He Māori Ahau: The lessons worth sharing!
He Māori Ahau.
A statement. A waiata. A kaupapa. A cause to come together to unite. A celebration of Māori success as Māori.
This hui was dreamed of over 3 years ago, back in 2021. Our chair and my bestie, Kara Nepe-Apatu posed a question online about organising a ‘real talk’ conference consisting of gnarly kaupapa, cultural intelligence, and sharing of best praxis. A collab space for iwi, communities, businesses, and govt to grow partnerships, based on kotahitanga, tikanga, manaakitanga and whanaungatanga. I was one of 250 commenters who said, hell to the yes, we need this!
Fast forward to 26 June 2024, He Māori Ahau grew from the momentum of our inaugural conference Poipoia te Manawa Māui in 2022, and our regular series of Kai Whai Hua events throughout 2023. Te Rau Hihiri has emerged as a hapori that provides safe spaces and places, offline and online, to share kōrero and wheako with others who get it. The movers and the hustlers working in and with the public service. We do it because we love it, there is no other reason.
At Waiwhetu in January, we heard the need to come together to unite and manaaki each other during this difficult season. From there, the planning started.
Caveat to the rest of this post…..despite running a few events to date, we do not class ourselves as professional conference organisers. Just a group of friends who dream big, take the best of all our pūkenga and smash it together. Believe me, we do plenty of karakia and karanga to our ātua to guide us. We are hopeless addicts to the cause.
Te Rau Hihiri - Milly Tamaki, Kara Nepe-Apatu, Ernestynne Walsh, Elena Higgison and Rachael Thwaites
Ok, so here’s a run down of the good stuff which might serve as a few things to hold on to for other event organisers out there:
Design a conference that you know you would love to attend. Product market fit is key, and it helps when you are the market.
Timing is everything! Organising a conference during an economic recession and government spending cuts should not be repeated. We know of other events that have been delayed till 2025 for this very reason. Yet the timing was perfect for our hapori - it just meant we needed to be really creative and open in our thinking regarding hoa haere; and getting the pitch right.
Work with collaborators who multiply the vibe to the power of the xfactor. Working with ATA to hack the algorithm was a strong strategy, but working together to create FOMO amongst Māori equals winning!
Pull on the whanaungatanga spiderwebs that are highly tuned in to the frequency. This enables transmission of the message to those you know you need to bring this kaupapa to life.
Surround yourself with compassionate whānau, friends, and employers who believe in you, and therefore give you many passes for all the late-night hui, talking about nothing else for months, the doubting and non-believing, and the ‘present, but not really present’ eyes across the dinner table.
The 1000+ people who came ā-tinana to He Māori Ahau. The smiles, the hugs between mates, beautiful pakihi, the kounga of our speakers, the mic-drop moments, slam poetry, packed as workshop rooms, P2P+K2K=P2K.
In all seriousness, our whānau were unbelievable. They believed in us the most, but they also saw the stress and anxiety levels we were placing on ourselves – a tough position to be in.
Ok, so the not so good stuff and the lessons worth sharing:
All the should’ve, would’ve and could’ves that only we will go over and over for many days after the hui, especially with a bitch of an inner critic like mine. Just know, no-one else is across this level of detail and therefore they have no idea about much of that stuff. Hold on to the big picture.
Curate a strong storyline for your event and hold onto te aka matua, but be flexible and prepared to change your runsheet as you test and iterate with your collaborators, speakers, MCs and venue managers.
Never assume anything with venues, ask thousands of questions and organise several walkthroughs. Lest you end up with 1000 white plastic chairs that trigger marae seat trauma!
Be disciplined about using really good project management tools and systems. We started with kanban style Miro boards, but this became unstuck and we each developed our own system which I would not recommend. Mine was sticky notes that I took pleasure in throwing onto the floor each time I completed a task.
Engage early with whaikaha whānau to ensure you design the end-to-end experience with them. This is the thing I’m looking forward to the most next time given the generous feedback we have received.
Finding a price point is the hardest thing you will do, and you will question your decision time and time again. In all honesty, this is where a huge ego, if you can muster one, can help. There is a lot more I could say about this, and the ‘freemium’ model of many things kaupapa Māori makes doing anything slightly commercial almost impossible. There is a whole bunch of educating we need to do with employers and ourselves around investing in and valuing learning and developing, especially through the difficult times when we most need support.
Whatever time you think this is going to take, times it by at least 3. My involvement in He Māori Ahau was only possible because I left my fulltime job and took on a part-time contract. Even then, I was working most evenings and weekends.
Whakamārō tō kiri - put your 6-7mm wetsuit on when you read evaluation feedback e hoa mā. All feedback is a taonga, and lessons are beautiful inputs for the future. But heck, it can be really fricken hard to take some of it without jumping into defense mode.
Give thanks and praises, but also detailed feedback and work-ons. Especially to non-Māori organisations who are on a learning journey in working with Māori. Pay it forward for the next kaupapa.
Your partner, siblings and kids are the only ones who will take your shit and stressed as fuck demands without saying a word, so recruit them as your crew on the day and reward them immensely thereafter for everything they did for you.
We’ve been asked many times whether there will be a He Māori Ahau 2.0, and it’s way too early for us to answer that yet. We’ll take our lead from mana whenua and our hapori. For now, we are replenishing with rest and whānau time, and supporting other Māori-led conferences like the recent Tū Toa Conference and Amorangi Māori in Governance Summit.
To wrap up, I want to pass on some really cool kōrero Kara and I received a couple days before He Māori Ahau from our mate Ivan Tava. “Make sure you stop and bask in the sun of your success at least twice. You’ll both be running around trying to ‘mama bear’ everything, make sure you stop, look around, hold your head up for a bit and soak it in. You’ve earned it.”
We really needed to hear this. There were a few times throughout the day when we found ourselves standing together at the back of the room soaking it all in, hand in hand, weary heads on a shoulder, gentle squeezes to say…we did it. We fucking did it!
Our Te Rau Hihiri whānau - Joe Southee and Elena Higgison (Trustee).
