... August Happy Hour ...

So we had out first happy hour over at Dave and Busters in Milpitas. I guess they do have some good stuff out there and they really do offer a wide variety of activities that you could indulge in. A lot happened this night that I dare not get into details – flying pucks, the ticket wars, Tiffany’s addiction to the little coin sweeper game – Now you can only imagine what she is like in Vegas, Henry trying to get belligerent (more like Disney channel where the worst they can do is like cry or something), somehow Seitu figured out that you couln’t go wrong if you chose “C” at trivia – not to forget that Jessica had him on manikin duty, Jenesha landing knockout blows over at boxing, Zuberi and the football draft, Adrienne and the free food, Devaris and the clowning, Denny – Just like Denny’s, Joel and the famous random atom “critical path” trail. Crazy stuff.

How about less talk this time … more pictures. Too bad we didn’t take lots of them at the dinner table. I love how we encroached and poached the neighboring tables and seats and just gaffled them before the waiters even knew what was happening.

... Welcome to Phoenix, NV ...

So RLC was held in Phoenix this year from the 11th to the 13th of August (Don’t get on my case for my tardiness – Times are tough and time is really hard to come by). For those who don’t know, RLC (Regional Leadership Conference) is an event geared to those who would like to know more about how NSBE runs and what it takes to run a NSBE chapter.




One of the most amusing things about the trip was the flight there. So it just so happens that Arizona is a state plagued by a monsoon system during summer. So given this, we left San Jose for Phoenix on Friday night and being the extremely busy person I am I blacked out as soon as I got into my seat. A while later, the plane landed and I woke up as soon as the tires hit the tarmac. The very first thing I noticed though was that the skyline was really like whoa! I thought to myself “Wow, the Phoenix skyline has changed a lot within the last six months!” I mean there were lights all over and …




10 seconds later the captains voice goes on the intercom “Folks we just touched down in Las Vegas to refuel just in case we have to circle the Phoenix airport for a while because of the monsoon thunderstorms”. Do I need to say more. I don’t think I have to.




RLC was good (I have noticed that I am really short on my vocabulary – I use “Good”, “Great”, “Nice”, “The Bomb” a lot.) How about RLC was mind blowing! (Then insert a scream here). There were a ton of workshops as usual that will definitely help make the SVC Board a more effective board and we were blessed to have the national collegiate and alumni chairs in attendance, the national treasurer (she was great. Gave us some great tips on investments and how to get on the NSBE investment bandwagon … Oooh, I take that back – She was mind blowing).




So this year’s theme is LOVE.
Leadership and Academic Development
Operational Effectiveness
Vital Technical Excellence
Expanding Career Access

As an alumni chapter, some of these definitely do match with the goals that we set for ourselves as a chapter when we first convened to form the Alumni group. Our initial goals were:

- To recharter the chapter (done)
- To increase membership (in progress – we have grown tremendously so far)
- To offer professional development for members (we haven’t gained much headway in this yet)
- To strategically align ourselves with other black organizations e.g. black MBAs, to form a relationship with PCI Chapters and to form strong bond with collegiate chapters. (We currently have a very strong bond with San Jose State, a working relationship with Stanford, great … MINDBLOWING relations with NCCBPE among other black orgs)




For a corny ending – The thunderstorms in Arizona definitely reminded us of the NSBE lighting bolt symbol and we shall definitely keep striving towards the striking impact that will be felt by the society and industry due to the contributions and accomplishments made by the dedicated members of the National Society of Black Engineers.






For (string that was a really corny ending = really corny, corny < that was so corny, corny * infinity) {

cout << That was sooooooo corny;
endcorny; // Thanks!
}

... legit ...

So we finally became a chartered chapter this Sunday. Two members signed on and paid their NSBE dues to bring the total number of paid members to 10. Thanks to Seitu and Aresia for the photo finish, kodak moment payment of membership dues. Thanks to everyone who signed on and helped us cross this milestone. If you havent renewed your alum membership, https://nol.nsbe.org is the place to be and "Silicon Valley" is the chapter of choice.

Next milestone that needs to be crossed - Achieving 503(c) non-profit status which should be happening pretty soon.

... August power lunch ...

Well so the power lunch is held every first Friday of the month and the way it works is that we pick a restaurant and invite all the NSBE alums out for lunch. A pretty okay way to network coz really - you gotta have lunch and why not just have it with other NSBE alums and get to make that connection?



Anyway, today’s lunch was at Pedro’s in Santa Clara. Pretty cool place. Too bad nobody took pictures and hence I have to resort to posting a nice little generic image that I pulled off the Pedro’s site. For shame. A couple of people showed up - Guidant, Cloudshield, NASA, Cepheid, Rockwell and Juniper were well represented esp. Guidant. Those stent guys really rounded up a crowd. Juniper is hiring by the way. Anybody need a job? The food was nice - you know Mexican restaurants - fill up on salsa and chips waaaay before food shows up.



All in all, it was a great event, we doubled last month’s attendance and at this rate our numbers should increase exponentially. By December we will definitely have to reserve a whole restaurant if we keep going at this rate.

The short: Mark your calendars. We are definitely gonna shake it up come September 1st. And Juniper is hiring.

... alumni game night ...

29th Saturday 2006

Well the game night started kind of crazy for me (crazy considering the fact that I got there at about 7:30 - the event was supposed to start at 6PM and I had a bunch of stuff that I needed to finish up on). So I walk in to Diego’s place and there's about 20 people already there and I am thinking to myself "way to go people, I knew this whole CPT thing was a myth". So anyway theres a whole bunch of people, some playing dominoes, others playing Keno?, speed, some game whose name I don’t know and others were out in the balcony.





The crowd was really cool and it was my first time seeing at least half of the people there. I got to chat it up with a couple of people - the crowd was from pretty diverse locations too - Indiana was represented, Philly was in the house, St. Louis, Chicago, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria - not to forget good old Cali.





The event went on really well - great company, good food (who am I kidding, franchise pizza is *DEFINITELY* not what you would call good food - you gotta live though. At least it wasn’t Top Ramen like it used to be back in the college days), nice background music, crazy games and it is amazing that by 1AM there were still 16 of us. Oooh, I forgot to mention, the guys won the "Battle of the sexes" game. YEAH for masculinity.





Anyway, we started playing "Scene it" at 1AM. It was an 8 on 8 team affair but it was clear at the end of the night that Trish’s team was like the Bulls of the 90s. It was more like Trish vs the other 8. She was on fire - Like the reincarnation of the "Scene-it" version of MJ. Needless to say Trish's team won and we all decided to do an everyone vs Trish "Scene-off" (If that isn’t one of the craziest puns you ever heard then I don’t know what is). All I have to say is MJ came through harder than Kobe's 81 points. Trish pulled a comeback victory against all 15 of us. Talk about freaking ESPN worthy stuff man. It was all highlight material.





The game night ended later on (or early Sunday morning). It was a great event - back to training camp for now - no way Trish is schooling us like she did again.