Aug. 19th, 2008@ Losheng Sanatorium, Taipei.

Future Civic Media Technology Forum
How social workers, technologists, and activists can work together to raise their voices

In Taiwan, there is a growing gap between social issues and public awareness. Usually, the public misunderstands or undervalues major social issues while activists are securing the underestimated perspectives from people (like Leper patients and their caregivers in Losheng Sanatorium) who are usually recognized as social problems in the society. Future Civic Media Technology forum focuses on emphasizing: 1. How the general public can gain more understandings through the use of civic media and technology, 2, How technologists and social workers can develop civic technology together in order to engage the general public, 3. How activists can initiate civic engagement through the collaboration with technologists, social workers.

In addition, because the Losheng Issue draws a great attention to the online blogger community, we also invite few famous bloggers who pay much attention on this subject including 2008 national civic media prize winner, a public affair department manager in Yahoo! Company and the regional chief executive of Global Voice (an international group translate the important international news all around the world into the local language).

This forum will be held in Losheng Sanatorium, for this issue has become one of the most popular social issues due to the promotion of the online civic media community. What’s more important, in the recent days, our Legislative Yuan just passed the Protection and Compensation to Leper Patients Act, which guarantee them a reasonable compensation for the mistreatment and plan to set up a reserved medical historic park. In order to let more people understand this issue, we will publish several civic media interaction device for Losheng in this forum and keep those work in the future design inside the historic park.

Agenda:
09:00-09:45 Guide tour in Losheng Sanatorium by the Leper Patient Union and volunteers
09:45-10:00 Opening Remark
10:00-10:30 Presentation of the interactive device design. Guest chair: Prof. Hao Chu, National Taiwan University
10:30-12:00 Keynote Speech: Future Civic Media by Prof. Chris Csikzentmihalyi, Co-Director, Center for Future Civic Media, MIT
12:00-12:30 Music Performance by the Losheng Band
12:30-13:30 Group Lunch Talk with the Patients (Buffet)

Co-host by:
Gavin Lee, Taiwan Youth Environment Tank, gavin1028@gmail.com
Dr. Guan Zhong-Xiang, Taiwan Media Watch
Jackie Lee, Nightmarket Workshop, jackylee@nightmarket.org

Gavin Lee actively participates in the social movement with his legal profession. To protect the habitat of the endanger species in Wulai, he and his schoolmates initiate an organization to compose all the demonstrations. Gavin engages in one bigger issue to fight against the SuHua highway construction which is planned to pass through seventeen ecological, cultural and geographically sensitive areas in Taiwan east region. Dealing with a 93 billion development, Gavin and his allies hope to raise the awareness of the whole civil society. They use different media like film, cartoon and documentary, to build up a very attractive website “SuHua Bakery” and are awarded 2008 National Civic Media Prize. He is keeping looking for the balance point between nature and human desire.

Dr. Guan Zhong-Xiang, who is now the chief executive of Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and Professor in Department of Radio, Television and Film in Shih Hsin University, is interest in research and application for civic media issue and runs an ongoing project to develop the biggest civic media platform online with the community workers in Taiwan.

Jackie Lee initiated Nightmarket Workshop in 2006. Nightmarket Workshop aims for securing Taiwanese culture using the means of arts and technologies with interdisciplinary student collaboration. Jackie Lee is now a Ph.D candidate at the MIT Media Laboratory.

Location: Losheng Sanatorium, Taipei.
Losheng is a sanatorium for Leper patients .The patients over there were loathed by crowds over years by wrong politics and misunderstanding. Recent years because of MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) planned to build a depot in the site where it is. Although the government built a new hospital building nearby for settling the patients, the proposed demolition of the original compound still brought a series of debates and later a preservation movement. According to the survey conducted in March 2006, there are still 165 Losheng residents living in the new hospital building and 52 living in the old compound or other places.

[All images are from the book by the artist and activist- Mr. Chang]