Using Sound and AI for Conservation
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF Feb 26, 2024
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Using Sound and AI for Conservation
Speaker: Dr. Sarika Khanwilkar
Is this your first time to visit us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page. Each Monday our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time. Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you. Please also make sure to complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
To properly attend this meeting, please:
Read and watch the content below in its entirety.
Complete the attendance survey.
Everyone is also encouraged to leave a comment in the Disqus section at the bottom of the page.
Message from our President
Greetings Members and Friends of Rotary e-Club of Silicon Valley. As President of our Club, I want to welcome you all today.
WEEKLY FUNNY WITH SHAGS
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Steven "Shags" Shagrin!
No More Complaining
An elderly couple decided they just spent too much time and energy complaining about all their aches and pains.
“Let’s agree to not say a word about our ailments,” suggested the wife. “We’ll talk about something else or say nothing at all.”
“Great idea!” replied the husband.
Three weeks later, they got a message from Alexa. “Hello! This is Alexa wondering if you are both OK. For the past three weeks, I have picked up no verbal communication in your household.”
INSPIRATION
Every week we share a short video highlighting innovation, education, entrepreneurship, or whatever we think might inspire you to see the world in new ways.
Here's a promo for an announcement coming up on March 12th regarding an architecture competition for reimagining the future of affordable housing. It's from ICON, partners of NewStory, a crowd that has presented to us before about 3D-printed homes. I (Rushton) will be paying attention, for sure!
LEARN SOMETHING NEW
Black Actors in Early Hollywood
In the 1920's and 30's, Hollywood was booming as the entertainment industry's movie-making headquarters. Here's a short video of what the actors of color faced. (Warning: strong language in some quotes at the end.)
Club News
Members
Club Service Club Service is one of Rotary’s Avenues of Service.
The role of the Club Service or Club Administration committee is to perform the logistical tasks that help create a great club experience for both current and newly inducted members. Clubs need active, engaged members to provide service to their communities and attract new members. Offering members the opportunity to participate in service projects that are meaningful to them, creating meetings that are fun and interactive, recognizing Rotarians on their birthdays or other milestones, checking in with them if they have missed a few meetings, choosing meeting speakers that they enjoy, and helping them connect with one another and with other Rotary clubs are just a few of the ways to keep members engaged.
In general, this committee helps make your club run smoothly and your meetings successful. As such, duties may include: arranging speakers, setting meeting agendas, maintaining websites and social media, coordinating communication, and planning assemblies, socials and other events.
Remember, being a Rotarian means more than just being a member, being a Rotarian means you are willing to do Rotary work. Please volunteer! If interested in working on a club committee (Membership, Club Service, Programs, Foundation, Youth Service, Mini-Grants, Budget & Finance) please let President Nick or President-Elect Mike know ASAP!
TRF & Every Rotarian, Every Year (EREY)
It’s not too late. Have you received and returned your 2024-2025 TRF Pledge Card that was sent via email by TRF Chair Phil?
Help our club join others in District 5170 to achieve 100% EREY. Only a $25.00 donation (more is welcome if you can) per member will qualify us for the District EREY lottery. The winning clubs will earn extra DDF funds to help us in our efforts to make a better world. Remember, our DDF comes back to us through your TRF giving. Sign-up today for your TRF contribution - https://www.siliconvalleyrotary.com/trf
Poetry Contest
Our friends at the Rotary eClub of Innovation (East Anglia, England) are sponsoring a poetry contest, and you are welcome to give it a look! These good folks joined our members via video conference in 2015 when we launched our club, and are a fun crowd. I (Rushton) would add that “it's probably better to enter a poetry contest and not need to than to need to enter and not do so”. https://poetrycompetition.org/
Is your latest information posted on our ClubRunner Members site at: https://portal.clubrunner.ca/8370/Page/ShowHomePage. After logging in, please be sure to access the MyClubRunner tab, and select My Profile. Please update your personal information here, which automatically updates our club directory.
Your Service Hours reporting will now take you directly to your ClubRunner Login and Entry for Volunteer Hours. From this point forward, your Service Hours will report to Rotary from ClubRunner.
TRF and EREY - There’s still time to consider your gift to Rotary for the annual TRF Fund. There are several ways to give: outright payment (Check or Credit Card), monthly payments billed to your credit card, allocation to several funds, etc. Our TRF Chair, Phil Dean has already sent by email your pledge and methods for collecting. Have you returned your pledge? Our Club is striving to be designated as “Every Year, Every Rotarian”. Your gift matters, either a small amount or a large amount (that is up to you - we will never tell you how much to give). A portion of our Annual fundgiving will come back to us for our DDF usage.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK: 26 February
Neil Armstrong: "I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine." - Resonates with Rotary's philosophy of making every moment count in the service of humanity.
District 5170
Read the latest news from District 5170 - https://rotarydistrict5170.org
SERVICE REPORT
Tell us about the service you’ve done recently for the Club or in your community. Also, post here if you attended another Rotary Club meeting this week
Click here to post your Service Hours directly to ClubRunner
SERVICE PROJECT OPPORTUNITIES
For upcoming club projects in District 5170, check out the District 5170 website. Also, if you have some time available for projects, be sure to let your local area Rotary Club know that you are available to volunteer for their upcoming projects.
HAPPY DOLLARS: Do Good by Sharing Something Good
Each week we ask our members to share stories with the club and toss in a few dollars to support our efforts. The primary goal of this section is to provide a fun way of getting to know each fellow members and guests, while giving back to a good cause.
Happy dollars is an opportunity to share something positive that has happened in your life whether it is personal or business. Think of it as your opportunity to brag a little, but also put a little bit into a karma jar. The money donated through happy dollars is put to charitable use.
PROGRAM: Using Sound and AI for Conservation
SPEAKER: Dr. Sarika Khanwilkar
Every week we bring you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others.
The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley seeks to explore perspectives on service from across the world. The views of the speakers in our programs are their own, and unless stated otherwise, are not necessarily reflective of the views of our eClub or Rotary International.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directly or submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
Rainforest Connection (RFCx) is a science- and technology-driven nonprofit detecting and preventing deforestation and supporting biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring in 119 countries. Founded in 2014, RFCx accomplishes this work by combining the power of acoustics, AI, an international team of field workers, scientists, engineers, and data scientists, and on-the-ground collaborators. By utilizing acoustic data and AI, they can gather data on the presence, distribution, and behavior of a wide range of species, from birds and mammals to insects and frogs, as well as patterns of threats. This information can then be used to inform conservation and management decisions, including identifying key biodiversity areas, establishing protected areas, evaluating wildlife management initiatives, and developing conservation strategies tailored to different species.
RFCx focuses on real-time threat detection of illegal activities, such as logging and poaching, using acoustic technology. To decrease illegal activity and protect threatened ecosystems, they developed recorders called Guardians, which are placed in the canopy and run in real-time. The Guardians automatically detect the sounds of chainsaws or gunshots and send alerts to rangers or communities via the Guardian Mobile and Web App, who can then immediately take action to stop illicit activities. The threat detection pipeline developed by RFCx has been adopted and successfully deployed across 25 countries.
To monitor biodiversity, RFCx aids partners end-to-end and/or in specific areas with their biodiversity monitoring projects using acoustics and AI with planning, executing, and understanding results. They produce long-term solutions to biodiversity monitoring by creating regional Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) that automate species detections of hundreds of species from sound recordings; they have classified almost 1,500 species around the world for automatic detection from 16 CNNs their team has developed. This allows on-the-ground collaborators to detect species and monitor their behavior long-term for the purpose of enabling data-driven conservation decisions and actions. Their team also conducts ecoacoustic analyses, combining species-specific and soundscape results from acoustic analysis with climatic and environmental variables to model ecological processes.
Our speaker, Dr. Sarika Khanwilkar, has dedicated her career to conserving endangered species and improving planetary health through data-driven action. Before joining Rainforest Connection (RFCx), a conservation technology startup and nonprofit, she got her Ph.D. in Ecology from Columbia University and was a Fulbright scholar. Dr. Khanwilkar has conducted research on the illegal wildlife trade, forest-based livelihoods, and forest health. She also is a founder of a nonprofit dedicated to tiger conservation and co-founder of one of India’s first research projects using sound to assess biodiversity. Most of her free time is spent in the forests of central India looking for tigers and admiring trees. At RFCx, she is Head of Partnerships and is actively involved in using scalable technologies for high-impact conservation work across the globe.
Members and guests, please welcome Dr. Sarika Khanwilkar!
To learn more, go to:
To learn more about the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, go to:
Important Announcement - “Weekly Rotarian” Full Meeting Podcasts
Announcing: Our main program speakers are now available as audio podcasts in addition to YouTube videos! Each week they are available on Spotify, Google, and Apple podcasts.
Or you can simply click below for this week’s speaker:
And our original podcast, featuring Some of the best of our previous speakers is still available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts
UPCOMING PROGRAM RECORDING SCHEDULE
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always http://zoom.siliconvalleyrotary.com/. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).
If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
THE ATTENDANCE SURVEY
Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done.
We have a very short attendance survey below for you to fill out to record your attendance.
Visiting Rotarians, this is how you can get an email receipt to pass along to your club’s secretary as proof that you’ve attended our meeting if you need it for makeup.
Non-Rotarian Guests, we would love to see who is dropping by our meetings! This part is optional for you. If you think you may want to join our eClub at some point in the future, we would strongly recommend you fill out the attendance form as it will improve your chances of success for your membership application.
For all members and guests — we strongly recommend and ask that you leave a comment in our comments area below. Tell us how you enjoyed the program. Ask this week’s speaker any questions you might have. Or just stop by and say hello and tell us where you’re from!
Important: Once you submit the Attendance Survey below, please make sure you see the confirmation message. If you get an error message instead, please try the 'submit' button again, and if that doesn't work, please refresh the page and fill out the form again. Thanks!
