TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan's notorious 'Digital Minister' of the Executive Yuan, Audrey Tang (唐鳳), held the first ever "vTaiwan Open Consultation & Participation Officers Training" in New York City June 11 and June 12.

Tang's lecture on digital governance at last year's Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in New York City received a very warm welcome. The PDF organizers felt that Taiwan's experience in particular is worth learning from and spent over a year arranging the visit of Tang and seven other government officials.

GOT a sewing machine, a smartphone and a paintbrush? Then you might be Queensland's next rising fashion business.

The industry of micro-makers has exploded in the state thanks to the creative brains of young women who know their way around an Instagram handle.

There are success stories across Queensland. Cult earring makers like Kenzie Collective and designers like Jericho Road Clothing have built their brands on the back of social media.

When BlackBerry Ltd. divested about three million square feet of real estate in Waterloo, Ont., and area in 2014, some out-of-town naysayers warned of a calamitous office space glut in a region once dominated by the former tech titan.

“With 2.8 million square feet coming back on the market, there was a significant reluctance from the out-of-town investor to consider buying real estate in the Region of Waterloo,” says John Whitney, owner and chief executive officer of Whitney Commercial Real Estate Services. A fourth-generation Waterloo real estate broker, he helped BlackBerry decades earlier to acquire some of the same buildings that went on the chopping block. He says the skeptics told him, “You are crazy; you will never deal with all that space.”

A recent tour of Canada’s biggest battery allowed participants to get up close to an 8.8MW/40MWh lithium-ion array housed in an otherwise unremarkable looking shed in the Wright Industrial Park in Stratford, Ontario.

“This is a historical moment,” says Stefan Goertz, Director of Development of Energy Services for Saturn Power, EPC contractor (in a joint venture with Ellis Don) and co-developer (with Hecate Energy). “But in the future, we’re going to see a lot more of this.”

The Eindhoven University is partnering with various companies to 3D print a community of five houses. The concrete structures will be fully habitable, and will be available to residents next year.

3D printed structures are being erected across the world, but a heavy portion of this concrete additive manufacturing innovation seems to be centered in the Netherlands. Last year, the Eindhoven University of Technology and the UK-based construction company BAM began 3D printing a functional bicycle bridge in the city.

MONCTON – Having worked with many entrepreneurs as an employee at Idea Action, Mylène Després saw the need to help them with tasks like creating a budget to translating a social media post into French. So, she launched La Station to do just that.

“My target market is, a lot of them are ‘solo-preneurs’ and very lean teams. They’re used to doing it all themselves,” she said.

“I’m not there for entrepreneurs to be dependent on my services, but really, so that they’re better equipped to go forward. Whether we like it or not, hiring someone can be strenuous on a business. So I’m basically there to help alleviate some of that.”

Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson says the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project won't be a "silver bullet" for the city's economy even if it goes ahead.

And the city can no longer count on oilsands development for its economic health, Iveson said in his annual state of the city address Thursday in front of an Edmonton Chamber of Commerce audience at the Shaw Conference Centre.

"The oil sands are not likely to see a return to the frenetic expansion of the last generation," Iveson said.

SINGAPORE/ TAIPEI – Once touted as among the fabled "Asian Tigers", the Taiwan economy has fallen dramatically behind its counterparts including Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.

But after being mired in the economic doldrums for decades, Taiwan – which is the home of hardware giants Acer, ASUS, Foxconn and HTC – could be better poised than its regional rivals to ride the technological wave, said experts, citing its private sector capabilities in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), and autonomous vehicles for example.

Artificial intelligence is set to disrupt many industries, and the Ottawa area is poised to grab a slice of the action.

That was the message delivered Thursday to 550 attendees at Impact AI, the city's first industry conference on artificial intelligence.

"We have to put Canada on the map. AI is going to change everything," said Eli Fathi, the CEO of Ottawa-based MindBridge AI, which hosted the summit at the Woodroffe Avenue campus of Algonquin College.

A Montreal program is trying to help get more women working in artificial intelligence.

Twenty-eight women, mostly senior undergraduate students, began the six-week AI4Good summer lab on May 14.

Almost none of the participants have any experience with AI or machine learning, said Doina Precup, one of the program’s creators.