Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you got into the technology sector?
Randal admits he was always curious about technology. When he was around 7 or 8 years old, his dad bought the family's first computer, the pitch the salesman gave his dad was; “This is all you will ever need, it’s an absolute rocket ship! You can store all the names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone in New Zealand on it!” - at the time, that was probably true!
By the time he was in high school, Randal was the ‘go to’ person for family and friends with any technical issues. He recalls, back then Xtra (now, Spark) were doing deals on signing up to dial up (for any young people reading this, dial up was the old school method of using phone lines to connect to the internet!) Xtra offered a free month of internet access if you got a friend or family member to sign up. For the new person signing up - they’d offer the connection for free. Randal provided his technical services free of charge to help friends and family set up on dial up, thus clocking up a month of free internet every time. He didn’t know it - but in doing this, he also entered a national competition of getting new adopters onboard - which he won! He saved half the prize money for a car once he had his licence, and the other half on components for a computer, which he then built by himself.
After leaving school, he got a job at Sony while he was visiting a friend in Wellington. Initially he was on the floor working in sales, but during his 18 years at the company he moved into repping, training and product specific roles. He eventually left as he felt the higher up the corporate ladder he went, the further away from the tech he got - which was what he enjoyed the most.
He spent a few years working training and working as a network and audiovisual technician before he relocated from Auckland to Tauranga and joined TechnologyWise back in 2021 (just as the COVID-19 restrictions were being lifted!)
Can you share with us what you do and what problems you are trying to solve for your customers?
Randal shares that as TechnologyWise is a small company, they do a whole range of things for their customers. Although he never went to university and is totally self-taught, his interests are in networking, and although he is certified as a network engineer, but is happy to turn his hand to anything.
Due to the varied nature of support that TechnologyWise customers need, it always keeps the work interesting; from setting up a new business with all their technology needs, to rewiring dodgy or slow internet connections, Windows 11 upgrades, building Linux based servers using Docker and everything in-between. Ultimately, the team works to support their customers with all their technology needs.
Being located at Basestation, how does this help support the mahi you do?
One of the major benefits of being at Basestation is being centrally located. There are a good handful of customers that visit the team on a weekly basis, either dropping off tech or picking up items they’ve set up for them. Being in the heart of Tauranga CBD certainly gives customers access to the team.
This also makes it easy for the TechnologyWise team to go out and visit their customers, utilising the Go-To car sharing service, run from Basestation, makes it easy for them to get to customers' sites without having to manage a fleet of their own cars.
They are also the “go-to” tech team for all Basestation residents, this includes setting up new residents with their internet connection and printing services when they join Basestation.
Finally, we asked, what new technology excites you at the moment?
To Randal - this is a loaded question, although he sees a huge potential for new and emerging tech, he approaches it with caution! Being ‘in the know’ he is acutely aware of the downside or ways in which people use technology for bad or malicious purposes.
He gives an example of the 2022 deepfake video shared on X (formally Twitter) appearing to show Ukraine’s president talking of surrendering to Russia - ultimately a form of propaganda that looks plausible.
One of the things Randal mentions that does intrigue him is the development of biometric technologies. He mentions Sam Altman’s crypto project Worldcoin, which uses iris recognition technology to distinguish between real people, bots or AI. Although, as he points out, there are always concerns about security and identity fraud with such personal information being stored online.
It was fascinating to chat with Randal to discover a little more about what it means to be a technologist and work in the industry. If you want to find out more about TechnologyWise and the mahi they do, check out the website here: technologywise.co.nz