Sergeant at Arms for today was Alana Bogart who got us underway right on time.

Dan Vann, Toastmaster of the day introduced the theme for the morning, Survivor, this saw us split into two teams, in Fiji, with not much to eat.

Grammarian was Shaun Jacob who set everyone the challenge to use “Boggle” for word of the day.

Fittingly Rachel McConnachie introduced our first speaker, Stephen McConnachie with his speech entitled Thank you for all the fish. This was Stephen’s farewell speech after 4 years with Boaters. Being a new member myself, I listed many takeaways from Stephen’s experience, a few of these; Summarise, Summarise, Summarise, paint a picture, prepare but keep fresh, use props but don’t be cheesy, use connecting words then pause and to start writing a speech just get the thoughts out.

Next Hayley Ching introduced the third speaker, Louise Landess and her speech D72 Conference Revisited, which with great accompanying slides ran us though her experience at the D72 Conference in Parliament Wellington over the previous weekend.

After a great round of evaluations and timer’s report Tom Palmer presented the Toastie Award for the day to Stephen McConnachie.

Member blog by Dean McLeod