Hello everyone! I’m a freelance journalist working on a story for the US-based non-profit publications Shareable. Everything we publish is licensed CC 3.0.
Please add your input to the questions below - and put your name at the top so I know how many people participated. I’m looking for 1200-1500 words total for the story so feel free to give detailed answers.
ael
chihao
#1 - Can you tell us a bit about how g0v operates - your governance structure, how decisions are made, and how you communicate within your network?
ael: First of all, g0v does not have a "governance" structure. We consider ourselves as a community rather than an organization. Like other open source tech communities, we believe everyone is equal to participate in the community. We welcome every citizen to join any projects since all our projects are all open online, including codes, documents, videos and images etc. So how does it work? Online, we throw up our projects ideas, discuss thoughts and look for collaboration in our Facebook group, our Slack group, our irc channel, our hackpad workspace and our GitHub repository. Offline, we host at least one hackathon every two months, around 120 participants each time, and also host 2 international summits to connect to the global civic tech hackers. We are a multi-centered community, which means anyone can initiate any projects and host hackathons on any topics in any forms. We believe in openness and collaboration. Every Facebook Fanpage posts will be reviewed by the community before released. Any lecture invitation will be send to a Google group, and the lecture slides will be open licensed.
chihao> This is to address this, and all the questions raised in this pad that principle #0 of the g0v community is that no one is/represents the g0v community. I personally believe that this principle is key in keeping this community open and egalitarian.
#2 - What would you consider some of your biggest, or more meaningful achievements?
tools
staying
chihao> g0v’s “being here” for the past years and its evolution is very meaningful to me and, hopefully, the larger Taiwanese society. I think it has restored faith in people about their capacity to adapt and bring about change by empowering them to self-organize and “make things happen”.
#3 - Are there any challenges you have encountered since you started up, specifically around collaboration, or large-scale mobilizations?
chihao> People are difficult and awesome in the same time.
#3 - What are some of the most exciting, or most promising, projects that you are working on right now?
chihao> I’m working on a project called “dipSpace”. It is an open-sourced content management system for contemporary journalism.
#4 - Has there been any changes, or developments, since the new President came into power last year? Why is it so important to involve citizens in decision-making?
#5 - Though g0v is probably leading in innovations, it seems like other organizations with similar goals are emerging elsewhere in Asia. Can you tell me if, and how, you’re working with activists/hackers in other Asian countries?
ael: g0v community always has a good relationship with civic hackers around the globe, not limited in Asia, for example, Code for America and mysociety in UK. g0v also participates in Open Government Partnership in Paris in 2016, sharing civic tech tools and experience in open government. There are also always foreign participants in our hackathon. Speaking of Asia, g0v summits have invited speakers from South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Myanmar etc. g0v.news also aims to cover more civic tech stories in Asia in both English and Chinese, for example, fellowships in Japan and Pakistan and joint website to dismiss president Park in South Korea. Other ongoing projects include cyber security workshops for NGO workers in Asia, one long-stay staff from Malaysia and Civic Tech Fest in September.
#6 - Are there any lessons g0v can offer the platform co-op movement in terms of collaboratively organizing/mobilizing large groups of people?
ael: Be open! Release early release often! Troll hugging. We don’t organize people. We just encourage everyone to take actions. We create the atmosphere and platform that everybody can contribute something by clear and open documentation on project process, what kind of help the project needs. g0v’s motto is, "Don’t ask why nobody did this, admit you are the nobody first." When you start to do something good and influential, people will join you. If they feel accepted and accomplishment, they will continue to contribute their knowledge and passion. After all, we are all citizens believing in using technology to better democracy and society.