Potaua Biasiny-Tule: It's cool to be a Maori nerd

Wairua Motuhake I te wa o Matariki, ka whakanui tatou i to tatou mana me te wairua motuhake i tenei ao. Ki nga mate i nga mate, haere atu ra.

My kuia used to say the essence of life is to love deeply and to learn widely. This simple korero rang out loud last week when our whanau had the honour of attending NetHui 2013; a gathering of IT leaders and some of the smartest people from throughout Aotearoa.

NetHui brings together all the geeks to talk geek with lots of other geeks. As digital citizens of Aotearoa, we learn and laugh with the shared international community, celebrating the union envisioned by the Treaty of Waitangi and imagining our country tomorrow. We shared challenges, presented solutions and started to collaborate on powerful projects of social change. It's one of the few times where it's cool to be a Maori nerd.

We travelled with our cousin, Hemi Bennett, to Wellington, seeking to meet like-minded people. On Monday, we had the privilege of joining the Maori IT Meet Up, where issues around marae wi-fi, tamariki IT training houses, rangatahi and social media as well as geo-cultural mapping were raised. Antony Royal said IT had the potential to be the number one industry for Maori in the coming 10 years. That was exciting.

The next two days saw Hemi live stream the entire event to the world for free, which impressed everyone. We got to attend sessions on spying and the GCSB, learned about how some rural communities die when they cannot access the internet (families leave for Australia) and heard the amazing story of Pt England school in Tamaki and how IT can empower the student as well as the community. I loved the korero from Pacific Island communities who saw inspiration from Google Maori and looked to create Google Niue. Their passion showed how we can all share language lessons and ensure that our native tongues are recognised, protected and actively used online.

My main aim was to learn about spectrum and how Maori could be more involved. At the more basic level, exciting our tamariki to learn mathematics, science, computers and physics was a long-term plan. More immediate, we here in Rotorua are ideally placed to link the Waikato with the wider Bay of Plenty, so we'll be researching and deploying new tech over the coming months. Exciting stuff.

So with the rising of Matariki, we remember those who have passed and look ahead to new horizons, preparing new crops of knowledge. Nga mihi o te tau hou Rotorua

Potaua Biasiny-Tule is a member of the Rotorua District Council, Te Arawa Standing Committee.