The first ever DayBreak Festival of Innovation is off to a flying start, with our two-day Innovation Summit held 07/08 March 2024.

Tauranga’s City Centre provided the stage, the waterfront and downtown were buzzing with yellow lanyards and DayBreak logos. The Summit started with a mihi whakatau from mana whenua as the sun rose, then moved into a programme covering areas ranging across tangata whenua innovation, marketing, AI, robotics, investing, climate change, facilitation, project management, museums, startups, circular design and more. We’ve had great initial feedback on the Summit, particularly in some of the new things we tried, such as: 

• Inverse catering (giving vouchers for lunch at local eateries rather than catering on site).
• Using offices around town as breakout spaces.
• Celebrating regional innovation through ice-cream, music, art, and no awards! 

Participant Leeann Basset said, “I was blown away by the huge array of sessions to attend and what struck me the most was how many amazing people we have right here in the Bay of Plenty making an impact locally, nationally and globally.”

Tania Bui, Head of Marketing and Communications at Craigs Investment Partners (one of the DayBreak sponsors) said, “There are so many amazing businesses and stories here in the Bay. That’s been my highlight.” 

“One of our motivations for the DayBreak Festival is to create opportunities for people to make new connections,” said Shane Stuart, Priority One’s Innovation Manager, “and so one of the really pleasing aspects has been the diverse range of sectors and communities who came along and the number of people who’ve talked to us about surprises and different experiences they had.”

The 2024 DayBreak Festival has three more events to come:

• Startup Social: a free pitching clinic for young people and students. 
• The DTX: a free design thinking course. 
• The DayBreak Lecture: a public presentation about innovation from Zespri.

We’ll be working with stakeholders to consider what we’ve learned from 2024 – keep an eye out for more updates and future plans! 

Lastly, DayBreak is a collaborative venture, co-created and delivered with 30+ organisations around the region, and Priority One gratefully acknowledges the support of everyone that took the plunge with us, and contributed to making the event happen.

A big thank you to our sponsors: Priority One Western Bay of Plenty, Aurecon, Craigs Investment Partners, LawVu, Sharp Tudhope Lawyers, Tauranga City Council, TechStep, Trimax Mowing Systems, Tauranga Western Bay Community Event Fund and Zespri International, Creative Bay of Plenty – Te Waka Auaha Toi, Downtown Tauranga, Kale Print, Mediaworks, Bay Catering, Flavours of Plenty and Lucy’s Event Hire.

And our session and venue partners: Aurecon, Beca, Callaghan Innovation, Circularity, Craigs Investment Partners, Datacom, Enterprise Angels, Fuel Agency, KingSt Advertising, MoPed, Mulberry St, Ngāpeke Permaculture, Oasis Engineering, SnapShot, Stand Tall, Tauranga Business Chamber, Toi Kai Rawa, The University of Waikato, Wave Agency, WOODS Agency, Workshope, and WNT Ventures.