About NZ Tech Rally

Our mission

We provide inclusive spaces for the NZ Aotearoa’s tech practitioners community to connect, grow and celebrate together.

NZ Tech Rally does this by:

  • Showcasing NZ ingenuity in software building.

  • Providing opportunities to grow our community’s network and impact.

  • Creating safe, inclusive, accessible and diverse educational content.

  • Sharing Kiwi adaptation of good software practices and emerging technologies.

  • Featuring diverse and NZ based speakers at all our conferences.

Our values

Operate with integrity

We lead with honesty, respect and accountability in how we work with our attendees, sponsors, vendors, instructors, speakers, crew, and volunteers.

Community-first

People and community will always come before hype, growth or prestige.

Inclusive by design

We intentionally create NZ Tech Rally spaces where more people across Aotearoa tech can feel seen, welcomed and reflected.

Excellence in execution

We care deeply about creating welcoming, thoughtful and exceptionally well-run experiences for every person who attends any NZ Tech Rally events.

  • NZ Tech Rally is a grassroots community run by and for tech practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand. We run free in-person meetups in Wellington Central, professional development workshops, and an NZ Tech Rally conference for everyone who builds software: engineers, testers, designers, product people and more.

    Everything we do is run by the Tech Rally crew and volunteers. NZ Tech Rally Ltd is the company behind all our community events and operations, and it’s owned by our Co-Founder and Director, Camy Bhandari, who runs the day-to-day business.

  • NZ Tech Rally started as a great idea in Camy Bhandari’s head back in 2022, after she successfully organised her first NZTestingConf. In August 2022, Camy approached Prae Songprasit to start an organisation together that would bring local tech practitioners together and serve as a great professional development platform outside our day jobs. They refined the idea and landed on a conference that unites all areas of building great software. Aaron Hodder joined them in early 2023, and the rest is history.

    The company was officially registered in early 2023, and our first edition was held at Victoria University’s Pipitea Wellington campus on 7 July 2023. Together, they went on to organise the second edition of NZTestingConf in 2024 and the second edition of NZ Tech Rally in May 2025.

  • After a decade working for NZ employers, Camy was frustrated by the stark underrepresentation of women, and women of colour in particular, in the NZ tech industry, especially in software engineering. She grew up in a highly patriarchal culture in North India, then built most of her tech career in NZ without many diverse role models who shared a similar background.

    She was also frustrated that the majority of NZ employers didn’t spend any money or time on their employees’ personal development. This was especially true at individual contributor level. At the time, Camy was a senior IC who had worked her way through most NZ banks and reached the top of her expertise but didn’t want to move into a leadership or management role. Prae and Aaron were both team leads and managers, when they first met Camy.

    So together they envisioned a community/organisation where diversity, equity and inclusion were baked into the structure and simply a given. A place outside the borders of your day job where you would meet people working in tech from all different backgrounds, native languages, cultures, abilities and genders, united by their love of building great software and unique values of Aotearoa New Zealand.

    Right from the start, our founding team was also highly aware that this had to be a community platform, uniquely Kiwi and free of salesy, pushy marketing, sponsor and investor influence. NZ Tech Rally was started from $0 in 2022, as bootstrapped as they come, and to this day remains fully bootstrapped and free of debt and of any influence from sponsors and investors. This is one of the reasons Camy continues to hold the majority of the company shares. It gives her the power to say ‘No’ quickly to business partners, sponsors and vendors who don’t align with Tech Rally’s values. This also enables her and the crew to protect the integrity of the Tech Rally attendee experience rather than diluting it with sales pitches.

  • Camy Bhandari, our Co-Founder and Director, runs the company.

    Camy, Prae and Aaron are the founding team but Camy owns all of the company shares and is the sole Director for the company.

  • Our community and all our events are run by the Tech Rally crew and volunteers. Our crew changes a little each year, but most of our core crew stays the same, and they are the biggest drivers behind our events.

    Our 2027 crew:

    Our events also rely on volunteers who give their time to make each one happen.

  • NZ Tech Rally is for tech practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand, meaning anyone who builds great software across the whole delivery team: engineers, testers and QAs, product managers, designers and UX, security, data and tech leaders.

    We have a big focus on human-centred tech, so if you care about building technology that works well for the people who use it, you’ll feel at home with us.

    We’re especially keen to support local Kiwi practitioners, first-generation migrants, women and non-binary people in tech, and cross-functional teams. Everyone is welcome, whatever your background, culture, language or ability.

  • While we run many free events throughout the year, almost all of our revenue is raised through our annual NZ Tech Rally conference, which also includes paid professional development workshops.

    We also raise money through conference sponsorships.

  • Joining is easy, and it won’t cost you a cent. Our community meetups are absolutely free and run in person in Wellington Central, so just pop by when you can. You can also follow us on LinkedIn or sign up to our newsletter to hear what’s coming up.

    And no, we don’t do subscriptions. Joining a local community shouldn’t cost you anything, and we know there’s an entire generation with subscription fatigue, so we’ve never had, and likely never will have, a subscription or membership model.

    If you’d like to support us, we’d be eternally grateful if you came along to our NZ Tech Rally conference and bought a ticket.

  • Yes, you heard that right. We are famously known for paying all our speakers and crew for all our paid events.

    Here is what our 2027 compensation looks like:
    Speaker fee - $500 NZD + GST
    Workshop instructor fee - $1000 NZD + GST (for a half day workshop)
    Track Leads - $500 NZD + GST

    We also pay all our long term staff.

    We do not pay our volunteers but we offer travel compensation for up to $25 for the conference day.

  • There are a few easy ways to stay in the loop, and you can pick whatever suits you.

    Our newsletter is the best way to hear what’s coming up, from conference news to workshop announcements. Scroll to the bottom of this page to sign up.

    You can also follow us on LinkedIn, where we share updates, speaker announcements and community highlights.

    If you’d like to see what’s on locally, our meetup calendar lists every upcoming free Wellington Central meetup, so you can pop by when it suits you. And if you can’t make it in person, our YouTube channel has recordings of past talks to watch in your own time.

    Got a question or want to get in touch? Just drop us a line at info@nztechrally.nz. We’d love to hear from you.

Meet our 2027 crew