A farewell that keeps the archive open and the work visible.
Access Granted closes by returning to where it started, with Mike, Raj, and Jono revisiting the show's early balcony-beers origin story in an easy, familiar register.

New Zealand tech, told through its people.
Access Granted NZ is a loose, people-first record of New Zealand’s tech and startup circles. Mike, Raj, and the wider team move from easy banter into practical stories about digital education, VR, civic tech, hackathons, and community work.
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Access Granted NZ is a long-running conversational record of New Zealand’s tech, media, startup, and civic communities. It sounds like people who know each other opening the door, pulling chairs around a table, and then letting the useful conversation happen. The show is rarely stiff. Mike, Raj, and the wider team lean into banter, quick corrections, side stories, and the occasional messy room detail before settling into why a guest’s work matters. That looseness is part of the value. Episodes turn practical and grounded once the story gets going, whether the subject is VR experience design, digital technology in classrooms, government transparency, community hackathons, or the cost of bootstrapping a health-focused product. The show keeps asking how things began. It also asks what keeps people moving. Victoria MacLennan’s episode traces digital education work through coding clubs, teacher support, girls’ activation events, and school garden sensors that make data feel real. Dr Karl Löfgren’s conversation brings government online down to questions of open data, algorithmic impact, welfare systems, and how public decisions should explain their workings. Shiffy Nayar’s episode connects confidence, teaching, micro-enterprise skills, young women, and the desire to leave something useful behind. Jessica Manins brings the show into a VR lab where the hosts respond first as delighted users and then as interviewers trying to understand the design underneath the fun. TechFugees broadens the frame again, focusing on a Techweek hackathon that brings technical people and refugees together. The System Error format adds a looser live-table energy, with topics passed around by talking stick and the off-record chatter left outside the edit. The final episodes also make the show’s own history part of the subject. Access Granted NZ is not just about gadgets or startups. It is about the local networks, small experiments, stubborn volunteers, and practical civic imagination behind them.
Made for: For listeners interested in New Zealand tech, startups, media, digital education, civic systems, and community projects. It especially suits people who prefer informal, human interviews over polished industry commentary.
What sets it apart: Access Granted NZ stands out for its local memory and relaxed access: the show captures rooms, relationships, side projects, and origin stories as much as the finished work. Its best moments turn technical subjects into plain human stakes.
🎙️ Behind the scenes of #tech, #media, and #startups #podcast 🤗 Hosts of @WellyTechNZ 🎧 Find us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify and your podcast app
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Access Granted NZ connects technical systems with the careers, institutions, and community projects that give them consequence.
Access Granted NZ turns technology into conversations about the people building, teaching, funding, and governing it. Mike and Raj ask guests to explain both their work and the choices behind it, moving from public-sector algorithms and transparency to coding education,…
When government algorithms claim an answer, Mike and Raj want the working shown before you nod along.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A farewell that keeps the archive open and the work visible.
Access Granted closes by returning to where it started, with Mike, Raj, and Jono revisiting the show's early balcony-beers origin story in an easy, familiar register.
A warm farewell that shows education work becoming real, measurable, and unexpectedly joyful.
Access Granted ends its guest run by returning to Victoria McLennan, the series' first interviewee, and asking what still feels good after five or six years and what has shifted since then.
A clear look at how government code is meant to explain itself.
The conversation uses Dr Karl Lofgren, an associate professor at Victoria University, to ground e-government in how government actually works online.
A practical story about skills, service, and leaving something behind.
Access Granted NZ follows Shiffy Nair from an early visit at about eight years old through teaching, bank work, and an MBA, then into the practical focus of MedSkills and More Than Rubies.
A five-year check-in on Access Granted, with Owen in the guest chair and the hosts reflecting on the show.
Five years in, Access Granted flips the setup and puts Owen on the guest side while he talks with Mike, Raj, and Viv about the show itself. It starts with a simple question about what makes them happy, and the answers stay rooted in being super busy, juggling lots of projects,…

Blunt VR game talk with controller-level detail.

VR gaming talk from inside the headset.

Immersive makers on how the work actually gets made.
Hosts Mike and Raj introduce a roundtable discussion on tech, media, and startups in New Zealand, recorded live at a social event.
Hosts Mike and Raj interview two women from Microsoft and Trade Me about their experiences mentoring at a TechFugees hackathon.
Hosts Raj and Mike discuss their first immersive VR experience and interview Jessica Mannins about her company Beyond Fun.
Hosts Raj and Mike introduce a redo session with TechFugees organizers about a hackathon bringing technical people and refugees together during Tech Week.
Access Granted NZ marks five years by flipping the microphone onto Mike, Raj, and Viv, with Owen Evans as guest interviewer asking what makes them happy and why the show still works.
Hosts Raj and Mike introduce their tech podcast and interview Terry Miller, founder of a virtual reality sphere startup in Wellington.
Hosts interview Kylie Lely from Nicholson Consulting about applying data, AI, and machine learning to automate processes like ACC claims.
“Access Granted” was named from the recurring “access denied, access denied” movie prompt, then “access granted” on the third try.
"I have some skills and experience that I can really help amplify the capabilities of others," McLennan says.
Karl Lofgren, associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington and deputy head of the School of Government, teaches e-government, public sector reform, and good governance.
Access Granted asks Shiffy Nair of Mad Skills and Tenzing why her work starts with getting people to talk to each other, not with APIs.
Dave Moskovitz argues that accessible education matters, describing Jaipuna's AI maths tutor Amy as a way to scale student support.
On Access Granted NZ, Tamara Buckland describes teaching two-day mental health first aid courses through CoLiberate and working as a People Experience Advisor at Sharesies.
Chris McDowall and Tim Denny spent years making We Are Here, an Atlas of Aotearoa, a visual account of New Zealand in 2019.
The hosts of Access Granted NZ interview each other about their backgrounds and what makes them happy, discussing tech projects and personal interests.
Hosts discuss their first immersive VR experience and interview Jessica Mannins about her company Beyond Fun.