... october general meeting ...

Saturday October 28th 2006 – Now that’s what you call a perfect day. The skies were all laid out in blue with little puffs of white here and there, sun shone brightly and I could almost see the little face on the sun smiling at me … OK, story times over. It was a great day, the sun didn’t have a smile on it neither did all the mailmen break into song as I walked down the street – The lies Nickelodeon fed me when I was young.





Down to the meat (or whatever your favorite food substance is). The meeting turnout was superb! A lot of new faces – always very welcome. The downside was that our speaker turned out to be available at the last minute because of unexpected commitments that arose from her Chinese homeland. No biggie though – next meeting is definitely gonna feature a patent speech.





As always we kicked it off with the intros – The ego thing is getting to me and next time I may just introduce myself as the king of the world (A coworker once told me that if he was king of the world his first action would be to get off – Something about him being a racist; apparently he dislikes the human race). The intros led into the icebreaker titled “person to person” - I can’t really explain the whole thing – All I can say is that it kept everyone laughing. I got the pictures to prove it.





The good times on the icebreaker led to even better times when Jessica discussed the previous events that we had held the previous month – power lunch and the AIDS walk in which we managed to raise $1765 which was well above out $1000 target. She touched on the upcoming events i.e.
11.03.2006 – Power Lunch at Sonoma Chicken Coop in Downtown San Jose
11.03.2006 – NSBE Fall regional Conference, Newport Beach
11.14.2006 – Black Recruiters Network Networking Event over at Yahoo
11.15.2006 – Second Harvest Food Sort
11.16.2006 – San Jose State BASE Joint Potluck Event
12.16.2006 – Holiday Party/ Gift Exchange at Diego’s
12.06.2006 – Second Harvest Food Sort





Among other programs run initiatives that were touched on were the formation of a NSBE soccer team which starts (everyone’s welcome to join – games start Nov 10th and are held every Friday?), our PCI involvement, our mentorship program with both collegiate and PCI students and the ski trip to be held some time early next year.





Since we didn’t have a scheduled speaker, we held a forum where we discussed the effect of rap and hip-hop on the African American community as far as education, relationships and opportunities are concerned. This was a very HOT topic. A lot of emotional opinions and the likes. We were very blessed to have people with friends in the industry who gave us an insight on what the rap/hip hop entertainment industry is about. After this, the propositions and bond measures on the upcoming ballot were tabled and explained in more detail other than the usual “If you vote yes/no on prop XX you are saying yes/no to Satan” explanations you get on TV. It’s all about empowering the community starting with the man in the mirror.





We closed off after a Q&A session that was held in parallel with the presentation of the propositions. In conclusion, all I really have to say was that the meeting was a great event as always – always fun to meet new people from diverse backgrounds (It is quite amazing how many of the members are from outside California – where are all the California NSBE engineers heading to?) I gotta get back to my Nickelodeon dreams so … see you at the next event.