The Rural Connect Forum is a two-day conference run by NZ events company Brightstar at Crowne Plaza Auckland on 19–20 October 2026, focused on how the rural sector connects with its changing customer base through digital channels, data and AI.
The Rural Connect Forum returns to Auckland on 19–20 October 2026, gathering the people who sell to, serve and advise New Zealand's farmers for a two-day working session on how the rural customer is changing. Run by conference company Brightstar, the programme is pitched squarely at the commercial edge of the primary sector rather than at farmers themselves.
According to the organiser's programme, the two days are structured around three themes: "the changing rural customer" and the rise of a next-generation farm operator, "connection in a digital world" and holding trust through digital transformation, and "data, AI and commercial growth" for customer intelligence.
The forum is produced by Brightstar, a New Zealand business-events company that runs professional conferences across sectors. Brightstar owns the event site and programme, sets the two-day agenda, and has assembled a speaker line-up drawn from the rural establishment, including Rabobank CEO Todd Charteris, Lincoln University's Hamish Gow, DairyNZ's Mike Borrie, Blair Rooney of Enable Digital, Amber Carpenter of Grass Roots Media and St John Craner of Agrarian Rural Sales Success.
Brightstar describes the audience as marketing, sales and customer-engagement professionals working in the rural sector, alongside executives, change-management and HR professionals, consultants and rural business leaders. This is a business-to-business audience serving primary industries, not a growers' field day.
The forum is held at the Crowne Plaza, 128 Albert Street, in central Auckland, per the organiser. The Albert Street location sits in Auckland's CBD, close to the Britomart and downtown transport hub and within walking distance of a dense cluster of city-centre hotels, which suits a national delegate audience flying in for a two-day programme. Day one opens with registration from 8:30am and day two begins at 9:00am.
The Rural Connect Forum is a clean example of a specialised, professionally-run national conference anchoring mid-week hotel business in Auckland's CBD. A recurring two-day Brightstar event with a confirmed senior speaker roster brings out-of-town delegates into central-city accommodation and meeting space, the kind of repeatable corporate-conference demand that underpins the Auckland business-events calendar.
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