WellyForge - 3rd Sept 2025

Forging a dynamic, vibrant, science & city innovation culture

Author

Ralph Highnam
September 03, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes

Hello Everyone:

Rather than formal tickets, we’re going to try and just use calendar invites for the next events, so please do click away to accept so we can manage numbers:

[Invite:WellyForge4, Sept 17th at 7pm] - main talks from Matt Hayter, founder of Projectworks who won the HITECH Award for Emerging Company, and Dave Shoemack from Goodnature who won the Supreme Award at the Gold Awards along with short talks from Innovation Award winners Uunafit and two others.

The Ecosystem Map continues developing, loved learning about “reveal” this week and various companies in the Hutt, thanks Patrick McKibbin.

Technology Investment Network have released their investment report covering 2024. You can download the full report (page 41 has an comprehensive NZ investor directory). It’s clear from their data that investment and revenues are growing as the tech industry in NZ matures. The importance of the industry is captured for me in this graph showing the overall export revenue from various sectors, along with the knowledge that the average wage in the tech sector is far, far higher than the other sectors:

Additionally, they say that in 2024, $78m of investment went into tech companies in Wellington (13% of the total NZ investment), and the sector generated some $4.7Bn of revenue, showing 9.7% growth, and we had 32 of the firms in their top 200 tech firms.

Of the events below, please particularly note these deadlines:

Rule #1 - Celebrate the Wins

And recent media coverage of local interest:

Rule #2 - Meet the Locals

Wed Sept 3rd, 5.30-7pm, “The Future of Insurance” by Jonathan Boston from Vic at Critical Signals on Taranaki

Thu Sept 4th, 5.30pm, “The Beauty of Uncertainty”, inaugural lecture by Prof Ivy Liu of the Maths & Stats department at Victoria

Tue Sept 9th, 12-4pm, “Governing the Agentic AI Future”, at IBM TechXchange Workshop at the Botanical Gardens.

Tue Sept 9th, 5.30-7.30pm, Chiasma Wellington workshop on career catalysts with Vic students. Can you offer a summer internship? Email: [email protected].

Wed Sept 10th, 10-11am, “Our National Data Centre Infrastructure”, NZ Tech Report Launch at EY on Bowen St,

Wed Sept 10th, 1pm, “From Sample to Intelligence”, ONLINE, how innovation in eDNA typing and data science is changing biodiversity monitoring. This is being run by EPI and includes talks by Shaun Wilkinson of Wilderlab (started in Miramar) and Petra Muellner of EPI.

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, 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!)

Wed Sept 17th, 7pm - [Invite:WellyForge4] - Matt Hayter of Projectworks, Dave Shoemack of Goodnature, Viv Baartman of Uunafit and two short talks TBC.

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.

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

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

  • Govt puts $1m extra into the NZ Product Accelerator. To be honest, I’d never heard of the NZ Product Accelerator. Looks like they aim to connect up industry with the relevant science teams, and the claimed returns to NZ look substantial - take a look!

  • Peter Gluckman’s University Advisory Group has put out it’s second report. From what I can tell, there’s to be a new Tertiary Education Strategy with a focus on economic growth, and rather than academics being incentivized on papers, there will be greater weighting towards academics working with industry (did I mention that Vic has the biggest AI & data group in NZ?).

Rule #4 - Your Local Community Index

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