John (“Jonty”) Skinner
Jonty Skinner is a former South African swimmer turned national American swim coach. Jonty began his coaching career in 1978 when appointed head coach of University of Alabama's swim team. After three years he moved to California and became the head coach of the San Jose Aquatics Club where under his guidance the club won five junior national championship team titles and in 1986 took the national championship team title at Phillips 66 Long Course Senior Nationals. He served as head coach until 1988.

From 1994 to 2000 Skinner served as USA Swimming’s Resident Team Coach, which involved coaching some of the nation's top swimmers at the elite national and international level.

From 2000 to 2008 Skinner served as USA Swimming's Director of National Team Technical Support, which involves coordinating all of the testing, tracking and assessment of the National Team athletes.

He currently operates Athletic Intelligence Consulting and is an UpMyGame coach.

Jon Foss
The Foss Swim School is a talented and energetic group of professionals dedicated to a child’s interest in swimming. Co-owners, Jon and Susan Foss, and their collection of outstanding staff, have redefined the “swim lesson” experience since 1993 for thousands of Minnesota children by providing a unique, creative, animated, challenging, and remarkably “FOSS” style of teaching that keeps children smiling, swimming, and safe!

Barbara Nolan
Barb formerly owned and operated the Nolan Swim School for 15 years. Currently, she owns and operates Dipadees Little Aussie Swim School. She has previously been the Swim Australia Development Manager and the Swim Australia National Learn To Swim Tour Seminar Coordinator as well as the Australasian–Oceania Swimming Professionals Convention and Expo Teaching Stream Coordinator.

Barb has been an advisor in the Swim Australia Teacher course development and on the Swim Australia Infant Teacher Guidelines.

She is the author of several e-books, workbooks and articles.

Siria Thomas
I am looking forward to coming over to speak on water safety/drowning prevention.

My key presentation is on ‘Integrating Water Safety into your Curriculum’. This would be an hour session that starts with the overwhelming tragedy of childhood drowning (including footage of families who have lost children to drowning). I then offer teachers and swim schools advice on easy, practical things they can do to raise the water safety component at their swim school (including footage of survival skills that can be included in lessons) and how swimming lessons can and do make a difference to the drowning statistics - finishing off with footage (which I am currently putting together) of families for which swimming lessons have ‘paid-off’ and their children have survived accidental fall-in’s etc….

Tracey & I are also leading Swim Australia’s SwimSAFER (water safety) initiative

Tracey Ayton
My presentation is called “The Pros and Cons of Teaching with Flotation”. It outlines the good and bad methods of teaching with flotation devices. There are good reasons for teaching with appropriate flotation aids for minimal parts of a lesson plan and also reasons not to use them in an inappropriate way.

Discussion is based on what works correctly and how teachers can change their ways if they are teaching with an overkill of flotation devices. The presentation also covers the consequence of the inflated ability that the swimmer develops with the flotation aids and the overconfidence that this also brings. There is video footage of teaching with and without flotation during the presentation.

It is a fairly controversial subject so at the end of the presentation we open it up to debate across the floor. This usually gets everybody talking about what is the best way to go about teaching infants. It is not necessarily about who is right or wrong in their teaching methods but what is the most effective way to bring about the best result and not one of false security.

Gill Connell
Gill Connell is a primary trained teacher who specialised in music, child development and motor development. She has taught extensively at all levels of the pre and primary school, from birth to year 8. She established Moving Smart Ltd, to provide assistance for parents, caregivers and teachers working in Child and Motor Development.

In recent years Gill has run her own preschool music school, she is a trained Suzuki piano teacher and more recently was responsible for the GymbaROO programme arriving on the New Zealand scene. She has trained with Judie Bullus and Peter Coles in Melbourne in PMP (Perceptual Motor programming) and Smart Words (Word Study) and is the co- author of Moving to Learn. She also helped develop the SPARC Active Movement Initiative and trains and mentors the Active Movement coordinators nationally for Sport and Recreation New Zealand. She was heavily involved in the writing of the Active Movement guidelines and wrote the Active Movement brochures for SPARC.

Raelene Ryan
With a proven ability in designing and implementing training programs, Raelene (Raels) joined Miami in 1997 as the National Age coach. She has achieved gold qualifications and has travelled with teams as Head Coach for the Queensland Development Squad. She has toured as manager for numerous international teams including the PAN PAC team (Victoria, Canada), World Youth Games and the World Cup (Singapore). Raelene has recently been appointed as a coach to the Commonwealth Youth Games team in September to be held in India.

Raelene started swimming at eight years of age and at the age of ten her family moved to Bundaberg, where she was trained by Lawrie Lawrence. She competed and was a record holder at state and national levels. At eleven years of age she represented Australia in the first High School Pan Pacific Games in Brisbane.

Nathan Mikaere-Wallis
Nathan’s current role is lecturer at Canterbury University’s College of Education, School of Human Development and Educational Studies. Nathan’s background is in teaching, child counseling, and educational management. Nathan is a founding member of the Te Wai Pounamu Brainwave Board, a presenter for Brainwave and a trainer for Child Protection Studies. He works within his own consultancy called “X Factor Education”.

The 1990s were called the ‘decade of the brain’ because we learnt more about the brain then than all of our collective knowledge prior to that. The result is there is now a large gap between how people ‘think’ the brain works and how research shows it to actually be! These research results contradict a lot of the practices parents, teachers and coaches have used for the last 100 years and continue to think are aiding the child. New technologies give us clear scientific research with which to understand the human brain and how to best facilitate reaching its full potential.