Tasmanian sailing club, the Derwent Sailing Squadron, has shown tremendous innovation amidst this challenging time and taken their traditional weekly Friday Members night online!

For the past two weeks, DSS have hosted a virtual member’s night with 53 members tuned in on the first Friday and 89 last Friday!

DSS General Manger, Shaun Tiedemann, couldn’t be happier with how the club and members have embraced the change.

“We held our first virtual member’s night  online 2 Friday nights ago and it was an outstanding success with 53 members tuned in and chatting away for 2 hours – we did around 15-member jackpot draws but couldn’t give away the jackpot.”

He added “Last Friday night we had 89 members attend with them thoroughly enjoying the night in. We were able to give members a look around their club using our array of scanning security camera’s, Commodore Scott Brain was able to host the night via Zoom and chat with our members and we conducted our usual member Jackpot draws and modified raffle giveaways. One of our members was present last Friday night when their name was drawn and took home one of our $500 jackpots.”

“We have received absolutely outstanding feedback and expect there will 80 to 100 this Friday night.”

DSS conduct the draw through their private Facebook members’ page that can only be accessed by DSS Members. The Facebook live function allows the host to share screens or your choosing including displaying the draw visually to members.

Shaun says this format for members night is here to stay for the time-being and will continue the draw, thanks to its fantastic member night sponsor, in the same format for the foreseeable future. Shaun expects attendance to grow from here.

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