Stories & Podcasts

  • Sherryn Irvine

    Sherryn Irvine

    Sherryn is the ICT Industry Project Coordinator for UCOL. Sherryn provides some great insights on drawing skills from previous roles to take into a future career. We also talk about self-confidence and working on building skills outside of the purely technical – such as soft skills of building relationships and communication.

  • Guy Phillips

    Guy Phillips

    Guy is ex-military, running a VC-funded startup Bolster tracking shipping containers around the world. NZ is heavily reliant on imports and exports. Bolster’s tech helps with that. Also talks about friendships and finding a startup cofounder.

  • Aaron Fulton

    Aaron Fulton

    Aaron studied Food Technology at Massey, but loved tech more. He was employee number one at Levno and was there as the company grew to 50 people. He’s done consulting, built his own Radar Electronics company, and had some interesting challenges working for the Vet Association doing CRM and Beta Solutions supporting their electronics / hardware…

  • Mark Easton

    Mark Easton

    Mark from Nodero talks about entrepreneurship, starting your own company (“the hardest part of any business is making sales”), and his career in tech working in some of the big-name companies locally.

  • Patricia Virgen

    Patricia Virgen

    Patricia is wrapping up an 11-month internship. We discuss Patricia’s experience studying software engineering, teaching students, and the real world.

  • Michael Davis

    Michael Davis

    Learn about Michael‘s journey from leading a team as a Chief Technology Officer to challenging himself further, going out on his own and becoming an independent game developer

  • Tiger Fu

    Meet Tiger, a Chinese national who moved to New Zealand seven years ago to be closer to his mum. Around the time he moved was when Tiger’s interest in IT increased, and he decided to make a career from it. “No one else in my family has worked in the IT industry, but I loved…

  • Tech is thriving in the Manawatū

    In the fast-moving tech world, working 14 years for one company is a pretty long time. But Craig Webb of Integration Technologies Ltd (ITL) wouldn’t have it any other way. A born and bred Palmerston North lad, he’s proud to be part of a Manawatū company that’s been quietly developing world-leading tech for 25 years. Someone else…

  • The perfect place to start a career

    Originally from Belgium and then Napier, Max first moved to Palmerston North in 2012 to study. “It’s a great student city – my first year was one of the best of my life, I met so many cool people.” He worked here for a few years, but relocated to Tauranga so he could stay with…

  • Using tech to plant trees

    Using tech to plant trees

    M-Planter identified that the industry was in great need of improvement, and have designed machinery that has revolutionised the way trees can be planted, through custom planting equipment which can be fitted to a wide range of excavators. The machines can efficiently plant a range of tree species at several plants per minute. Having accomplished…

  • Theresa Byrne finds her place in the IT sector

    Theresa Byrne finds her place in the IT sector

    When Theresa Byrne finished high school, she wasn’t sure what career path to follow, so she opted to take a gap year, and a full-time job at the meat works. Fast forward to today, and she’s thriving in her role as a Digital Business Analyst at Te Whatu Ora MidCentral in Palmerston North. Based in…

  • Inspiring young minds at Girls High

    Inspiring young minds at Girls High

    Nicola King has been teaching Technology at Palmerston North Girls’ High School for nearly 23 years. With her zest for learning, she’s still just as excited about her subject as when she began. Today, she’s Head of Digital Technologies. That means she leads the development, delivery and evaluation of the New Zealand curriculum across the…

  • Keeping the World fueled up – from Palmy

    Keeping the World fueled up – from Palmy

    Chris Deere, Managing Director describes their Enabler© Forecourt Controller as “the brains” of the service station. It’s essentially a complex translation device, exchanging data and communicating with other devices onsite. It tells the attendant how much petrol is in the fuel tanks below the forecourt and controls the price signs and the fuel pump. Without…

  • Andy Chilton on a career in tech

    Andy Chilton on a career in tech

    Originally from the United Kingdom, Andy Chilton was 14 years old when he discovered the exciting world of tech. He opted into a computing class, even though he didn’t have a computer. Then two friends piqued his interest in programming. One showed him how to use a programming language called Basic. The other coded his…

  • Kiwi tech changing global agriculture

    It all began in 2007 with an idea and two Massey University graduates in a farmhouse in Colyton. Fifteen years later, seven Kiwi software engineers are now working for global irrigation and infrastructure company Lindsay Corporation from its new offices in Palmerston North… Full Story

  • Digits volunteer helping reduce the digital divide

    Digits volunteer helping reduce the digital divide

    Roland started volunteering for the charitable trust in 2019 after seeing a callout for helpers in Volunteer Central’s newsletter. “My motivation is that kids literally can’t get their schoolwork done without a laptop and an internet connection now,” says Roland, “it’s not a level playing field.” Roland feels a “frustrated sadness” about the digital divide…

  • Make Radar Simple: cutting edge mm radar from Radar IQ

    Make Radar Simple: cutting edge mm radar from Radar IQ

    In 2018, Beta Solutions Engineers Aaron Fulton and Matt van der Werff founded RadarIQ. Their mission? “Make radar simple,” says Aaron. The pair discovered that radars already on the market produce complex data that takes a lot of processing to make sense of. So, they set out to design a user-friendly sensor for embedded applications…

  • Tales from a Security Operations Centre

    Dr Bryce Antony is a senior cyber security engineer for Advantage. He gave a look behind the scenes of Advantage’s security operations centre Full story by NZ Herald

  • From university exams to a full time job at Levno

    From university exams to a full time job at Levno

    27-year-old Gray Hockley describes herself as “a bit of a tech geek”. A gamer from a young age, she’s always enjoyed staying up with the latest developments in technology whether it’s new virtual reality headsets or robots. Despite her keen interest in all things technological, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her…

  • Studying IT

    Emma Glendinning studied IT at UCOL and it changed her life. Study fitted around small kids and re-entering the work force. She now has a project manager job at Yorb. Short video

  • Advantage talks Managed Security in NZ

    “Criminal groups and ransomware cartels like Conti, REvil and Darkside have sprung up from a cybercrime business ecosystem, becoming more centralised and more reliant on the trade of access, information and services. These kinds of issues are problematic, but there is good news – organisations are now keenly aware of the risks of attacks to…

  • Massey lab encourages innovative students

    The idea of the lab is to create a pipeline of innovative students and staff. Full story here Manawatu Standard

  • Beta Solutions: Glowworm LED Bike Lighting solution

    BetaSolutions did the hardware, firmware and more for a clever LED bike light and Powerbank with bluetooth and mobile phone app. They solved some tricky problems around getting USB-C to work with multiple chargers, heat and power management and more. Full Story

  • Trio: An enjoyable and purpose-driven workplace

    Dynamic. Growing. Evolving. These are the three words Nick Crossman uses to describe the tech industry in the Manawatū, and he would know, having worked in this space over the past decade. Tucked down the northern end of Victoria Avenue, Palmerston North is a team of talented developers responsible for many of the apps, websites…

  • Beta Solutions: Building from the ground up

    Beta Solutions was started by two friends working in a garage sleep out. They met at Massey studying Mechatronics. A decade later, they are am important part of the local tech industry, employing many more people and helping local and national clients turn their product ideas into reality. Beta specialises in electronic product design and…

  • Levno: Students to employees

    How students and Callaghan Innovation fund help Levno build their product. The video gives a peek inside the company offices, its people and tools. Watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6ATnm2Zpuo

  • Stock Trim and Times-7: complex supply chains

    Projects often take two to three years from proof of concept to global deployment, but clients do not order until closer to their installation date. Some components have 28 week lead times. If one item is missing, it holds up the entire assembly line. Stock Trim helped solve the problem: https://www.stocktrim.com/blog/times-7-stocktrim-customer-story

  • Deptive: Live Well

    Deptive looked at their company values to decide what it means to them to “live well”. …we are setting out to decide on what living well really means to us. It could have major implications for the company, potentially changing how we measure success, invest in people and set our goals for the future.

  • Objective builds world class development centre

    Objective’s brand new, state of the art building provides teams with cross-collaboration opportunities that lay the foundation for innovation and outstanding software. It combines the teams for three products: Trapeze, Alpha and GoGet working towards a streamlined building consent process.