NZATD's Digital Learning Showcase brings a day of L&D case studies to Waipuna

The Digital Learning Showcase 2026 is a one-day practitioner conference run by the New Zealand Association for Training and Development, scheduled for Friday 11 September 2026 at Waipuna Hotel & Conference Centre in Mount Wellington, Auckland. NZATD describes it as one of the highlight events of its Learning and Development Week, running 7 to 11 September 2026, whose 2026 theme is "Manaaki Tangata, Akohia te Ao Hou: Nurturing Our People, Learning the New World". Registrations are capped; the ticketing page showed 153 spaces remaining at the time of writing.

Who runs it

NZATD is New Zealand's national professional body for trainers, learning designers and other learning-and-development specialists. Per its own history page, it traces back to regional training-and-development groups formed in the early 1980s and became a single national incorporated organisation in 1989. Today it runs a competency framework, a mentoring programme, an annual awards programme and a provider directory for the sector, plus courses and branch events across the Upper North Island, Lower North Island and South Island. The showcase sits alongside NZATD's separately ticketed masterclass, with the two often bundled as combo tickets.

Programme and audience

Per NZATD's published running order, the showcase opens with registration from 8.15am and a 9am welcome, then runs back-to-back practitioner case studies through to a 4pm close. Confirmed sessions include speakers from 2degrees, KPMG, NZ Post, Foodstuffs, Careerforce, Orion Group, Hohepa Hawkes Bay and several L&D consultancies, on topics spanning AI in learning design, gamification, chatbot-based simulation training and flipped learning in the disability sector.

NZATD says the programme deliberately avoids sales pitches in favour of practitioner-led case studies on real workplace digital-learning problems. The event is open to NZATD members, non-members and members of affiliate bodies including HRNZ, AITD, CDANZ, FLANZ, ICF, NZOQ, PSANZ and TechCommNZ.

The venue, and one thing to check before you drive

NZATD's main event page lists Waipuna Hotel & Conference Centre at 58 Waipuna Road, Mount Wellington, as the venue, with free on-site parking. One discrepancy is worth flagging: NZATD's separate online-registration page instead lists Foodstuffs, 35 Landing Drive, Māngere, as the location. NZATD has not published an explanation for the mismatch, and anyone travelling to the event should confirm the address with the organiser directly. This report follows the venue given in the dedicated logistics section of the main event page.

Waipuna is a 148-room hotel and conference venue set on a tidal lagoon in Mount Wellington, roughly 20 minutes' drive from both downtown Auckland and Auckland Airport, with more than 400 free on-site car parks and no airport shuttle of its own. Its conference centre has 17 flexible function rooms and a purpose-built 400-seat tiered theatre, and the operator markets the property as offering the facilities of an inner-city venue without inner-city traffic and parking.

For a one-day sector showcase drawing practitioners from workplaces spread across greater Auckland, that trade-off is the point: an out-of-CBD venue with abundant free parking and motorway access removes the need to navigate the central city for a single drive-in day.

Why it matters in NZ MICE

The Digital Learning Showcase is a modest single-day sector event rather than a major congress, and it is worth reporting as such. But it sits inside NZATD's wider Learning and Development Week and gives Auckland's L&D, HR and corporate-training community a vendor-neutral forum to compare practice. Events like it are the steady base of the business-events calendar — niche, one-day, professional-body run — that keep venues outside the CBD hotel circuit in continuous use.