Convince your manager template

Highlight how attending NZ Tech Rally can benefit your career and your employer.

Subject: Request for approval and budget to attend NZ Tech Rally 2026

Dear [Manager/Approver],

I would like to request for your approval and financial assistance to attend NZ Tech Rally 2026 in-person.

Date: Friday, 15th June 2026
Time: 8.00am to 5.00pm
Venue: TĀKINA, 50 Cable Street, Wellington, NZ

NZ Tech Rally is one of the few truly inclusive, multi-disciplinary, multi-track tech conferences in Aotearoa. It places a strong emphasis on local voices, with most speakers coming from New Zealand-based companies. It’s a rare chance for our whole software team — across Product, Engineering, and Management — to attend and learn together.

The event is focused on uplifting and showcasing the talent within the Aotearoa software community. The sessions are grounded in real-world experiences from New Zealand teams, making the lessons directly relevant to how we work.

The organisers are also behind some of the most physically accessible software events in the country, including NZTestingConf. Their values closely align with ours — community-focused, inclusive, and practical.

Why this year’s content will be great for our company

This year’s NZ Tech Rally event features 3 keynote talks and 16 talks across four dedicated tracks:

  1. Engineering & Platforms

  2. Product, Design & UX

  3. Software Testing & Quality

  4. AI, Data & Ethics

The content is designed to reflect real-world challenges and practices. Although the speaker lineup hasn’t been announced yet, NZ Tech Rally is known for prioritising diverse, experienced speakers — most of whom work at New Zealand-based companies solving problems similar to ours.

Attending will be a great chance to:

  • Stay up to date with trends, tools, and practices across our local software industry

  • Learn from a broad range of roles beyond my own area

  • Bring back ideas and insights we can apply to our organisation

  • Connect with hundreds of peers from all over Aotearoa and learn more about how they are solving similar challenges to ours.

NZ Tech Rally also offers a range of career-building opportunities. The 2025 event included free CV reviews, mentor–mentee speed matching, and the chance to get a professional LinkedIn headshot.

How this will develop my career

I would love an opportunity to grow in our company. I believe this conference will:

  • Allow me to mentor and be mentored by others via career building activities during breaks

  • Expose me to diverse software and career approaches by experts working in different parts of software lifecycle, at different seniority

  • Let me interact with and learn from other software professionals, who care about growing sustainably together, through career coaching activities

  • Give me an opportunity to validate my progress and lessons learnt while working at our company

Conference cost

Fees include registration and food for the whole day.

  • $180-$250 ticket (early bird tickets are on sale now)

  • $20 bulk discount per ticket applies when purchasing 4 tickets or more (available only for Standard ticket purchases). So we save when buying tickets as a group.

Travel & accommodation cost (optional)

In order to attend the conference, I will need to travel to Wellington. To ensure that I’ll be able to absorb as much knowledge and experience as I could, I’d also need accommodation before and after.

  • $200 return flights

  • $400 accommodation close to venue

 

I see this as a valuable investment in both my professional growth and our team’s capability. I’m excited about the opportunity to attend and would be happy to share key takeaways, practical insights, and logistics with you and the wider team. I can run a 30‑minute lunch‑and‑learn or prepare a short slide deck to highlight what I’ve learned. Thanks for considering this — happy to discuss further.

I really appreciate your time considering my request.

 

Yours sincerely,