TechWeek Tauranga workshops explore answers to future challenges

Could the world in the future be run entirely by one big government? Or by hyper-local community groups?

These were the types of questions posed at a series of future-focused workshops in Tauranga to participants who were asked to brainstorm innovative ideas of how they would cope in challenging future worlds.

The GrowPlenty workshops held on Monday and yesterdaywere part of the week-long TechWeek Tauranga festival run by the Venture Centre at the Basestation on Durham St.

About 170 participants, including students from local colleges and a number of experts, came together to brainstorm possible solutions to challenges that could be faced in four imaginary future worlds.

The participants worked with experts, mentors and people already working on new technologies, and were broken into four groups, each looking at an imaginary future world.

The imaginary futures were: One where the government controlled everything; one where everything was privatised and controlled by business; another that was community-run on a hyper-local level; and a shared world or service-driven model like Uber.

Each group was asked to solve four key issues in their imaginary futures: How they would generate energy; care for the earth, air and water; what they would grow; and how production and distribution systems would work in their world.

Katikati College student Caleb MacMillan, 15, who participated in the small world group, said he thoroughly enjoyed the experience and had learned a lot.

"I now know that there are lots of people already planning for a better future for us, and we all can play a key role in decision-making in our local and global community," he said.

Caleb said he would be happiest living in the world where people shared what resources they had and everyone had a say in how things were run.

Venture Centre co-founder Pascale Hyboud-Peron said the GrowPlenty workshops had brought together youth, small business owners, startup founders, and several experts.

Hyboud-Peron said many people feared what the future may hold.

"But there was nothing to fear if people started to talk about the challenges they may face, started to plan now and share ideas about how they could cope with those challenges."