Transcript
SULU FITI: Yes I have been an innovator in the past. I have run two software companies - one was about 5 years ago in the tech space, it was an online plumbing business but that crashed and burned unfortunately but I learned a lot of incredible lessons from that and that was part of my talk where I was talking about life lessons as part of my experience. And last year I was part of Kiwibank Fintech Accelerator where I entered a company that was hoping to make it cheaper to send back money to the Pacific Islands.
SARA VUI-TALITU: What do you think Pacific people bring to the tech space?
SF: One of our big sort of selling points is that we've got a huge opportunity to talk about our stories and we have got a unique culture. And no one else can tell our stories, only we can tell our stories. So I work for Te Papa and the opportunity is there for people of Pacific Islands backgrounds to tell their stories to the world.
SV: Can you tell me what makes those stories uniquely Pacific?
SF: There's no other Samoa in the world, there's no other Fiji in the world, there's no other Tuvalu in the world. Only those people can talk about those stories. It is unique and it's something which the world wants to know about. They lap it up and so there is huge opportunity to talk about ourselves and spread those messages to the world.
SV: Do you have any advice for youth wanting to get into the tech space? Just get up and do it?
SF: Yes certainly what I did, and what I still do, was attend a lot of meetups. You go there and find like minded people. When I first started, there weren't a lot of brown faces but slowly they are starting to trickle through but still not enough. Attend meetups and network like crazy.
SV: Can you tell us about your personal journey in tech?
SF: In 1982, age of 12, my dad brought a home computer. It's called a sinclair spectrum and we used to code on that and we would save programmes to cassette tape and my sister and I used to hack a programme and we made a game online, a TV game. Then I studied. Fast forward to 2015 where I studied software development.
SV: Was the tech space something your parent's encouraged you to study?
SF: No certainly not. Back in the day we were brought up it was the golden triangle of doctor, lawyer and accountant. The typical Pacific Island journey to go to university and here are the jobs you should aspire to, but I didn't follow that journey obviously and neither did any of my siblings but my parents have always been supportive of whatever endeavour we followed.
