WellyForge - 10th Sept 2025

Forging a dynamic, vibrant, science & city innovation culture

Author

Ralph Highnam
September 10, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes

Hello Everyone:

The full WellyForge4 line-up is out, with award-winning Matt Hayter of Projectworks, Dave Shoemack of Goodnature and Viv Baartman, Uunafit (custom-made clothing) being joined by Jo Struthers, Navigater (legal start-up), and Roydon Goldstack, Victoria Uni (PhD AI to create “emotional human characters”). You can either get formal tickets via Humanitix or you can accept this calendar [Invite:WellyForge4, Sept 17th at 7pm] - we are close to capacity! Thank you to Diana Minnee and Astronort for sponsoring.

Tonight (Weds 10th Sept) 5.30pm is the WCC Mayoral “Debate for Business” live on The Post - what will they say about innovation? Upper Hutt Mayors are talking at 5pm.

Of the events listed, please particularly note these deadlines:

Rule #1 - Celebrate the Wins

And recent media coverage of local interest:

  • “Government town rhetoric failing city” [Post], Wellington Chamber of Commerce coming out with a pre-election report urging WCC to embrace it’s private sector, including “targetted investment into innovation”

  • “Green light economy” [Scoop] the Wellington Chamber of Commerce’s press release, including noting we should be “the Innovation Capital”, you can find the complete report here.

  • “My Wellington” in the Post by Tim Brown (current WCC council and formerly Infratil, Wellington Airport), has this quote in it: “The future of Wellington depends on it being a place young, talented people want to live. We have great universities but we have to retain the graduates. That requires a vibrant business sector providing interesting well-paid jobs and affordable housing. In my day as mayor I'd get university and business leaders to put forward plans for creating employment opportunities. The council has no real plan to grow employment and only weak connections with the universities and businesses.” - we can fix that WellyForge!

Rule #2 - Meet the Locals

Wed Sept 10th, 5pm, Upper Hutt Mayor Candidates talking to the business community

Wed Sept 10th, 5.30-7pm, “Space: What is Our Place in the Cosmos?” at the Southern Cross, this is a rebirth of Cafe Scientifique from Victoria. Great to see this back. Speakers are Dr Tim Corballis, Dr Yvetter Perrot.

Fri Sept 12th, 8.30-12, “Supercharge your Business Productivity with AI”, Rutherford House with Serge van Dam and Dascha Cooper

Fri Sept 12th, 1-3pm, “How to build a unicorn” with Manish Muralidhar (Phase One, early leadership team at Canva), Level 12, Rutherford House, run by Taiawa & Ministry of Awesome.

Fri Sept 12th, 4-5.30pm, “AI Safety and Alignment: Research Agendas and Organizations” by Hanna Betts at Rutherford House as part of the AI & Society Series at Victoria

Wed Sept 17th, 5pm, Hutt City Mayor Candidates talking to the business community, hopefully the Gracefield site comes up as a topic

Wed Sept 17th, 4.30-6.30pm Angel HQ AGM & Members meeting (member only, so join!)

Thu Sept 18th, 5-7pm, “Summer of Tech, Greet & Meet”, register asap to meet with the region’s future talent.

Thu Sept 18th, 5-7pm, Wellington AI Agent Meetup

Thu Sept 18th, 6-9pm, , TEQ Talk run by the Visual Effects Society and Visual Effects Professional Guild, being hosted at Vic. “TEQ Talks are about sparking cross-industry conversations and celebrating Aotearoa’s innovation edge”. Speakers are all Wellington based - 37Degrees Studio, Doze Animation Lab, Vic, and PikPok.

Sat Sept 20th, 11am-12, “Art & AI: Brit Bunkley in Conversation with Megan Dunn” at the National Library, Bunkley is a artist and filmmaker.

Mon Sept 22nd, 8.30-12.30pm, “The Power of Ambition - Elevate your Tech Team” with David Hansen at Level 12, Rutherford House organized by Taiawa & Vic.

Mon Sept 22nd, 5-7pm, “Fuel your Startup’s Ambition” with David Hansen, Level 12 Rutherford House, organized by Taiawa & Vic.

Thu Sept 25th, 7-8pm, “Earthquakes on the Alpine Fault” by Prof John Townend in the Old Govt Buildings at Vic. (Btw, I’m fascinated by these talks because of the quakes and the science, but also the tech behind the computing).

Thu-Sat, Sept 25-27th, NZ Game Developers Conference 2025 at Takina, celebration of NZ’s gaming industry

Tue Oct 7th, 8.30-10.00am, Sustainable Business Network. Victoria and the MacDiarmid Institute are co-hosting a network meeting at the Marae at Victoria

Thu Oct 9th, 5-8.30pm, Startup World Cup, NZ Final hosted in Kapiti - apply via CreativeHQ by 5th September

Fri-Sun, Oct 10-12th, Startup Weekend Wellington at Rutherford House

Thu Oct 16th, 8.30am-6pm, AI for Adults: A Mind-blowing Exploration for Tech Companies, Level 12, Rutherford House, organized by Taiawa & Vic.

Fri-Mon, Oct 24th-28th, POWER UP! Game Jam for Women, a virtual event but being run out of Wellington by XEquals based on Cuba.

Wed, Oct 29th, 6.15pm, Invite:WellyForge5 (hmm, close to Halloween)

Thu-Sat, Nov 6-8th, Kawaiicon 2025, at the Michael Fowler Center, hacker paradise.

Mon-Wed, Nov 10-13th, ICDE (International Council for Open & Distance Education) is being hosted at Takina with AI a major focus

Mon-Sun, Nov 17-23rd, KohaCon25, conference for the world’s open source library system (Koha).

Mon-Fri, Nov 17th-21st, Pacific Rim International Conference on AI (PRICAI) is being held at Takina with plenty of input from the AI people at Victoria

Wed-Fri, Nov 19th-21st, Synbio (synthetic biology) is at Te Papa, organized by Mark Calcott

Fri Nov 21st, 6pm. Wellington Regional Business Excellence Awards 2025 in Upper Hutt, apply by 12th Sept

Fri-Sun Nov 21-23rd, Kiwi PyCon (Python!) at Shed 6

Recurring Events:

The Atom at Victoria is open for any unfunded Founders (Students, Early Stage, Idea Stage) and is run by Entrepreneur in Residence, Adiraj Gupta - Email [email protected] , or join the Facebook community.

Reminders:

Rule #3 - Understand the Wider Environment

  • NZ Tech have issued their 2024 Key Metrics Report, this shows Wellington with some 16,599 people working in tech (3,803 hi-tech, 12,796 ICT) and the number of tech firms dipping 5% or so over the last couple of years.

  • Dealroom and NZ Growth Capital Partners Tech Ecosystem Report 2025, this is interesting as it says 77% of the NZ$129B of value from tech has been from three companies - Xero, FNZ (both Wellington) and Rocket Lab, the tech industry is still growing fast - of other unicorns, Weta & TradeMe are both in Wellington. Pg 14 shows how VC funding has gone more to Auckland last few years.

  • Both those reports and the Wellington Chamber of Commerce one are important, but someone has to marry them all up to give us the full picture!!

Reminders:

Rule #4 - Your Local Community Index

WellyForge