How (and Why) I'm Doing It Different
Meeting for the week of November 11 - November 17, 2019
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: How (and Why) I'm Doing It Different
Speaker: Brett Kopf
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:
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Everyone is also encouraged to leave a comment in the Disqus section at the bottom of the page.
Table of Contents
Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from President Tzviatko:
Greetings Rotarians and Guests,I’d like to congratulate May on her Paul Harris Fellow recognition! See the video in the past events section below for more info.This week we have Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brett Kopf speaking to us about his learnings from his first venture and the excitement of his new undertaking.Looking forward to seeing your comments and questions.
Sincerely,
Tzviatko
President, Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley
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!
🎂 🎈 🎉 🎁 🍾
Happy Birthday!!
Ferheen Abbasi (Nov 11)
Rebecca Fry (Nov 15)
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!”
Have I got a deal for you this week! These playing card jokes are sure to win big laughs!
Why can't you play cards with a pirate?Because they're standing on the deck!
Why can't you play cards in the grasslands?Because there are too many cheetahs!
I keep imagining I'm holding a pack of invisible cards.No one knows what I'm dealing with!
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
This restaurant in Weissbad, Switzerland, is remote, to say the least. Perched on the side of a mountain in the Swiss Alps, it’s at an elevation of about 5,000 feet above ground level. Even if you take a cable car, you’ve got to hike steep terrain at least part of the way.That said, it’s a beautiful journey that takes you through a 40,000-year-old cave and by a chapel carved right into the mountain. And you’re following in the footsteps of hungry hikers who have been trekking to this restaurant for 173 years.
Member Spotlight
This week's Member Spotlight is Ferheen Abbasi! Here is what she has been up to lately:
As I prepare for medical school, I have been working on my personal statement and trying to figure out which schools to apply to. It's been a little rough because it's hard to talk about yourself. If anyone is interested in reading my essay and giving me feedback, please let me know!! I need a lot of help ;)Last week, I went to my former workplace's 20th Anniversary Celebration where my former boss/second mom Marcy was honored for her work in advocating for early childhood educators. Marcy has been the leading researcher in this field for 40 years, with HUNDREDS of research publications about the issue. Something that really stuck with me that night was a comment her son made.He said "how wonderful must it be to find that one thing you are passionate about and then dedicate your life to it." It made me think long and hard about what I want my lasting legacy to be. I got to meet extraordinary people whose lives were all touched by Marcy and I want to dedicate this "Member Spotlight" to her :)Cheers to turning 27!
World of
Vocational training team helps with autism
Learn more at https://blog.rotary.org/2019/09/26/vocational-training-team-helps-with-autism/
Movember fundraising
Are you interested in growing a mustache for the month of November? The fundraising committee is looking to host a Movember fundraising effort where we find volunteers from our club willing to grow a mustache for the month and then create a financial pledge to the Rotary Foundation for their efforts. If you'd like to donate to the effort to do so via the Happy Dollars spot.
Ps: please send your pictures to the club's Slack or Facebook pages and we'll collect them each week and post a collage of our works-in-progress!
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.
Monday, Novermber 11th is Veteran's Day in the USA. I took this photo on Veteran's Day in 2004 at the San Francisco National Cemetary in the Presidio with infrared film.With infrared light anything with chlorophyll (cemetary lawn) is reflected as white.
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.
5-Minute Crafts
3 useful and easy craft ideas
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 Sandy from Fremont, CA, USA reporting on a chat with Nate from Nagoya, JapanFirst, Nate and his family and friends are all safe from Typhoon Hagibis that made landfall in Japan.Nate was born and raised in Halifax, Canada.He has taught in Japan for 23 years.Nate has been a Rotarian for 4 years and was asked to join the eClub by Rushton who he has known for many years. His wife just became a Nurse.We had a very interesting conversation about world history and travel.We encourage all club members to participate in Coffee With a Rotarian. You can sign up here!
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!
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:
On Saturday, November 9th, our member May Yam was honored with the Paul Harris Fellow award, presented physically by our Past President Mitty Chang. The Paul Harris Fellow was provided to May by Rotary Club of Alpharetta's Past President Scott Doll, who used his personal points for Paul Harris Fellow in recognition of May Yam’s outstanding contributions to our common Rotarian causes. Thanks Scott!
Here is a recording from the celebration and congratulations May!
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.
Rushton Hurley made a $5 donation.Gotta toss in a donation to the club in honor of Keith, who had a birthday AND presented! Very cool.
Helene Davis made a $20 donation.I'm the Assistant Governor for Area 8 which includes the eClub of Silicon Valley. This is my first time attending one of your meetings and I have to say, I am impressed!
Rory Olsen made a $20 donation.Visited my daughter and grandkids in NC. Great time.
November is Rotary Foundation Month, so all Happy Dollars donations made in November will go to the Annual Fund (unless otherwise indicated)
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.
Rushton Hurley said:
Happy birthday, Keith! Loved getting the lessons on photography, too. I'll admit to tearing up watching the Five Keys school bus video. As with Keith's passion for photography, I love seeing someone with a purpose tell a story. Yvonne, great picture of your students at The Tech. I'll be taking some students to a makerspace in a few weeks, and we should powwow about it afterward to see if it's a good place for your class.
ShagsCA said:
I finally was able to get editing access again and added the recipe to my contribution to Learn Something New, so if you missed it the first time you stopped into the meeting and then later in my first comment (since deleted), it's now above! Great learning some photo tips from Keith, and I'm an old style film guy from the 70s with a home darkroom. I've got to start playing around in digital and with editing and merging like he does!
Sandy Stabile said:
Happy Birthday Keith! I really enjoyed your talk and i am looking forward to trying some things I learned. The Five Keys program is remarkable.I look forward to trying the rice recipe.
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: How (and Why) I'm Doing It Different
Speaker: Brett Kopf
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.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directlyor submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
Brett Kopf is the cofounder and former CEO of Remind.com, where he is currently a board member. Remind currently supports thirty million active teachers, students and parents, and has 80% of u.s. teachers using the product. Brett raised over $60M from Kleiner Perkins and Social Capital.He now resides in Denver, Colorado, with his wife and 100-pound Swiss Mountain dog. He has recently started his second company which helps clubs, teachers, and religious leaders more easily collect money as part of their fundraising efforts.As someone who has truly lived a Silicon Valley dream, Brett will share how his experiences here changed him. From his description: "My first startup was a rollercoaster. After taking time off, I've started company two with a new lens on what matters and why - both personally and professionally.I will share lessons learned, and the changes I've made to build a long term, values-driven company which impacts many."Members and guests, please welcome Brett Kopf.
Share your thoughts or ask our speaker a question in the comments at the bottom of this meeting page!
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 https://zoom.us/j/5104080000. 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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