There's a little video above of a great event I got a chance to be part of. Grow Wellington hosted 400 or so international students for a Welcome to Wellington function at Pipiteia Marae. It was designed to allow the students to meet each other, experience a bit of Maori culture and find out about some of the services that Wellington has to offer them. The group was amazingly divers, coming from all across the globe and ranging in age from primary school right through to adul

Another long-term client required a few tweaks to keep things fresh this year. This time we were talking about the IPENZ Transportation Group who we have helped out in 2014 and 2015. In the past I've normally MCed their conference days as myself but this time we wanted to try something different to keep things fresh. So I appeared as per usual for the first day conferencing - suit, tie, the usual business as required by this particular conference. And then we changed it up...

Another Sevens done. And, as with the last year or so, come the questions about whether it will be the last one for Wellington. Since a lot of people know I have been involved in pretty much every tournament since the beginning they ask me if I share that opinion. I very much don't want this to be the case. It's out of my hands and the hands of the countless numbers of people who try their very hardest to put on a great event every year. Luckily, it's also out of the hands of

This year, from Tuesday through until the Friday before the Sevens tournament begins Civic Square was the centre of a celebration of Sevens rugby. Billed as "Seven Days of Sevens" we were the final four days of that celebration and I got to MC the whole thing. It was amazing to see Civic Square fill up with school holiday groups, cruise ship passengers, Wellingtonian workers and the curious as we filled the lunchtime with music, sports, sevens stars and a host of other activi

That's me as Dr. Colin Scopy, world reknowned trauma surgeon and member of Doctors Without Borders. And I'm helping break the ice at the 2015 Nurse Managers' Conference dinner in Tauranga. On the night I did double duty. For pre-dinner drinks Colin did the rounds of the guests regaling them with his far-fetched tales of courage under fire in tent hospitals dotted all over the Horn of Africa. He was also busily trying to recruit new managers for his hospitals in Africa because

Somewhere in the middle of the all-consuming Rugby World Cup there was another competition taking place - NZ's own National Provincial Rugby comp. It was a strange year for the ITM Championship (where the Lions found themselves this year) because the RWC forced a real truncation of the programme and so we saw mid-week matches and a shorter season. Again it was a real pleasure for Cohen and I to work with the Wellington rugby crew, Janine and Mel at Launch and Dom, Craig and t

Mac is the gift that keeps on giving! This time I teamed up with the folk at Macs Function Centre to help Battery Town open their conference. The brief from Warren at Battery Town was that they wanted an opening function that was casual and informal but that was a bit different and made all the delegates want to come even though the conference proper wasn't kicking off until the next day. So we paired Mac, once again with a beer and food matching expert and let things go from

There I am looking preeeeeetty pleased with myself in front of our stand at Show Me Wellington. It was the first time Greg Ellis Creative had a presence at the big Wellington conference and events expo as the year before I was in Australia with Thom McGrath and unable to attend. So there were a lot of reunions with people who thought I was out of the conference and events business and it was really nice to clear up that misconception! Greg Ellis Creative does so many things w

Here I am again, in front of a good thousand of Wellington's intrepid school patrollers for another Orange Day event. Kenny King is in there too and it was our pleasure, once again, to host and entertain all the amazing kids who keep their peers safe crossing the croad every day. The stats are pretty amazing - these 1000 Year 6 pupils take care of some 30,000 primary school age kids (and a lot of parents) every school day twice a day largely without incident. These are 10 yea

I'm looking a little stunned in this picture. That's because I'm playing Captain Stubbie, who is responsible for the final voyage of the Arahura before she is retired from the Interislander fleet. Alongside Cohen Holloway I helped entertain the guests on the final voyage as well as MC the formalities involved. The audience was a fascinating mix of former crew, original passengers from 1983, TranzRail and Interislander folk and dignitaries. Over the course of the evening we go

Every year the Wellington Golds business awards have a quiz and I have had the pleasure of hosting it a fair few times in the last few years. One of the best things about the quiz is that it always involves me getting dressed up in character, which is still a favourite thing of mine to do. In the past I've been Maggie Thatcher, Einstein and Kim Dotcom to name a few - each time to fit in with the theme of the event. This year had an Eco theme and so my quizmaster was Sir Josep

I've had a good run with the sports events I've been part of this year - things have gone pretty well on and off the field and the Hurricanes run to the Super Rugby final was no different. On the night of the final we were pretty busy pre-match and I got the chance to interview some pretty cool people for the big screen - including Nathan, who queued all night for finals tickets and Tana Umaga. There was a really nice spot before kick-off where we got to introduce and bring o

Yes - that's right another outing for Corrugated Iron Man! For those of you that don't regularly follow this blog Corrugated Iron Man is a character I created in conjunction with Stun for Z Energy. He's appeared in the staff training videos and is now into his second awards show for the company. These awards are great because they are for something close to my heart and that's customer service. Every year Z has its annual Gathering of Heroes to salute the best in customer se

The last time I had to do any crying as part of a performance was back at University.But this job, with my old friends at MyFarm, required me to MC as myself, perform a dramatic piece about Safety and then, later on in the evening MC the gala dinner in character. It was a one day conference that had all the extremes! Beginning the day as MC things carried along business as usual until just before lunch when all the delegates came back from workshops to find me dressed as a fa

Once again it was awesome to be involved with the match presentations for The Hurricanes this season as the onfield MC (also ably assisted by Cohen Holloway while I was out of town on another event). This time we managed to cover every one of the Hurricanes' games at home. It was another awesome experience and we expanded our role this year, not only talking to the awesome fans in the crowd but interviewing players before the game, managing half-time activations and I even go

Its great to be able to talk about jobs that already have blog posts attached to them because this means that its repeat business! The IPENZ Transportation Group is a client I've had for a while and its always a great fun job to do because it is a mixture of character work (like my MCing the Gala Dinner as the Roman centurion Felinus Occulus Medianus Strada) and traditional MCing. It is also a real luxury being with the same group of people for a while - there is a real knowl

At last its done! With the completion of the New Zealand/West Indies Quarter-final my part in the Cricket World Cup for 2015 is over. The Black Caps are still going though after an amazing match where I was privileged to be able to watch Martin Guptill's amazing innings from down on the turf at the Westpac Stadium. I got to meet so many amazing fans from all over the world and had a chance to really indulge the cricket fan in me by meeting some amazing ex-players (including h

A little while back we talked in this blog about an awesome team-building exercise that we created for Te Papa. The great thing about the place is its uniqueness. There's no other venue around that comes close to it for size, variety of spaces and inspiration. So I thought it might be cool to put a few other suggestions of things that work fantastically in one of Wellington's most fantastic venues: THE BOGUS TOUR Take a tour unlike any other you will ever have at Te Papa! Our