March 20, 2019
AIT Official Text #: OT-1909
Remarks by AIT Director Brent Christensen
at 2019 AIC Innovation Forum and “Imagine That! Innovation Exhibition”
March 20, 2019
(As Prepared for Delivery)
Minister Kung, Secretary General Chen, Chairman Sung, Dr. Liu, Director Chang, Professor Huwang, and friends,大家好!
I am pleased to be here today representing the American Institute in Taiwan to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the American Innovation Center and to open both the 2019 AIC Innovation Forum and the “Imagine That! Innovation Exhibition.”
The AIC was jointly established by AIT and the Taiwan Design Center in 2014 to promote shared U.S.-Taiwan values of Innovation, Entrpreneruship, Digitalization, and Culture & Design, by offering technology, creativity, and design-themed programs to public audiences. Over the past five years, more than 98,000 people have visited the AIC or attended one of over 570 programs to teach coding, 3-D printing, or other key digital economy skills.
On April 16, in partnership with Taiwan Design Center, we will be organizing here at Songshan, a large-scale Women’s Economic Empowerment Summit, which will bring together more than 500 participants from more than 15 countries. This event is part of our lead up to the “Global Entrepreneurship Summit” in The Hague this June, and will kickstart the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity, or W-GDP, initiative for the Indo-Pacific. The Summit is open to the public and everyone here is invited to attend.
We are grateful to the Taiwan Design Center and our innovation partners for their contributions to making the AIC such a successful partnership. Today, I am pleased to welcome the Chinese Institute of Design (中華民國設計學會) as the newest AIC innovation partner. We are excited about the new energy, ideas, and resources they bring to the AIC.
Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” This year’s Innovation Forum explores emerging technologies, and also how people can learn to “think outside the box” and imagine these new technologies. We are honored to have experts like Dr. Liu, Michael Chang, and professor Hwang here today to provide their vision about creative thinking, new technology, service design, and entrepreneurship.
Today we also open the “Imagine That! Innovation Exhibition” at the American Innovation Center. From today until April 14, you can see new trends and ideas in VR and AI development from our AIC partners, including Microsoft, IBM, Facebook and Yahoo. I hope that today’s forum and exhibition will inspire you.
Finally, once again I want to thank our distinguished speakers and panelists for sharing their views with us today. Also thank you to the people and partners, especially Taiwan Design Center staff, who have contributed to the development of the center and made today’s events possible. And thank you to everyone attending here today. Without your efforts and participation, the AIC would not be the success it is today.
