Frances Valintine isn't afraid of change.

When she founded The Mind Lab in 2013, she left behind 14 years at Media Design School in the central city. Since then, The Mind Lab has moved from its original home at one corner of Auckland Domain, then down into Newmarket – and finally into Uptown.

More remarkably, in that time, the institute's kaupapa has moved from introducing kids to technology and teaching the teachers (at one point it was operating 26 sites around the country) to what it does now – offering postgraduate training for adults who want to refresh and enhance their working lives.

"We've really focused on that group of professionals who are looking to either supplement what they know, because they were already in some kind of tech-aligned role; reskill completely; or just delve into something that they've never thought about doing before," says Frances. "The average age of our students is actually 47."

The Mind Lab's location at the corner of Khyber Pass Road and Nugent Street is also home to sister company, Tech Futures Lab (also founded and run by Valintine), which is targeted at commercial and corporate businesses with more of a focus on technology. Increasingly, technology companies are becoming neighbours.

"There's a bit of a tech hub forming, as the whole neighbourhood changes," she says. "All our building tenants are in tech and that's exciting. We don't necessarily want to be mainstream, but we want this connection where people can hang out together. "I think a place like Uptown could really do that well, where you can bring in people who want to go to university, people who are moving to New Zealand, or returning home, who want to be involved and have conversations with smart people who are interesting – and don't necessarily have the aspiration to have the quarter acre somewhere. I think we need a cosmopolitan hub and it's definitely not Grey Lynn, which has sort-of moved on and it's too gentrified, and it's certainly not Newmarket. So, you know, where's that in Auckland?"

Brenda Leeuwenberg, co-founder of Agile consultancy Nomad8, teaches sessions at The Mind Lab and has also lived in the area for three and half years. "I definitely like that it takes me two minutes to walk to The Mind Lab!" she says. "The sessions I deliver are some of my favourites. I love the space and the people in the room are smart, engaged, have different perspectives and experiences – and the conversation is always interesting.

"I’ve also done work for Chorus, who are in the same building, and I know of a few other tech businesses in that area and I think it’s a great part of town, for many reasons. Excellent transport options, good cafes, great food, lots of apartments, plenty of areas to run/ walk/shop nearby – and soon a train station."

Anna Huang, who works at the Asia-Pacific office of the global media research firm Parrot Analytics in Burleigh Street, took the opportunity to expand her horizons with The Mind Lab's Postgraduate Certificate in Leading Change for Good. 

"I really liked being able to walk over to The Mind Lab from my office," she says. "I wanted to get my brain thinking about something different. Having done finance/operations for a while now, the solutions I was thinking of were starting to look the same – your ideas start to become stale.

The 'for good' aspect really appealed to me and it was really different to what I have been doing both in content and the people I met."

People like Anna, who keep their professional lives fresh by learning, are key to The Mind Lab's philosophy around the future of work – an area that Frances believes has only become more urgently interesting in a global pandemic. Frances says Covid imperatives have moved long-term trends in how we work forward by five to eight years.

"In New Zealand, it's slightly different because we haven't had one long, sustained lockdown like in some countries. But it's enough time for everyone to start to understand that the technologies we use now to be productive, to connect, to communicate, to reach our customers, it's all technology that we need to know. It's not like you only need to know it if you are in a certain sector or a certain type of role."

The other thing the pandemic has done is change the face of the city. Frances quotes an estimate of 100,000 square metres of unused commercial space in Auckland's central city and she expects a trend as leases come up for renewal towards smaller offices where not everyone is expected to be in every day.

Which raises the question of what cities are for now. If they're not going to be where all the offices are, what are they for?

"People and living!" Frances responds instantly.

"Hopefully for people. Great cities have lots of people in them."