At last week's meeting Chairman PP Cameron Ward introduced Pres Colleen d'Offay to the meeting. She in turn welcomed everyone and especially guest speaker Tom Mason and guests Colin Miller
and Issac Weinstein.
There were 23 people attending the meeting and they were treated to a great presentation from Tom Mason on Cybersecurity under the heading
of "You clicked on that link didn't you?". See below for a summary.
Meeting Highlights
Secretaries Announcements
Colleen announced the apologies and they were:
Roger Fairlam, Keiran Cromie, PP Julie Avery, Paul Laband,
Jo Kwok & Brendan Kierce.
Rob Pinchbeck
Rob spoke about the Brighton Classic Car Show which is coming up on Sunday 22 March 2026. He pointed out that there were DL brochures on the tables for us to place on the windscreen of a car we think fits the "Classic" style and that is it's over 25 years old. There will be more brochures to letterbox drop shortly and he was asking for help with this. Please contact Rob if you can assist. Details below:
Stuart McIntyre
Stuart gave us an Event report on the Kieser Great Bayside Swim 2026.
He said it was a successful event once again with excellent swimming conditions - could have held a water skiing event it was so calm. It was a warm morning and pretty hot by the time they packed up.
We had 690 swim entries- lower than the past years. Major issues - adverse publicity about then red jellyfish infestation on the Bay the week before. The Age had an article saying it was a good idea not to swim in the Bay on the weekend. But there were none to be seen Saturday as the wind probably pushed them across the Bay to the other side.
Event without incident - comments were about water conditions near the Marina and beach aggravated by a low tide.
There were 70 Rotarians, families and friends and 55 lifesavers. Stuart said it was hard to thanks everyone but wanted to mention:
Sam Dimopotous, Pres of Brighton Lifesavers and his team, PP Damien Hellard and Matt Nichols for commentary and interviews, Keiran Cromie, Anthony Langley, Seng Goh, Geoff Cunningham,
Max Martin Designs for Graphic Design and T-Shirt, Wayne Styles, Angie Biggin, Suzie Mence, PP Alan Pinkus and team for Fruit and Drinks, Wendy & Glenys Awards, Jo Kwok for endless flow of Facebook posts and handout of swimmers gear and team, Colleen and team - Registrations, Max Martin and the Gear Tent Guys, John Schmoll - Marshals, PP Des Thomas and the 'Sausage team" and Sean Stratton and the team from Holloway Bend Scouts (Finish Line) and Photography by PP Ivan Vojlay, PP Cameron Ward, Norm Thomas and Jo Kwok.
Sponsors - Kieser, Community Bank Highett, RT Edgar, Bayside Council, Nichols Crowder and Brighton Travelworld.
Supporters - Southern FM, Royal Brighton Yacht Club and The Baths.
Bottom Line: $40,000
Survey: Great Team effort. Members and friends seemed to enjoy
the Fellowship and the Event certainly helps our brand and image.
More Kieser Great Bayside Swim 2026 Highlights
Photos by PP Ivan Vojlay, PP Cameron Ward and Jo Kwok
David Smyth
David announced that the Jazz Night at the Royal Brighton Yacht Club would occur on Thursday 7 May. This is a combined meeting with the Brighton North Rotary club. Put this one in your Diary. More information
to come.
Speaker Tom Mason
"You clicked on that link didn't you?"
Many have described Tom as a certified geek as he spent
4.5 years building his own movie grade wearable Darth
Vader costume. But what does he really do at work? Tom’s
role is to manage the day to day relationship with our strategic
IT partners and work with MLC to identify new ways of working
that allow us to improve our productivity, our go to market
agility and help reduce our total cost of ownership. In fact, he's
currently tasked with assessing how Artificial Intelligence
solutions can be used and is having fun testing the boundaries
and breaking each AI solution. Tom is also referred to as the
IT Chief Investigator, so whenever there is any new IT challenge,
he’ll look into how it can be solved.
Tom gave us great advice on what not to click on when searching through the internet or receiving suspicious spam mail in your inbox. Things like having a strong password can make a big difference in the prevention of identity stealth and financial loss.
Last week's Raffle Results
Last week the raffle was presented by Wendy Davis with help from Merve Boztepe.
The winners were David Finney and PP Alan Pinkus.
