Guillaume Saunier & Lucien Langton about how Voca helps to distribute the participatory tool Decidim
Guillaume Saunier & Lucien Langton both work at Octree, a tech cooperative that operates the Voca project, among others. Voca is a software as a service (SaaS) product that simplifies and extends the citizen participation platform Decidim. The aim is to facilitate the distribution of tools for civic participation.
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Transcript
Welcome on another episode of, Democracy Innovator podcast. And our guests of today are Guillaume Sauniere and Lucian Langton. And, yeah, sorry again for my pronunciation. And welcome. Welcome here.
Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice. Hello.
Nice to meet you. And, I mean, you have a company that is called Octree. Right?
Yes.
Would you like to tell us something about it, what what it's doing?
Yeah. Sure. I mean, if you want, Luca can introduce a bit, Octree, and then I'll talk about the the civic tech project that we have called VUCA. Sure. Of course.
Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation. Really happy to to share our work here and to to discuss civic tech with, with you here. So Octree is a tech co op, which is based in Switzerland and which exists now since about ten years. And our aim is to launch different digital commons, different products, but, based on pre owned and open source software and open source governance in the fields of basically the social and ecological transition. And so we have different different projects concerning different aspects of this. Some projects are about mobility. Others are about waste management, etcetera, etcetera. But, one of our projects is around, an existing tech called. And, our main intro so the the name of this project is Voca. And, and that's, I think, why we are we are here to, to talk about civic tech with, with you. And so to introduce briefly, Voca, I'll let Guillaume speak. But perhaps for myself, I can just introduce my background. So I come from, interaction design and interface design. And it's been now since, I'd say, 02/1919 that I've been working on, design aspects of civic tech and especially the product design of, building civic tech in an approach of digital commons. So that's where I come from. Guillaume?
Yeah. And, I'm I'm Guillaume. I, I've joined Octree three years ago to to to work on the on the partnerships and the and the fundraising and the, you know, like, talking with the outside, communicating with the outside from the Vocus perspective. And, Voca is, is a Pacific tech project that we have been working on, since, the past three, four years now, but officially launched it two years ago. It comes out of our work with the CDIM, that we've been that we work that we've been doing, for, public institution in Switzerland. So the mainly the the the Canton of Geneva, the city of Lausanne, the city of Neuchatel, the the Canton Of The Valais. So the the French speaking side of Switzerland. And from that experience, we decided to build a a SaaS product that is based on the on the CDM. And we've been exploring a lot, around, what that SaaS product should be. And today, Voca is mainly aiming at distributing and simplifying, and removing barriers to entry to the CGM for, public institution, of course, but also really focusing on bringing this product and this this technology to other actors. And when I say removing bio bioaccidentry and simplifying, really on the technology side, making it easier to use and making it more targeted towards the needs, and the needs of the participants and the organ the organization that are doing participation work. And also, trying to bring the cost, of using the CDIM to to to a point where not only, public institution can afford, a platform. Yeah.
And, when you had the the idea I mean, that, simplified version of the CDMA, was helpful. And, also, if, you can, if you remember when you how you got to know about, Desiderium? Like, because you came from, UX Design, you came from, more financial economic, I don't know, Guillaume. So how did it happen?
Sure. I mean, I can answer on the idea why why Voca and maybe Lucian, you you you can tell a bit of the story of the system, at Octree. I think that simplifying the system really came out really came out of of, our experience in working with, with with public institution, and also the the the experience that we've seen around with the CGM, seeing that, it started out, you know, obviously of Barcelona, but then mainly large, European cities, were able to install this technology. And, the technology remained, very cumbersome in the sense that you had to train it. You have to train a team. You have to have a a budget for consulting work. You had to really dedicate resources to that product. And, obviously, keeping the product inside those large public institution prevent in our opinion, prevents, and is and hinders, the ability for, you know, civil society, associations, organizations, any type of nonprofit or any type of mission driven organization that already, have participation at heart, and they already use methodologies of participation. They already have frameworks of collective decision making, but they don't have a tool for it. And so we thought and the idea is really to if we can make the tool fit their need and, not make it an extra layer of work, not make it a financial burden to to their activity, but really make it something that can help them achieve their goals, then we can hope for a larger adoption and a distribution of the CDM at scale, where different types of organization, can use the the the product.
Yeah. And concerning how we we started working with Taslim, actually, it was a contact of us, clients and friends who, who came from academia, and political science in Geneva, who started working, as a participant, participatory expert, for the state of Geneva and who simply contacted us, asking if we knew about the project, this team, in 02/2019, if we could install it. And we had a look at it. And since the beginning, we do have, one of our our core, core skills in at Octree is, also to to handle Ruby on Rails code, and this team is is based on Ruby on Rails. It's not this easy to find engineers which are fluent with Ruby on Rails, but this was our case and it seems interesting enough that we give it a try. And that was the first SDM platform, in Switzerland. So it was in 02/2019, it was set up. And then, the next, like, three, four years, a lot of different platforms popped up in Switzerland, about eight of the total now. And so some of them are managed by us, and some of them are managed by another actor who is also part of the the decision association. So we can really collaborate together. And I think the the the really like, the switching points in this story is that, as I mentioned in the beginning, we're a tech co op and we're we're really rooted in self organization and distributed governance. And we discovered this team and thought, hey, this looks a little bit like tools like Loomio or other tools that teams can use to make decisions, more collaborative and transparent. And so our hypothesis was, okay, if we really want widespread democracy in society, perhaps we should not focus on, on structures, which are already held accountable to hold these democratic frameworks, such as public institutions, cities, neighborhoods, etcetera. But we should probably investigate how we can, you know, backport civic tech tools to more community oriented structures. And so, basically, that's the work we've been trying to do through Voca is to bridge this gap in the civic tech field, between tools like and classic civic texts, like, you know, citizen lab, console,
And, at the moment, what is possible to do, like, with, with Voca? Is it simplified, like, only in terms of design, like, UX? So you can do the same things that, are doable on the steam or, like, less, less functions. I don't know.
So, basically, when when we say simplifying, we, so I'm gonna just go a little bit into how this team is organized in order for, you know, listeners and and you to understand, like, what what we mean by by, simplify. So this team is structured around participatory spaces, and those participatory spaces are, have a function or a dedicated function like a process or an assembly or a conference. And when you get to the CDIM platform, traditionally, you have access to all those spaces. And then it's inside those spaces that you can activate the different functionalities of the CDIM, which are, you know, to have a vote or proposal or, you know, shared calendars. And so what the switch that we're making is that rather than offering, the entire scope of spaces and the unlimited amount of processes with the unlimited amount of votes that you can run and the unlimited amount of assemblies, which we have seen can be very overwhelming, for for users that, you know, that just doesn't answer the need of a user that just wants to run a participatory process or that wants to have an open governance structure, for its association or its cooperative. So what we did is that we're splitting up those spaces into individual an individual space, and that individual space will answer a specific need. So if you are hoping to run a participatory budget rather than having a platform on which you can run a participatory three or four or five part three budget while you're also running a citizen assembly, while you're also running neighborhood councils, we will only provide you with the space and the part that allows you to run that participatory budget process. And, and maybe you can start to imagine why having all those spaces at once can be very interesting for a city that is, you know, a few million people or a couple of million people city. But for an organization, that's made that just wants to, you know, do an experiment or, you know, or or or have a standardized a process that they take every year. We think and we've seen, that it's just more targeted to their need and less overwhelming in terms of functionalities and options. And maybe, Lucian, you wanna add something on that?
No. Thank you. I I I think that was really well summed up. I think what's what's kind of brilliant with this is that, we also learned a lot from experiments with customers. One one of the people and projects we've been working with is Ruth Chisay from Matic, which is an open source project, which is international. So Mautic is basically a marketing automation software, but which is open source and, which is, managed by a community of contributors worldwide. And they didn't have any tool to organize their community, and to have a clear governance, basically. And so this is a case where typically, the team can really be of use, to a large community, which really needs clarity in order to to to simply function and have clear operations. However, they can't really meet in person because half of their contributors are from India, Africa, The States, UK, etcetera. So, I mean, Desim is perfect for, for this type of use case. And I think, we're at a turning point where we see a lot of, you know, a lot of initiatives and tech co ops, which are still grounded in a country or a city or, you know, a community bound by a space, but you also have a growing number of international decentralized communities which really need tools to organize themselves. So that's that's the interesting take.
And do you have other, case studies, like, that are interesting? This one about Matic is, it's very cool.
Sure.
You you you Just I'm just trying yeah. Go ahead, Michel. No. I think to to in to to frame a bit, the question, since we're trying to kind of design an open SaaS on a digital common, which is the CDIM, There are several design constraints which help us to test our approach. Right? So one of one of these tests is with open source online communities, such as Mautic. But we also tested Voca in other context, which are really different. So we have, a project where we're trying to or where we actually did bridge, civic tech with, the humanitarian fields in Tanzania. And that that was a whole other challenge because people in Tanzania don't even have computers. You know? They all have smartphones. So we needed to enable participation large scale in a country which is, not known for its, you know, democratic maturity, let's say. And, so anonymity plays a large role also in who will participate how. And perhaps, Guillaume, you can you could tell a word about this one. We have another project in Colombia too, which is quite interesting.
Yeah. And then and and yeah. So on on that one, in in Tanzania, the and and it's interesting because they're also trying to solve how to distribute, like, participation and and and tools for participation, in different, regions. So we're working with, with a with a humanitarian organization, based in Norway, and they, are they they have the ambition to use participation to gather better the needs of the populations that are affected by their programs. And so we're running a pilot in Tanzania. And as Lucian said, the constraints, are obviously the lack of of connectivity and and, you know, the the low tech devices. And the fact that even if people have people have smartphones, but they surely don't have a desktop computer or a laptop computer. And they interestingly enough, they also don't have email addresses. And all those platforms like the CDIM are based on the on the login with email. So the first, challenge was to get people on the platform, create an account, but without an email and without a desktop and a laptop and low connectivity. So we, we implemented a chatbot based on WhatsApp. So the participants only use WhatsApp to interact with decision. They do not go on the decision platform. They can go on the decision platform if they if they want if they wish to, but they're not really, going on there because they don't need to. So they they can join processes, through the chatbot. And it's one phone number, one WhatsApp phone number, one WhatsApp profile per process. So they join that process, and then they get then they get send information and and, call to actions. So the call to action can be read some news or it can be write a proposal or vote on proposals, and they interact with the chatbot and their profile in this in the decision instance is just based on their WhatsApp phone number and then anonymized so the so the the organization, the administrators of the platforms don't know which profile is parts they just know that a a profile is participating. They don't know, who that profile is. So that's one case study. And what's on the distributing aspect of it is that the objective of that organization is to be able to implement, this those processes across their different country offices and not keep the administration of it as at the headquarters, you know, with a, like, kind of top down approach, but really have the local offices use the tool, for their participatory needs in their context. And they obviously all all have very different context, but they're all humanitarian ones. So Sub Saharan Africa or, some Asian countries or or a little bit of Central America or The Caribbean is like Haiti or something like that. So that's one of our case study. And then another one, which I can quickly go into, is how we are helping participation professionals, so the people that actually work in the field of participation. So those are, you know, labs or co ops or companies, that have as a customer, a city or government or regional, you know, regional organization that are mandated to run participatory processes. And they've been sometimes doing it for twenty years, you know, running participatory budgets or, citizen assemblies or, you know, all those kinds of of processes. And they're usually also asked by the by the by their by their customer to, you know, provide a digital tool with it, or use some digital component to their process. And what we figured out is that up to today, they have to, manage with a set of different tools. So they're gonna use a survey tool here. Maybe they're gonna have a a web, you know, or like a one a web page to communicate on. Then they're gonna maybe use some other spreadsheet here. It's like they really have no digital tool that is tailored for them and that answers their need and what they are and what they do, on a day to day basis. So we are exploring with two participation, offices here in Switzerland, on how to build, as, a way of using the system that is adapted to them so they can launch a process for their customer where they need it. And they can also this also means that they can add, some value, you know, some some value to their usual practice and also offer a digital solution to their customer. And so they can add, like, a new, practice to the the work that they've been doing, and they can also rely on the tool that is designed with them in mind and not just having to, use whatever whatever they can find.
This made me think about, the call that we had, I don't know, last month when you were talking about this, Tanzan AI project. I mean, I was understanding that, and at a certain point, I was asking. So tell me more about it. Is there a white paper? Because I I thought it was some project related to AI, so this Tanzan AI. And then I, understood that it was Tanzania. And this made me think about, how many misunderstanding can happen between humans. But I I was wondering, this lack of technology, in some way, means also, a lack of knowledge. And they saw how the people, what was their experience related to using Testedium, like, with this, WhatsApp bot? Like, do you had any feedback from them?
Look. I'm I'm to be pretty honest, it's a it's it's quite challenging, for multiple reasons. First of all, as Lucian mentioned, there is the the building the trust, and people ability to share their opinions even if it's the if it even if it's not their if it's it's not the opinion about, you know, the current government or something like that. It's just the opinion about, a humanitarian a humanitarian actor that's helping them. It's just asking them, like, what they what what they feel and what they need. And we're running and we're also running a process on peace and peace building during elections because Tanzania is going through these elections this year in Tanzania, and and there's been a lot of violence. And it's, so so building this trust, even though you tell them it's anonymous and they can share in a country where when people share their political opinion, they might disappear or something might happen to them or, you know, we don't know, is is is the biggest challenge. And then the second challenge, is more on the on the technological one for us is that this is a pilot project. And, you know, we're obviously facing, some some some issues here and there, and sometimes people receive the so there's been there's been a bit of of of of of, of mishaps, but I think this is, like, kind of part of every any type of this project. And then I would say that the third challenge is on training the local teams, the local people that work in the NGO on the ground to build a mindset where they're communicating to the right holders through WhatsApp when they have had the experience of of only communicating back to the NGO and writing reports and, you know, making and it's it's it's like you you have to build a new skill. And so this this takes this takes a a fair amount of of time as well, but, we are overcoming all those challenges, and it's it's getting it's getting, we're getting users. I mean, I I think the platform has, is gaining users every every month, every time the the the engineer people go out go out there and and show the and and invite people to the WhatsApp chatbot. Like, the numbers of the participation are actually quite interesting, and they're they're higher than I would have, imagined for the first pilot because there's also not so much friction. You know? You just you just you just send a WhatsApp message and you participated. So once you build that trust, you you,
like, have a bit, you know, because it takes time to go to all the villages to share the number, and then it doesn't work on someone's phone because they're doing something. And it
it takes a bit of time, but once it's installed, once it's it's functioning, the group that it's installed and functioning for a few weeks, people do participate.
And if if I may add, it's it's quite interesting what you mentioned about how, you know, introducing a tool like Desidiem, actually requires to change in house habits from, let's say the the NGO. We see this also with public administrations, when this is introduced. And I would say this, of course, it's not always easy to manage, but it's almost a success metric because it means that they're they're the new tool actually introduces change in the way people work, relates to citizens, relate to end users, interact and collaborate together. And so, of course, it doesn't work in every city. But in in a lot of cities, we see that dynamics are actually changing in house because there's this new tool. So, yeah, I think it's it's a nice metric to keep change management in mind when introducing a civic tech tool.
I I really like the WhatsApp approach because it's, it's easier for people to participate. Otherwise, there is this sort of cognitive load when you have to use a new tool, and sometimes it's challenging. And usually people just don't participate, maybe. And, and then thinking about numbers, like, how many, I don't know, municipalities, NGOs, or are using now Voca? If you have some numbers, if you
I was on mute. I think, on the decision implementations, I think that I mean, that I'm not you will I don't have this number on top of my head, but it's something around 300 platforms that have been installed, maybe more. I'm I'm not sure. Us at Voca, we, run, like, five municipal platforms in Switzerland. Plus, with Voca, we are we have about another 10 customers that use, the smaller, the smaller version of the CDIM. But, I mean, this VUCA, you know, those simplified processes, and those thing you know, those standalone processes or standalone, these mini DCDs have only been launched, for a few months. So we're still experimenting, but we're getting good good good feedback from the from the from the first customers.
Yeah. And and I'd say it's fair to say that, during the past two years, we've been in this experimentation process because we really acknowledge the fact that civic tech is still an emergent field. And even if you have leading actors that are kind of trying to sell really hard, like Granicus, you know, to public administrations or in mass market products like in The States or or in, let's say, in Northern Hemisphere. We really believe that, things are quite fragile. And perhaps one indicator of this is how fragile they are also democratically in countries, especially like The States, The United States. And, so before when Guillaume was mentioning that where our aim is to simplify the use of this scheme, we're we also have the aim in parallel. And and what we do, on the concrete level is to broaden and deepen the use cases of. So we also build modules around Voca, and this is why, the the chatbot, the WhatsApp chatbot is is one of the modules. But we also have another module around participatory cartography, which is used by cities, but which is also used by, you know, remote remote indigenous tribes in Brazil. So, we do have, like, many use cases, which are kind of starting to build bridges between different contexts where people need to use this. And this is quite an interesting, you know, product design field research, you could say, in civic tech because we it really enables us to find the right balance between specificity and and and, you know, tackle the right features that people need and at the same time have the the right level of simplification for a tool like this.
Yeah. I really like the the modular approach. And, I wonder, like, which modules you already developed and, which other you want to develop? Or
Sure. I mean, we have a lot of oh, sorry. Dion, did you want to go? No? Okay. We we have a lot of specific modules that we did only for one or two clients, but the main modules we support now are three modules. We have the chatbot module, which at the end of the day is actually an open API so that you can actually build interoperability between this team and other civic text. So it's not restricted only to WhatsApp, but it can also be used, you know, Discord, Telegram, etcetera. At least the integration is is is thought in this way and designed in this way. So that's one module, around, let's say, more reaching out to participants. The other module is, which is the participatory cartography module. This one is quite interesting because it enables the, you know, the large large scale gathering of data. And in some context, not only urban, context in the Northern Hemisphere, but let's say for biodiversity preservation, it's really useful to be able to pinpoint on a map large scale, data from participatory sources. And the third module is a module which is really used actually, which is called and, which basically just enables to set a simple set of rules in order to lower unwanted unsolicited, messages and spams on platforms. So it's it's it's designed so that you can't use it to basically censor content, and it preserves as much as possible the the, the freedom of the of the user, which has an account on the platform. But still you can enable certain rules, like to ban certain keywords, like, you know, domain name extensions, for instance, so that it pre filters out certain types of content. So these are the three three modules. And perhaps I mean, the last one is is is really is really a practical use case. But, actually, it offers a really nice testing ground on what limits, can the, you know, ethical frame of a tool like this, maintain, to ensure that, the the the debates stays democratic, that you don't have moderation beforehand, but only reactive moderation. You avoid censorship. So it's it's kind of an interesting use case. And, and for, the interesting part is that, mainly, if you look at the design aspect of civic text, you have two categories of civic text. You have categories, category a of civic tech is, the category that is built on an abstraction of what democracy is like. So you have, you know, processes with steps and perhaps buttons to submit proposals and the grids to show all the proposals like this. And the other approach in civic tech design is about having everything on a map, like, let's say, Machinal. So we have an interactive map, and everybody can participate directly on the map. And so this team, JEO, enables us to test the bridging between these two categories of of designs.
And, now you want to add, anything to Liam? Or
Today is fine. It's okay.
No. I I was wondering. So, because also the cinema has modules. Right? And, but, so the models that are developed for Voca are not compatible for Decidim and vice versa. Right? Or not?
No. They they are compatible with other Decidim versions. Yeah. And we are active members of the Distune community. So our aim is just, I mean, to act as easy entry points to this team and, you know, distributor. Let's say easy access distributor of this team because you can say this team is free software, so it's easy of access. But as long as you don't know how to install a platform, it's not this easy. You know? And and a lot of people which are really concerned with this team are activists, which are already handling a lot of different aspects, and they don't necessarily feel at ease to, you know, spend days installing a design platform. So
Yeah. Wonderful. I I like the fact that these, that the models work on both platforms. And, also, it's very interesting the fact about, about democratic processes, what you say, the abstraction, and the other way of, like, everything on a map. So something, a different way of visualizing maybe problems and, and having maybe a different kind of participation. And, yeah, I wonder, like, yeah, if you have any other models that you would like to develop, but, I don't know. Maybe they are difficult to develop if you are struggling with some problems that you want to I don't know.
Yeah. I mean, I can I can I mean, it's it's too bad we don't have, our, dev on the spot because he has a whole book full of modules that he has, like, imagined is in his mind and he would like to develop? But I can, I can expand a little bit on what we're doing in the term in terms of the distribution, because we're developing modules for that? And it's basically how and so this is part of what we're doing in in in Colombia, but also in the Chatel in in Switzerland. And that's how we are building a a a tiny module that for now we call the generator, that allows, users, you know, participants that to directly connect to a decision platform and generate a process or or an assembly and and generate, like, another smaller decision platform on their own without having to request, so you can build, like, a a a request access so they so only an admin can do it. But the point is that you don't you shouldn't be you shouldn't have to ask the admin, and you can generate this standalone from an existing platform and just add it to the URL. And so for us that we're working on that one to solve the because so it all started in this with our customer in, where where they wanted to, have the associations, the organizations, the communities of the city have their own. But the uptake of that has been limited because organizations just feel that they're putting some work to advertise on another website from the city because they don't feel like it's their website. They don't feel like it's their decidim. It is the colors of the city, the logo of the city everywhere. And so what we what we did and and later enhanced in Cali, in Colombia with with a partner, is that now the the association, the group, the communities from the main platform launch their own private space, which is which in which they can, you know, change the color at their logo. But they don't need to, you know, ask for from us or from the city or from anyone to do it. They just they just fill a form and and generate that that that mini standalone,
parts of the rest space. So that's the module we're working on right now. And for now, it's just a generator, but maybe it'll have a better name soon. And, if Lucien want to add anything?
Or I guess there's a lot to say, but, basically, one of the I I'd say one of the challenges this could help tackle is to bridge, top bottom participation, such as the ones already performed by public administrations and bottom up admin bottom up participation, such as, the ones already done everywhere by associations and, social workers. So the idea is to find the right balance between these two modes so that they can trust each other and coexist with enough autonomy.
Okay. And, would you like to share, maybe something related to your personal life, like, I don't know, from your childhood. Where did you grow up? What are your hobbies? What what were your
I'm trying to share so as, so just to, I'm, I live in I live in, I live in Switzerland now. I live in, in, the mountains of Switzerland. I don't live, I I don't live where Oaktree is based, but I grew up in, in France, in Paris. And I would say that, personally, I'm I'm I'm, I I give a lot of energy, and I put my my my, you know, what I can for for this project because I I do think that, a project a project like like the CGM is a tool if if it if it becomes if if we can, you know, if it can be uptake by community associations, all those groups that are constantly struggling, in the defense of of their rights, in the defense of what whatever thing they're fighting for. I think it's a project that can help structure and build agency towards whoever they are, in in a, you know, in in a position and they're trying to and and so it for me, it's a tool that help help communities, helps us build agency in order for us to achieve better because we can use some of the tools, like, you know, the the the archiving, processes, which which seems, and it's a difficult one because for all the people that are doing so much, telling them that they also need to, you know, spend time archiving seems terrible. But, and I but but if we can make but this this archiving process, the fact that we have everything noted down, the fact that we can trace, we can have traceability of the actions taken, we have transparency on the decision making progress process that allows us to have more agency in negotiating and in pushing back against, you know, whichever state or, corporate or, whatever, you know, power that, we have to gain back control on.
That that's a reference to, Cheeto. How do they call them? So so that was way outside just childhood, but I guess, no. What I can say is I was born in San Francisco, but I grew up in Switzerland. And, I wasn't at all a fan of technology since I'm somewhat, really, actually. But I didn't start to work with with technology until, design school where I figured out that there was really a strong lack of designers and technology. And by designers, I mean, you know, people who can defend a critical viewpoint and not just design shiny new objects to to buy. And I I feel like the intersection of activism, design, and civic tech, particularly around the the notion of digital commons and and, you know, alternatives to, let's say, capitalism or standard capitalism is quite an interesting place to to question a lot of different aspects of society. And so I I'm pretty grateful that our work at least enables us to ask these questions, first of all, for ourselves and to to have these discussions with civic tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs and researchers, like like yourself. So thank you for having us.
Thank you. Thank you. It's always nice to talk about this kind of topics, because, sometimes it's hard also in outside outside to talk about civic tech. People don't really know what is. And, and I think you have to leave soon, or you have, some other minutes for another question. That is actually if you have any message for the people in the civic tech space, people that are exploring, finding new solutions, experimenting. So so like you.
Okay. I'll give one quick message, and then I'll leave it to Lucian. But my quick message is that, in this in this space, I think I think there's so many areas of collaboration, so many things, so many projects that we can work on together, building bridges. And, yeah, we we are we are you know, I'm always I mean, I'm on the partnership side, and I always want to figure out ways to to to partner, and to collaborate, with, with with other organizations, specific tech space, overall.
And my my final thought would be that, with all the the talks going around, AI, let's not forget that governance is made by humans and that AI governance is a real subject. And for that, I I bet we could organize an assembly on a decision platform powered by Voca. But, concretely, let's not forget that, a, we're not gonna automate governance, out of humans. I mean, humans need to to collaborate and to to have transparent, accountable mechanism in order to to ensure, a safe society for all. So, yeah, we're we're not gonna out outsmart and, you know, outtech ourselves, out of governance. We we need to tackle these issues on the human side.
Yeah. I'm also quite scared, by the black box, that, could maybe better than many politicians that we have now, but only maybe in the short term. And in the long term, I will be very worried about possible outcomes. So thank you both.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. And I'm actually curious to try work out to see how it works.
Sure.
Yeah. We can we can book another call if you want. Absolutely.
