This year Chewie as our current President joined Malcolm and Donald at the annual Conference and AGM. This year it was hosted Christchurch at the huge Te Pae Centre, pretty much in central Christchurch. We stayed in an Airbnb about 5 minutes walk each day so very handy to the venue. The theme this year was Growth & Participation.
Fridays session involve breaking up to attend various commissions who gave their presentations and then opened up to getting feedback from us attendees. Donald attended the Rally Commission and heard about the business formed to run National rallys. The Race to rally Group ran the Daybreaker rally early this year and are running the Southland Southern Lights rally, a new event to the calendar.
Chewie and myself went to the Race and then the Volunteer Commission seminars. Did’t get a lot out of the actual presentation apart from the new commission members being introduced. Steve Collier the MSNZ Health & Safety & Volunteer Manager address the seminar and spoke about Pathways though the sport for volunteers, which is something our club can take on board more than we do at present. Growing our numbers would be the key to this and that gives us the ability to bring some through the other roles we do or that are available to pursue to becoming a licence official. The registration of all volunteers was discussed and we should be encouraging members to register on the MSNZ volunteers register so they get news updates from MSNZ. This plays a part in MSNZ national framework for “stat’s” and can keep records of your training, skills and event history. During the open sessions in these commission seminars both Chewie and myself contributed to the discussions and white board notes were made for the commissions to use for their future planning and meeting agendas.
Saturdays conference leading into the actual AGM meeting made good progress on remits tabled last year and agreed on to vote on this year with some tidy up of wording before the agm so it made the agm go much quicker. The Commission leaders gave updates on the discussions at their respective seminars and the executive board discussed board matters from the year. The agm itself was after the lunch break. Debbie Day was confirmed as the new President of Motorsport NZ, due to no other nominations this was ratified along with some other positions that also had single nominations so no voting needed.
Away from the MSNZ work the three of us caught up with our Ruapuna friends, Bob Richard (Treasurer) and Andrew came to join us for Saturday night chat over dinner. As usual there was plenty of chat, and chewing over various events and what we both do. It’s cool we have this relationship with a sister club and can share resources and ideas freely. Sadly other clubs are insular and keep to themselves which can’t be good for the volunteers and for the progression of the sport.
That about wraps up this report, it was the quietest annual MSNZ bash I have been to so no real late nights, plenty of walking and little social networking away from the actual meeting.
RSQKRU 