a second year so I think for the first couple yeah I think we should highlight just how inclusive and friendly this community is yeah and how inclusive and friendly this community is working with everyday people yeah not necessarily on like large individual contribution you you worry about that when you want to get a dual citizenship and that's down one yeah I totally agree with that because that would be an organic process as a part of implementing themselves into Taiwan yeah it's crazy I think it's happened to all of us I mean to be quite honest right like we came here didn't really think about being involved but then we ended up being like I was again born in the States and then I came to Taiwan and I found myself to be extremely patriotic and I didn't know why but it was because the culture right like you just you interact with a lot of really kind people who are the practice humility and or extremely welcoming and then some of you just want to give back and that kind of synergy and and positivity really inspires other people to give back so and I think that it itself is pretty awesome and I think like you know Eric mentioned a really good point and you as well I just remember it Steven had Steve had mentioned you know one of the things that he cared about most was being able to provide resources that we've had you know maybe because we have resources through friends and friends of friends to people who are just as deserving yeah but perhaps didn't have the right connections and so and it's all about not again not focused on like you know how to start your business how to encourage you to like think of some innovative ideas but it's like where do you go to Taiwan like this life lifestyle like how do you open the bank account you know here's here's onboarding buddy where they're willing to spend their entire time showing me around showing you wrote giving you a psychological safe place so that you can feel like hey you know I feel like I'm starting to pick up on cultural yeah that's what I mean by changing you right I'm seeing more people like me or more people who are friendly yeah that changes things yeah exactly I totally agree thanks for you're coding the profiles feature on the website this week right so yeah it start promoting the people who have come here and making them easily consumable in case any other outlets want to also promote those people so just the idea gold card holders here's how they qualified here's what they do here's what they're doing in Taiwan photo name simple things like that the hundred people yeah well the screen part of the association on profit that we are crossroads yeah and I know I think you saw the presentation exactly to see I mean there's you have this ready and passionate and very talented community coming into Taiwan and our associates trying to figure out how to cross that language and cultural there so that there is a meaningful avenue to share knowledge experiences and try to kind of move away from the classroom style but we you know this is something that we're going to be happy to do in trial there as we're doing this association so yeah be great to work with the cold card yeah oh I actually forgot to mention so I remember I had a meeting with Tony Chen and one of the things that I mentioned that I think would be incredibly useful is that the gold piece of holders go through an orientation process just so that it you know it's a college maybe pick up your ID at the orientation or something but as immediately your your approach with the welcome package you have all the contacts all the resources how to get set up where to live where you find co-working spaces have you know any translations or you know things like that do what we do to the home we should work with the quarantine hotel is to become good with her ideas and creative comments yeah orientation complete the onboarding process the care package an easy covered as well yeah exactly for so one thing I think every legislator needs to be aware of which is that the number one problem for existing gold card holders freelancers is the requirement if they don't have a Taiwanese employer to stay in Taiwan without leaving for six months before they can get health insurance that's fixed in the new economic immigration bill which is under discussion yeah I'm aware and I'm aware that it's fixed in the immigration bill but there's a lot of people waiting for that I mean the NHI has its own act and that is very carefully politically balanced so it needs a special act to to change any part of that so yeah we really can't go back and change the NHI yeah I know it needs to be done through the legislative but I just want you to know that this is a very common discussion the gold card I understand that dark that was just a random tangent please continue yeah it's an amazing system yeah pure pure socialism yeah education and health are the two socialist domains in Taiwan everything else is kind of yeah this is a really exciting time you know I'm so I feel so fortunate to be around all of you guys because I just feel like just having this gold visa process available can you imagine it's like it's seated a lot of people's minds that they're that Taiwan is a place that they can go to before Taiwan was never a consideration that's right so even if they don't come I I'm already hearing a lot of conversations where they want to be here and they want to find ways to contribute or they just want to come in like bunker down that's okay and we should help them that should be encouraged that should be encouraged yeah I feel like this is an awesome time to leverage the coronavirus and turn something negative into something positive in the country golden gold and we have a lot of jokes it's an honor to meet you now I was so excited I was telling some of my friends like oh my god I'm gonna vomit rainbows when I see here all righty so so the thing for me to do is I'll talk to our analyze the comment and I'll expect a few constructive creative criticism coming from you and we'll see what we can do with the contractor with a mid to long-term goal of a more like NDC like bilingual for everything but I think the kind of drinking our ocean pain improving the process is is I think bootstrapping because with other otherwise it's harder for you to convince right the other potential holders that we're serious yeah drinking our own cool it was a kind of cool anyway it's sufficient quantity that's right it's all magic it's sufficiently advanced for it so that's it for today yeah yeah I feel free just just email anytime yes I love thank you thank you yeah I'm looking forward to doing school now I guess it's a good one