Thank you and Looking Forward
Meeting for the week of June 29 - July 05, 2020
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Thank you and Looking Forward
Speaker: Tzviatko Chiderov, Raquel D'Garay-Juncal
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.
Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from President Tzviatko:
President Tzviatko
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?
Members of the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley from around the world
Happy Birthday!!
Monique Ziesenhenne (Jul 5)
From around the world,
Wishing you all the best, on your birthday and always!
🎂 🎈 🎉 🎁 🍾
Members and guests, consider donating in their honor in our Happy Dollars section below.
Weekly Funny with the Lady of Laughter (LOL)
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 Yvonne Kwan, our “Lady of Laughter!”
This week is the last week of the Rotary year and also my last week as your LoL. It's been a great 5-year run! Please continue to share jokes in the comments so that we can keep spreading laughter!
In honor of our new Rotary theme logo, here are some jokes that you will a-door.
Why did the scientist install a knocker on his door?
He wanted to win the no-bell prize!
I always knock on the front door of my fridge.
Just in case there is a salad dressing!
I'm writing a song about getting my door replaced.
There's a key change in the end!
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
Phra Maha Pranom Dhammalangkaro is a Buddhist monk leading a massive recycling effort in Thailand. Every month, 10 tons of plastic bottles fished from the ocean and discarded on land are delivered to his temple in Wat Chak Deng, and the waste is repurposed into monastic robes. See how the project benefits both the environment and the economy.
Member Spotlight
This week's Member Spotlight is Anil Gupta! Here is what they have been up to lately:
We recently took a small private group on a spiritual trip to India which included a meet up with His Holiness The Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamshala. We visited and inspired schools, monks, charity groups, ate the local cuisine and of course a bit of sightseeing including the Taj Mahal at sunrise and sunset.
The group enjoyed the interactions with a school in Rishikesh led by a Persian woman that now hosts 500 school kids, all paid by her charity, who are all from the slums. Each child is given milk in the morning and all you can eat lunch (their main meal of the day). They are all happy, respectful, kind and courteous.
All the kids have to pass an entrance exam and many kids are turned away. So sad to see that. All the kids are taught coding so they will all get jobs and will change their communities, one child at a time. It was a beautiful trip.
World of Rotary
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.
Sometimes, simple compositions are best. A bedsheet with three clothes pins or a ghost being arrested?
Learn Something New
This section is curated by members Shags Shagrin and Rushton Hurley 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 Rushton or Shags.
An Interesting Way to Thread a Needle!
Shags here! I'll admit that my eyesight isn't what it used to be, and that wasn't always great from age 20 or so on. When I had to mend things, I would often use a large needle with a huge eye so that threading it wasn't so hard. I know there are those thin needle-threader helpers which have a wire-diamond shaped part and a thin pusher part, but you still have to find that little hole with the wire tip. Here's a little hack from someone who calls themself Mad Russian Scientist!
Coffee With a Rotarian
A natural part of Rotary is the networking and the fellowship you get out of meeting other Rotarians. Coffee With a Rotarian is a monthly program of our club where we match participating club members for one-on-one virtual (or in some cases in person) coffee meetings, so they can learn more about each other. This program is organized by member Tzviatko Chiderov.
This week we have Suzanne from Napa, CA, USA reporting on a chat with Olukunle from Lagos, Nigeria
Today I had the pleasure of meeting with Olukunle Abolade of Lagos, Nigeria. He goes by the nickname of Olu, and his smile will brighten any room. I still feel aglow from our conversation. Olu is a very busy man because he works from home right now and has a four-year old boy and a two-year old daughter. He introduced me to them and they are precious!
Olu is a very happy member of our club and joined in 2018. He and I plan to continue our friendship, and I hope to introduce him to one of my friends who is also a software developer. I am excited to think about the next time that we will talk together.
We encourage all club members to participate in Coffee With a Rotarian. You can sign up here!
Relay for Life
Thanks again to everyone who contributed messages, photos, and donations to help with our club's fight against cancer! The money raised ($1122.62) goes to research, education, and programs for patients and caregivers. It makes a difference, and we want to honor all 35 members who took part:
When the event rolls around in October (hopefully), we'll look to get as many of our members who are able to join our team for walking.
Keep spreading hope!
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
On the first meeting of every month, we feature service reports from club members for the previous month. Thanks for your service everyone!
Help the vulnerable in your community during COVID-19
Helping Hands is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the most at-risk people in our community stay safe at home, while getting the supplies they need. It works by connecting local volunteers who can run critical errands, such as grocery shopping, with the most vulnerable members of our community. If you or someone you know needs help, fill out a request. If you are healthy and able to volunteer, please sign up to help. Together, we can help flatten the curve of COVID-19 by protecting our community’s most vulnerable.
Additional resources:
Club Announcements
Haven't joined the conversation on Facebook yet? Consider joining the conversation by signing into our club members-only Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/rotarysiliconvalley/
Our Events & Projects
We hold our meetings online, but we do regular service projects and social events in the Silicon Valley! This section is updated every week with our upcoming events. We welcome guests to all of the events and service projects listed here.
Past Events:
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 on the early hours of Saturday, so contributions made over the weekend may not be listed here.
Tzviatko Chiderov made a $10 donation.
Yay new website! Thanks Mark and Olu for your work on this!
Sarah Chase made a $25 donation.
I just wanted to thank Brett Sham for presenting to our club in Upstate New York last month. I appreciate you being flexible with the screen-share not working, waking up early to present to us, and helping to raise awareness to our club about how alternative clubs can attract more members. Thank you for your wonderful presentation!
Paul Boehm made a $25 donation.
Advocacy Treatment Center is a worthy charity that helps the Mentally ill.
Rory Olsen made a $20 donation.
Rained all day, off and on. Jazzy is awake and playful. Please apply my gift to Polio Plus.
Selected Comments
Every week at the bottom of our meetings, there is a comments section for members and guests to tell us what they enjoyed about the meeting or to ask questions to the speaker. We select a few comments every week from last week’s meeting to be featured during this week’s meeting.
Here are the comments selected from last week’s meeting.
Kelly said:
Happy birthday, Roger and Heather! Welcome to the club, Angelica! I'm looking forward to getting to know you better. I NEED to go back to Hamburg just to visit Miniature Wunderland. It looks incredible!
Thank you, Emily, for taking a stand against racism and being an ally.
Excellent presentation, Christine, Micah, and Jesse! I’m excited to see more and more companies incorporating AR/VR in their training toolbox. Your presentation definitely made me think about ways to improve the remote onboarding training I conduct with new team members at my firm.
By the way, Rotary offered a VR experience at one of its conventions a few years ago to show convention-goers how Rotary is changing lives. Here is the link to the videos in case anyone is interested: https://www.rotary.org/en/v....
Claudio “Sapi” Valdez said:
Hello!!
First of all happy birthday Heather and Roger.
Again a great meeting with a lot of content and super interesting stories.
Thank very much for sharing so much information!
Greetings from Paraguay!
Nathan Gildart said:
Christine, Micah, and Jesse, thank you for the presentation - Micah and Jesse especially, I'm bummed I couldn't join you for the recording! It would have been nice to reconnect. I'm a big fan of AR/VR and love what you're doing. My school here in Japan did an Expeditions pilot until COVID pulled to the plug on me working with faculty on it. Unfortunately, we don't have a dedicated tech coach so it's difficult to make time to get faculty up to speed on the potential of AR/VR for learning. (but still trying) Awesome to see you teaching the potential for schools, businesses and governments to harness AR/VR for learning. Great stuff!
For the teachers in the club, I'll give a little promo for Micah's book you'll enjoy called Wanderlust EDU. https://tinyurl.com/ycqspcl4
Be sure to leave a comment at the end of this week’s meeting after you watch the program below, and perhaps you’ll see your comment featured next week!
Program: Thank you and Looking Forward
Speaker: Tzviatko Chiderov, Raquel D'Garay-Juncal
Every week we bring to you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others. Special thanks to member Roger Plested for leading our club's Programs Committee in finding us amazing speakers each week.
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!
In this program, President Tzviatko and President-Elect Raquel will be walking us through how our club has evolved in the past year and what exciting plans are in store for the 2020-2021 Rotary year!
President Tzviatko will talk about what's been achieved over the past year as it relates to his goals of growing our club’s impact in our global community, improving member happiness and engagement, and making club operations more efficient.
President-Elect Raquel will then share her vision to bridge the continents through membership and projects, elevate our club's message, and strengthen our Rotary family.
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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Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done.
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