A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
A new addition to the Tairawhiti economy and the development of our people, entrepreneurship and our potential was launched yesterday with the opening of co-working centre Launch! — a digitally-enabled space upstairs in the harbour-side Works building which aims to allow start-up businesses to connect, collaborate and hopefully grow quickly.
It followed a weekend of intense digital innovation and collaboration in a 48-hour hackathon, where eight Maori export companies put forward business challenges to some of the country’s top tech talent. The inaugural Hack Tairawhiti event — led by NZ Trade and Enterprise and T3W, a group of global Maori tech companies — attracted 80 developers from outside the region as well as representatives from Microsoft and Amazon.
A two-day headline event for the national Techweek’18 was opened in Auckland yesterday by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appearing as a hologram, before Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck started a line-up of inspirational speakers with his story — “from building a rocket prototype in a Parnell basement to launching one into space from the first place in the world to see the sun”.
The strong desire of people in this region to foster technology uptake and innovation for business success was exemplified in the Gigatown competition of 2013/14, where a huge effort by many saw Gisborne nearly earn the right to be the country’s first city to receive gigabit broadband connectivity. TaiTech Trust was a key contributor and has led digital skills development and technology advocacy here over many years, including running large and successful conferences.
This is the first time Tairawhiti has participated in the national Techweek, which has been run since 2012. A line-up of activities organised by Activate Tairawhiti includes our own Rocket Lab presentation tonight at the Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club.
