Category Athena

Conference Talk｜Leveraging Python for Community Policy Evaluation in Taiwan

While still in development, this project emphasizes the sustainability of the approach. Leveraging Python's open-source tools and libraries, I hope to provide a modular analysis process that allows users of varying technical backgrounds to quickly adopt and apply it flexibly to various community policy discussion contexts, and help enable community members to engage more effectively and influence policy decisions.

A Casual Reflection on Agility

Agile equals lightning speed? Rolling adjustments are a sham? Not necessarily. The core issue lies in whether we are willing to permit such adjustments and, when necessary, draw a line and halt.

Notes on Serving as an Novice Deliberation Coach for “Let’s Talk”

Youth Development Administration (YDA) runs an annual series of deliberative democratic forums known as “Let’s Talk.” A few years ago, it transitioned from government-led initiatives to a model where youth teams propose and run their own projects. Not all these teams have backgrounds in deliberative democracy, so YDA pairs them with professional mentors—to help optimize their deliberation processes. In this article, I share my personal notes on this mentorship experience, from early preparations before meeting the teams to what a mentor might still do after the event.

Reflecting on Online Deliberation: “Let’s Talk” Phase Two

Serving as both a subgroup facilitator in the second phase of the "Let’s Talk" and as a deliberation mentor to teams in the first phase, I inevitably gathered some impressions and insights along the way. These notes aren’t rigorously systematic, nor would I call them classic “observations.” They are, instead, a set of casual reflections—“miscellaneous notes,” if you will—intended to provide future organizers of online deliberations a point of reference. Please note that in Phase Two of Let’s Talk, the approach and methods used by each facilitator or subgroup could vary. What I recount here is strictly my own experience.