Be creative and express yourself! That was what students and young people in South Auckland were told during a special New Zealand Tech Week event featuring live demonstrations of the latest in emerging tech including AI interviews, Holobox and fogscreen projections.
The Cause Collective event themed, "Bringing South Auckland to the Tech World", came with a powerful message for young minds: the future is not just in Silicon Valley it's also in your hands.
It connected high school students, young people and community leaders with guest speakers from major tech companies including Apple, Spark, Moa Thought, DNA Digital and Ideas at Work.
With interactive displays showcasing the endless possibilities when technology intersects with culture and purpose.
Photo: Nick Monro
Creative lead Muliagatele Danny "Brotha D" Leaoasavai'i said introducing young Maori and Pacific students, with unique styles of learning, to different kinds of technology is crucial.
"Creating awareness and exposing our young people to the different type of technology that we have here today, I think is really important.
"Our young people need to understand technology isn't just about sitting in front of a computer or cybersecurity or IT," Brotha D said.
"There's a lot of different aspects of technology, and there's a lot of creative technology as well. And for us, Maori and Pasifika, our brain leads more to the creative side."
He said that is what spawned the idea of gathering stakeholders with a creative approach to technology.
"I called it the South Auckland to the Tech World because I really wanted to, as a lot of people know, I always fly the flag of South Auckland everywhere I go. And you know, this is a great industry to be flying a flag in," Brotha D said.
Graphic designer Mataafa Pio Mulipola said he saw a lot of youth come through the doors who left with a sense of direction.
"They might not know what they're doing with their careers, you know, they might not know what's possible in the tech space," Mataafa said.
"So they do a bit of animation, bit of graphic, bit of photography and things like that. And then they're able to find what strengths they have, and then they can go off and maybe do further study, or even create their own ideas"
Photo: Nick Monro
Former Pakuranga student DJ Taivairanga completed the cause collective tech course and expressed his enthusiasm to pursue his passion further.
"At first I thought it was just designing as a foundation. But then slowly, I started really learning more about graphic designing and like, how can sort of pursue that and it just slowly became my passion," Taivairanga said.
"It doesn't matter what people think...just like, express your mind," he said.
Papatoetoe High School students Rishka Chand and Eshana Parapilly-Bijo were really excited to attend.
Chand said she's inspired to pursue a career in cloud architecture.
"When I grow up, I want to be a cloud architect, where I want to design web pages and I want to start coding and things like that, which I think would be very beneficial for me," Chand said.
Photo: Nick Monro
Parapilly-Bijo said after attending tech week she is open to other opportunities.
"I might actually start looking into tech at this point because this is very, I don't know, like inspirational maybe.
"There aren't many people who get this opportunity," Eshana Parapilly-Bijo said.
Tech Week, Aotearoa's largest technology and innovation celebrations, ran from 19-25 May with events in 18 regions.
