MIT Media Lab and III IDEAS Jointly Hold “Future City Workshop” 16 Teams Nominated Fight for the Chance in October for Advanced Study in MIT
Date: 2015/06/10
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Education collaborated with each other and commissioned III IDEAS and MIT Media Lab to hold a 5-day “Future City Workshop” at Taiwan Air Force (TAF) from June 2nd to June 6th. The workshop was expected to congregate the innovative energy form the youngsters and map out the best outlook for a future city. Chi-Kuo, Mao, Premier of Executive Yuan, presented himself specifically at the opening and ending ceremony and expressed the sincerity that Taiwan government looks forward to the international experience in collaboration with MIT Media Lab so that, between industry and academy, it can play an active role supporting the next generation Taiwan students embracing innovative thinking.
III IDEAS Director General Dr. Ren-Dar, Yang, indicated that the goal of “Future City Workshop” is to find teammates with the same perspective so that these participants can work together with the concept of a future city in the 5 main fields such as transportation, smart community, water resource, food safety, and social innovation. Tutored by MIT Media Lab professors, the team members were expected to collectively come up with new ideas and transform the ideas into reliable solution packages.
What worth mentioning is that there were nearly 300 students from 41 schools such as NTU, NCKU, NTHU, NCTU, NCCU, NTUT, NTUST, NSYSU, applying for the workshop. After preliminary screening, more 200 students were able to vigorously participate in and dedicate to each distinct subject and discussed with MIT professors as well as coordinated and communicated with teammates the ideas and procedures of each other. Finally, the judges selected 16 teams into the final. In the coming next 4 months, these teams need to finish their works and the outcomes related to them are scheduled to be exhibited at Taiwan Air Force. In the end, the final winner will be arranged by Ministry of Education going abroad to MIT Media Lab for short term advanced study. In addition, the organization holding the workshop will collect the concepts and recommendations of the winning teams and provide them for local governments and the related industries as reference. There is the possibility that these ideas will be able to solve some of the difficulties that the government, the academy, and the industry are facing and to break through the bottlenecks and make progress on the issues.
III President Ruey-Beei, Wu indicated that, in terms of the performance of each team in the “Future City Workshop” where fresh ideas came out unintentionally and gradually became workable projects in the consecutive three days, Taiwan young talented students from different schools and various department teams fully demonstrated their energy in innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. What is rare was that there were no language barriers between these students and internationally well known professors from top schools. Facing the challenges given by their global mentors, Taiwan youngsters opened the collaborative gate between Taiwan and the U.S. and narrowed the cultural entrepreneurship gap between Taiwan and the world. By the event, III expected to attract more young talents to join the group dedicating to innovation and creativity and will continue to cultivate more gifted youngsters. With the cross industry, cross generation, and cross nation creativity and energy, III is confidence to promote Taiwan as one of the shining spot on the global map.
Furthermore, representatives of the selected teams also expressed their feelings at the ending ceremony saying that this activity gave them a chance to actually experience the international teaching methodology. Not only did they have to face the challenges and discuss ideas in English the entire workshop, but also they had to provide their points of view on the topic of “The Sharing of City Technology”. The process let them further consider the development need for a international city and inspired their creativity. The representatives also said that they wanted to take the chance to come up with ideas and methods to solve social problems and hoped to win the trophy in October exhibition so that they could get the chance going abroad for further study.
III Executive Vice President Gary Gong indicated that the workshop not only successfully represented the capability of a Taiwan institution to collaborate with international organizations but also integrated various industries in Taiwan including Makerbar, Realtek Semiconductor, and Fablab dynamic who provided Maker Maps, Ameba Development Modules and Platform Modules, and 3D Printers. By this chance, all these companies hoped to expand the global vision and perspective of Taiwan students and further built TAF as a Living Lab to test out new ideas where the industry, the academy, and MIT can cooperate and exchange ideas with each other more frequently.
The Best Interactive Award of the MIT Future City Workshop went to Serendipity, the team organized by students from NCKU, NTU, and NTUT. Premier of Executive Yuan, Chi-kuo, Mao (the first from the right) and MIT Media Lab Professor Kent Larson (the first from the left) collectively presented the prize and took photos with the team.
The first phase of MIT Future City Workshop successfully came to an end. MIT Media Lab Professor Kent Larson(the 5th from the left), Minister without Portfolio Shin-Cheng, Yeh(the 6th from the left), Minister without Portfolio Jaclyn Tsai (the 5th from the right), Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs Jong-Chin Shen(the 4th from the right), Political Deputy Minister, Ministey of Education Lucia S. Lin (the 3rd from the right), Director General, Industrial Development Bureau Ming-Ji Wu (the 2nd from the right), and III President Ruey-Beei, Wu(the 1st from the right) took a photo together.
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