Can local podcasts make cities healthier and happier?
Meeting for the week of February 28, 2022 - March 03, 2022
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Can local podcasts make cities healthier and happier?
Speaker: David Plotz
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!
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Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from our Club President.
Hi Members and Guests,
Welcome to this week’s meeting of the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley.
Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention is one of Rotary’s 7 areas of focus and is recognised during the month of February on the Rotary calendar. Promoting peace is a core part of Rotary’s mission, with Rotarians working to create a more peaceful world by carrying out service projects that aim to foster peace and understanding and address many of the root causes of conflict and tension, including poverty, discrimination, lack of access to education and other causes of inequality. Our club and our members have contributed to many projects in these areas, including our Global Grant school project in Soda, Ethiopia, that aims to improve access to education and greater education equality; and our Laptops for Good project, that provides laptops to low-income students that have been outstanding community leaders as they commence at university.
I also have some other important announcements:
Gabi has transitioned to a new role at work, and as a result, has stepped down as Treasurer. At the last Board meeting, it was resolved to appoint Cecelia to fill this vacancy, in accordance with our bylaws, section 3.8(e). Many of you would be familiar with Cecelia and know that she most recently served as Vice President during the past Rotary year. I would like to thank Gabi for the tremendous effort and contribution she has made since taking on the role and to also thank Cecelia for now taking over.
The Board has approved an extension to Sandy’s leave of absence until the end of the Rotary year. As most of you will be aware, Sandy has been a very passionate and hard-working Service Chair, and as such we are looking for someone to help act in this role for the remainder of this Rotary year. The focus will be on helping refine the changed Min-e-Grants program we launched last year and then identifying and selecting projects to receive the grants for this year. If you are interested and able to assist, please send me an email.
The Public Relations committee is currently dormant, and the Chair position is vacant (notwithstanding our website team continues to work hard, doing a great job of maintaining and updating our website, including the meeting page each week). The goal of this committee is to provide the public with information about our club and its service projects and activities. If you would be interested in serving on this committee or taking on the role as Chair, please send me an email.
Service to your club by actively engaging and participating on committees is an important part of Rotary service and a great way to enrich your Rotary experience, so I encourage you all to consider these positions as an opportunity to Serve to Change Lives.
Brett Sham
President, Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley
president@siliconvalleyrotary.com
Guests, we are happy to have you join us this week!
As we see it, our flexibility as an online, asynchronous club allows a special type of service to Rotarians around the world: we make it easier for anyone to strive for and maintain 100% attendance. That keeps you engaged with Rotary's events and ideas, and provides a moment of inspiration for devoting your creativity, talents, and resources to good causes.
You are certainly not required to pay anything in order to attend our meetings. However, if you would like to make a small contribution to our service efforts, you are welcome to do so in our secure Happy Dollars section down the page. This could be what you normally pay at your own club's meetings for lunch, for example. Any amount is welcome, but first and foremost, we're happy you've joined us, and hope you will share with others who we are and what we do to help inspire Service Above Self.
And don't forget to fill out our attendance form so you get an email you can pass on to your club's secretary!
The Four Way Test
The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships.
Of the things we think, say or do
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
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 !
The Verge
A Sunday school teacher asked her class, "What was Jesus' Mother's name?"
One child answered, "Mary."
The teacher then asked, "Who knows what Jesus' Father's name was?"
Another child said, "The Verge."
Confused, the teacher asked, "Where did you get that?"
The little one said, "Well, you know they are always talking about The Verge n' Mary."
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
Last week we met Sam Favret flying down a mountain on skis. This week, a different kind of flying. What does the crafting of the video make you wonder? Feel free to add your thoughts to the forum at the bottom of the meeting page.
Through a Rotarian's Lens
Sometimes a photo can capture an amazing moment. In this section Member Keith Marsh shares his incredible photography!
If you'd like to submit a photo for this section please contact Keith.
As a follow-up to my last week's photos that were published by The Rotarian Magazine, here are four more of my photos dating back to 1997 when I was President of the Rotary Club of Mission San Rafael. The Milky Way at Crater Lake photo was the winner of the Rotary Photo Contest in 2016. It was also selected by National Geographic as Photo of the Day in June 2015.
Learn Something New
This section is curated by members Shags Shagrin and aims to teach our members and guests something new, fun, and useful! If you have any ideas on a fun trick or skill you'd like to share please contact Shags.
More Barbershop Quartets!
I came across a great short clip that is called "This is Barbershop Today". The Choruses scene is the best! Hit pause and see how the different quartets dress for their part. There's even a Marx Brothers group!! Enjoy -- I always do. Now I want to go to a competition as a spectator!
3rd International e-RYLA - Rotary Youth Leadership Award
Hi everyone,
The third International e-RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) seminar - which our club is proud to be helping organise - is coming up soon, from 4 to 6 March.
With the theme Building Bridges, the seminar will bring together participants from around the world, providing them with the opportunity to hear from some amazing speakers - including RI President Shekar and our very own club members Rushton, Tzviatko, Maxi, Sarah and Mitty - and to network with other young leaders that are all looking to have an impact on the world. Thank you to our club members that have demonstrated such passion and dedicated much effort into organising a program that is jam-packed with content that will provide these young leaders with the tools, knowledge and inspiration to get out in the world and Serve to Change Lives.
Service Report
Tell us about service you’ve done recently in your community.
Click here to fill out The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Service Survey
Our Events & Projects
We hold our meetings online, but we do regular service projects and social events in the Silicon Valley! The section is updated every week with our upcoming events. We welcome guests to all of the events and service projects listed here.
Upcoming Events:
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)
District 5170 Events
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)
More events coming soon! All events are open to guests, unless otherwise mentioned. Feel free to join us! If you ever have questions, please email inquiries@siliconvalleyrotary.com
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, and the message that you leave for happy dollars will be posted in our online meeting the following week for the entire week for folks to see! (Pending that it’s appropriate!)
Here are the happy dollars contributions from last week!
This section is usually updated in the early hours of Saturday, so contributions made over the weekend may not be listed here.
Program: Can local podcasts make cities healthier and happier?
Speaker: David Plotz
Every week we bring to 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 nor 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!
Can local podcasts make cities healthier and happier?
Local news is at once dying and enjoying a renaissance. In most cities, daily newspapers are weakening or collapsing, and local TV news serves up sensationalist nothing. At the same time, Axios is launching local newsletters in 100 cities; digital nonprofit newsrooms like Denverite and Oaklandside are growing fast, and local public radio stations are thriving. And now, City Cast has walked into the room. In 5 cities today, and 17 by the end of 2022, City Cast is making the first serious effort to marry local news and podcasting.
Podcasting, our speaker argues, offers a new approach to local journalism, and one that--if done right--will make citizens feel more connected to their city and their neighbors. Podcasting is a poor informational medium: If you want to understand the city budget, would you choose a podcast or a digital data visualization? But podcasting is an incredible medium for emotion and connection because that's what the human voice does. City Cast podcast hosts are the Jimmy Breslins’ of our age--the people who love their city more than anyone else, think it's more messed up than anyone else and can convey that passion to their audience. From the company: "Our podcasts are going to make people care more about their cities."
David Plotz is CEO of City Cast (www.citycast.fm), a network of daily local news podcasts that launched in early 2021 and is now live in Denver, Chicago, Salt Lake, Houston, and Pittsburgh. He also co-hosts the Slate Political Gabfest, the popular weekly podcast. From 2014 to 2020, Plotz was the first CEO of Atlas Obscura. From 2008 to 2014, Plotz was Editor-in-Chief of Slate. He's the author of two books, one about the Bible, the other about a sperm bank for Nobel Prize winners. He lives in Washington, DC with his three kids.
Members and guests, please welcome David Plotz!
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.
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