Meeting for the Week of Feb. 2nd, 2015
Greetings
You have found your way to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, and are joining us for the second meeting of our young existence - welcome!Our club is part of Rotary International, which is made up of 1.2 million men and women around the globe who think the world can be better if we take a little time to make it so. That's all the more easily done when good folks pool their time, talents, energy, and resources, to see what we can do.Each week, we're helping our guests and our members new to Rotary strengthen their understanding of what service can be. And as an online club based in the world's heart of innovation, we're doing it with attention to what can be powerfully helpful, innovatively hopeful, and - quite simply - cool.Thank you for joining us, and we hope you will take part as often as you're able; for as you see, there's plenty of room at our table!
Choosing to Act
Rotarians are folks who choose not to sit on the sidelines, feeling it's better to get involved and find a way to help. The video below tells the story of Benjamin Rasmus, a Rotarian in the U.S. state of Washington, who decided last year to do something as part of the effort of clubs in that area to support the nonprofit Rotary First Harvest.https://vimeo.com/103271259I sent them an email and invited Benjamin or another rider to speak to our club. If you know someone whose story could inspire us, please do the same!
Club Happenings
New Member Orientation
All of our members who are new to Rotary should by now have attended the orientation meeting we did on January 17th, or should have followed this link to the new member orientation information Membership Chair Shags put together. That document also includes a link to the half-hour presentation Shags gave. If you are new to Rotary and haven't done this, now's the time!
Service Time
As Rotarians, we challenge ourselves to find time often (each week, if possible), to do something for others. We gather this info to get a good sense of what we as a club can make happen, so please take just a moment to tell of your service using this survey to report any service activities in which you've been involved. This should not be a direct activity of your employment, but can be tangential to your regular job.
Committee News
The Membership Committee will be doing its first hangout this Wednesday morning - see Shags' email for details.
District and Area Happenings
District NewsletterDistrict Governor Ed Jellen and his team have gathered plenty of news of goings-on in our area (District 5170), and you can read all about it in January's issue of the district newsletter.
District Conference
Each spring, our district has its annual conference for members of all the district's clubs. Please save April 17th-19th as a time to attend if you are able. You will find more details on p4 of the district newsletter.
Exercise for a Good Cause
The Lam Research Heart & Soles 5K invites everyone to participate in a family fun run/walk supporting healthier school lunches by raising funds to place salad bars in Silicon Valley K-12 schools. The event is on Saturday, Feb. 5th, with the 5K starting at 9:00a, and the Kids Fun Run (ages 2-7) starting at 10:30. Location: Hellyer County Park (985 Hellyer Avenue, San Jose). Click here to learn more from the event website.
Money Matters
A Timely Treatise from your Tenacious and Trusty TreasurerGreetings fellow eClub of Silicon Valley Rotarians! Here begins a regular weekly report from your friendly neighborhood bean counter. Since we’re just getting started, there’s not much to report, but I do want you all to know how much I do appreciate you and that I’ll be sending you each a love letter, though you might think it looks a lot more like an invoice. No, it’s a reflection of my deep admiration for each of you and, after receiving it, if you would just reciprocate with a token of your admiration for your trusty treasurer (in the form of a check or by using the online pay function that we’re going to get up and running real soon), I would feel so very honored.All kidding aside (I’m not kidding about the invoice, though), we’re looking forward to doing some great things in this club and I’ll be using this column to let you know where the money is coming from and where it is all going. Besides members’ dues, which is what we use for our club overhead, we hope to have some substantial fundraising. Funds that we raise will go 100% towards service projects and here is where I’ll pass along the details about the funds we’ve raised and where we used them.One of our principal fundraisers will be donations from our visitors who come here to make up a meeting. As we will every week, we would like to respectfully remind all visitors that if they would like to contribute the normal cost of a meal for your makeup, we would be grateful. You can be assured your donation will be used to provide necessary funds for a worthy service project. Guests, for now, you may write a check to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley and mail it to treasurer Allen Thompson, 13500 Cascade Ct., Bakersfield CA 93314. As I said earlier, soon we will have an online payment service (similar to PayPal), but that’s not ready yet.In the weeks ahead, you'll hear more from me about the funding that supports Rotary's projects around the world.Best wishes, and yours in Service to Rotary,From your treasurer,Allen Thompson
The Power of Images
Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley member Keith Marsh is an acclaimed photographer who was featured last year in The Rotarian magazine. In January, he made a trip to Yosemite here in California, and on a perfectly clear night with no moon, spent two hours in the meadow at 28 degrees making this star trails photo.I love it when technology allows us to see the wonder of nature!
Selected Comments from Last Week
In last week's meeting, President Rushton introduced our eclub to the world, and we began our mission of finding innovatively cool ways that technology can serve the business of service. Here are some of the comments that followed the meeting.
from member John Lozano:Thanks for a great first meeting. As a new member to Rotary, I will have to "go slow, to go fast" as I become more familiar with the meetings. I use the phrase, "go slow, to go fast" when starting something new. As seen in Kelvin's video, he started with something very simple and learned by doing. And later he has progressed to building a radio station and visiting M.I.T. Obviously, Kelvin could never had traveled to M.I.T without first starting slow and progressing to greater possibilities. I look forward to building my knowledge of Rotary and creating exciting opportunities for everyone involved.
from member Lisa Highfill:Really loved the flow of our first meeting. The website is clean, uncluttered, scrolling and to the point. I love the different pieces which give us pause to think without telling us what to think.The video of Kelvin will stay with me for a long time. It has some important points that go well beyond what an amazing person he is. It's something I think of often - what is the best way to help others. My key aha was David describing the Summer Innovation Camp he runs in Sierra Leone "that challenges kids to think about the toughest problems in their communities and have them solve it." In my opinion, this is the essence of lasting change that many hope to inspire because the outcomes are so multilayered.Thank you for a thought provoking meeting. It was a nice way to spend a little time on a Saturday morning.
from guest Judy Taunt (Arizona; Rotary eClub of the Southwest USA):It looks like a wonderful start and I am looking forward to see how all of you collaborate, cooperate in developing this club...I want to thank you as a low vision user that I was able to have my computer read the whole meeting to me. This is important to people like me with a vision condition, so keep it in mind when selecting new members allowing them to continue their Rotary membership and service. I find that low vision folks tend to shy away from meeting face to face in large groups. [Judy was the charter president of the Rotary eClub of the Southwest USA.]
from member Allen Thompson:This is a Great Start to a Great Rotary Club!!! My compliments to Mitty Chang and Rushton Hurley for all of their hard work getting this website "off the ground" and flying high.Wonderful inspirational video. There must be thousands of Kelvin Does in the world and they are both inspired and inspiring. But let's not forget the David Sengehs of the world who bring the Kelvins into view. Kudos to David and I hope we, as a club, can do as well as David has done in bringing good news to the world.
This Week's Program
This week's speaker is one of our eclub's new Rotarians, Kevin Brookhouser.Kevin is based in Monterey, California, where he teaches and serves as the Director of Technology at York School, an independent, college preparatory school for grades 8-12. You can read about his experiences as an educator at his blog at the 20time.org site.Kevin is also a writer, and his book, The 20time Project, became available on Amazon in the last few weeks.Today you will hear about Kevin's work to help students unlock their potential to solve "wicked" problems. It is the first of our programs to introduce our members to each other, and we look forward to having everyone else do a presentation, too!Members who viewed or participated in the recording of the message are welcome to skip below to the form for finishing the meeting. Everyone else, watch and enjoy!
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