Taiwan Salon Season 4 Episode 7: Ipa Chiu on Building Democracy through Open-Source Technologies

About this episode

The episode discusses Taiwan's unique civic tech community and its role in building democracy through open-source technologies.

“Don’t ask why nobody is doing this, you are the NOBODY.” Confronted with frequent natural disasters—such as earthquakes and typhoons—and ongoing political challenges, including Chinese coercion, Taiwan has cultivated a resilient and highly creative civil society. Within this dynamic ecosystem, civic technology stands out as a distinctive force, blending grassroots activism with digital innovation to tackle complex social and governance problems. In this episode of Taiwan Salon, GTI Communications Associate Yuchen Lee and Summer 2025 Intern Tracy Weener interview Ipa Hsiao-wei Chiu (瞿筱葳), the Co-Founder of Taiwan’s largest civic tech community, g0v (台灣零時政府). Ipa explains what makes Taiwan's civic tech community unique and how it thrives throughout this past decade, highlighting ‘openness’ as the core value of this long-standing digital activism. Useful links g0v’s website: https://g0v.tw/intl/en/ The book on Taiwan’s civic tech community and the story of g0v, “The NOBODY Movement: Civic Hackers and Digital Activism in Taiwan”: https://a.co/d/6QI27cP g0v Summit 2026: https://summit.g0v.tw/2026/ Sch001 零時小學校 (g0v Elementary School): https://sch001.g0v.tw/ The Minecraft Project by…

People in this episode

Hosts: Yuchen Lee, Tracy Weener

Guest: Ipa Hsiao-wei Chiu

Topics covered

• civic technology
• digital activism
• Taiwan
• civil society
• grassroots activism
• openness

Keywords

• Taiwan
• civic tech
• g0v
• digital innovation
• civil society
• openness
• activism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: g0v, Global Taiwan Institute, g0v Elementary School, g0v Summit 2026

Books & works: The NOBODY Movement: Civic Hackers and Digital Activism in Taiwan

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