Theme: New Position

As people grow up, we face many new stages, each stage being a new position.
Time moves and demands a new status quo. How we find our new position will determine the future of our current forward direction. The “individual” is replaced by “Taoyuan”, “Taiwan” maintains its current position. Taoyuan advances and feels a new international role; Taiwan in the past and a new variety of factors such as culture, politics, education, science, technology, and more, necessitate new ways of thinking.
"New Position" is not only about people, it is about the cities and important subjects affecting this country.

Taoyuan Arts Center (桃園展演中心)
桃園市桃園區中正路1188號
Taoyuan, Taoyuan, 330
Taiwan

Howhow

Youtuber

Jason Chen (Howhow) received his B.A. in Economics from NCCU, Taiwan. Interested in movie shooting, he produced many clips with friends and uploaded them onto internet as undergraduate. The goal to develop career in film producing when exchange in the USA motivate him to study visual effects in Savannah College of Arts and Design. His clips “What are We Going to Perform In Graduation Ceremony” and “Glad I Fulfilled the Military Service”, respectively attracted over millions views. Since then the name is known by people.

Eyad Al-Khayat

Syrian youth

Salam dreams of founding a local institute towards innovation, for people who lack resources and opportunity but are eager to learn, giving them a chance to approach high-quality education. Eyad aims to make real change in local. He attempts to utilize his specialty but not to be restricted to information technology. Both speak for the rights of women and adolescents. Besides the volunteers of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Salam and Eyad participate in many affairs and organizations, such as TED Open Translation Project, Syrian Youth Empowerment Program (SYEP), and GirlUp (UN), etc. The efforts they have made look ordinary, but it is the hope who keep in mind the candle light before silver lining shows.

J. Michael Cole

Editor-in-chief of Taiwan Sentinel

J. Michael Cole has published several books and approximately 2,000 newspaper and journal articles about Taiwan and China in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, The Diplomat, Huffington Post, CNN and several others. He was deputy news editor at the Taipei Times from 2010-2013 and served as a senior member of Thinking Taiwan Foundation from 2014-2016. He is currently Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, Associate Researcher with the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Taipei. He appears regularly on CNN, Al-Jazeera, Channel News Asia, Bloomberg TV, BBC, Radio Taiwan International, and other international media.

Salam Al-Nukta

Syrian youth

Salam dreams of founding a local institute towards innovation, for people who lack resources and opportunity but are eager to learn, giving them a chance to approach high-quality education. Eyad aims to make real change in local. He attempts to utilize his specialty but not to be restricted to information technology. Both speak for the rights of women and adolescents. Besides the volunteers of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Salam and Eyad participate in many affairs and organizations, such as TED Open Translation Project, Syrian Youth Empowerment Program (SYEP), and GirlUp (UN), etc. The efforts they have made look ordinary, but it is the hope who keep in mind the candle light before silver lining shows.

吳季剛 Chi-Kang Wu

Engineer, Industrial Technology Research Institute (IRTI)

Wu is an engineer who exclusively studies in the biomedical engineering and software/hardware development, aiming to realize the future life he once saw in childhood movies. Currently, he focuses on developing new methods of human-computer interface at ITRI, Taiwan, expecting to bring technical innovations to the world. Imaging a device which is the same size of the watch on your wrist, and you can lock/unlock other applications with gestures. Fortunately, this sort of life, is not far off. Moreover, the well-known virtual reality (VR) doesn’t provide only the experience of visibility but also users diverse body-sensory response. Let’s follow Wu’s talk and explore the future of wearable technology.

吳毓瑩 Yu-Ying Wu

Dean, College of Education, National Taipei University of Education.

Former editor-in-chief of “ Journal of Educational Practice and Research “. With wide research interest, she calls herself a “salad-bowl“ type researcher. She is from the family of different cultural backgrounds and also been to the east and west coasts of the United States and Scotland for a period of time. Those life experiences she has have made ”multi-culture recognition” not just a few words, but the full play of her expertise and skills.

周雅淳 Ya-Chun Chou

Writer

Chou received M.S. in Sociology from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU). She is a Ph.D. candidate of Graduate School of Sociology of NTU, Taiwan. Chou loves to record daily-life pieces by writing. Her goal is presenting sex-and-gender education in feminism point of view and speaking up for those whose voice is hidden. For Chou, it should be interesting to discuss gender and sex with children, while most parents who escape the talk or discuss it in a very serious way regard sex as a sensitive issue. Furthermore, they may be blamed even injured. All these could mislead children and set wrong viewpoint for them.

尤美女 Mei-Nu Yu

Legislature of DPP, Taiwan.

Yu is a pioneer in women-affair laws. She has lead many law adjustments toward Act of Gender Equality in Employment Sexual Assault Prevention Act, Gender Equity Education Act, etc.

張慶玉 Ching-Yu Chang

Adjunct assistant professor, Department of Sociology, Fu Jen Catholic University

After undergraduate, Chang served as a flight attendant for China Airlines about seven years. The experience benefited her academic research tremendously. Chang thinks sociology is a realization of daily life and hopes to bring this positive, energetic power to every single person she meets. Although “emotional labor” is just a name, it’s still a big issue to Taiwan’s service industry. Not only cabin crew but many other attendants regularly transfer attentive and positive emotional reaction to present “professional” impression. However, are we just abusing “emotional labor” to make lots of attendants suffer from invisible damage? ”Emotion is not still, what invisible does not mean it never exist.“

楊士毅 Shih-Yi Yang

Artist and director

Yang graduated from National Taiwan University of Arts. Besides his famous short, Yang’s works include photography, paper cutting, Chinese brush painting, poetry and screenplay writing. For many years, Director Yang tried to discover himself through diverse ways of creatio. Eventually, he wanted to be a storyteller who shared the inspiration and message from life and nature through the media he is familiar with. Yang’s childhood experience makes him easily feel less of himself. His relationship with paper cutting started off unexpectedly; and he was immediately touched by the purity of it. Yang thinks that every paper-cutting piece is not only a work of art but a medium. His ultimate goal through his works is to send out blessings.

花亦芬 Yih-Fen Hua

Professor, Department of History, National Taiwan University

Professor Hua focuses on art history, cultural history, modern German history, and cultural history of the Renaissance. Also, she is the editor of History Inquiry at National Taiwan University. In 2014, she started a collaborative blog named Kam-A-Tiam Forum Of History with other historians in order to spread the idea of civil history. Through comparing Taiwan’s totalitarianism in the past with Germany’s, people can learn more about the place they live and the history of themselves. To be sure, when mankind can treat their past more reasonably, society can gain more opportunity to see the bigger picture.

葉乃裳 Nai-Chang Yeh

Professor of Physics, Caltech

Yeh’s principal research field is experimental condensed matter physics, with special emphasis on correlated electrons, topological matter, spintronics, low-dimensional materials, nanoscience and nanotechnology, energy research, and precise measurements using superconducting technology. Yeh received her B.Sc. degree in physics from the National Taiwan University in 1983 and Ph.D. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. She joined the physics faculty of Caltech in 1989 and tenured as an associate professor in 1995, and promoted to full professorship in 1997. She is the first woman professor tenured in physics at Caltech, and is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the US and also an elected fellow and chartered physicist of The Institute of Physics in UK.

許毓仁 Jason Hsu

Legislature of KMT, Taiwan.

Hsu was licensee of TEDxTaipei and senior TEDx Ambassador, elected as legislature-at-large of KMT in 2016. He devotes himself in reforming environment for start-up, sports industry, and, innovation in education.

鄧培志 Page Deng

Co-founder of Addweup

Deng received his M.S. in Innovation and Design from National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech). His works include industrial design, product design, animation, multimedia, graphic design, package design and public design. He is eager to change the world with combining design and business. Owing to his passion for public design, Deng launched Addweup with co-workers, aiming to create value of the extra foreign currency that the traveler left over.

陳毓文 Yu-Wen Chen

Professor, Department of Social Work, National Taiwan University.

Chen’s research has focused on needs of disadvantaged youth and their families. She is especially interested in social services and welfare policies concerning youth. With the increase of foreign workers and spouses coming to Taiwan, the proportion of new Taiwan generations also grows in number. Thus, teenagers from new immigrant families have also become the target of research in recent years.

霍文蕙 Sonya Fok

Travler, Co-founder of i-Action

Hong Kong traveler, photographer, and the founder of a non-profit organization i-Action. She loves to travel alone, use her photographs to tell a story, and explore the world through her unique perspective. Once visiting Liang-shan Abu-Loha village in Sichuan, China, and witnessing demand of local residents motivated her to founded i-Action, to help the local adopt wild honey production for selling to bring a new life to the village.

馮嘯儒 Edison Feng

Co-founder and CEO of GrinnoDot

In order to break the high-cost line of solar energy and to make a sustainable energy common in daily life, Edison and partners founded GrinnoDot. He believes as long as there’s a spare roof, the residents can earn money and donate extra to socially vulnerable groups. Involving personal and public interests, GriinoDot provides a novel way to utilize solar energy.