... june general meeting ...

The official summer welcome. Out with the old, in with the new. This months meeting featured speeches by the potential members of next years board, a speech on patents by Michelle Galloway – a very successful Silicon Valley IP attorney, Stanford and Santa Clara lecturer as well as wife to an engineer topped off with lunch catering courtesy of Sade of TAN, The African Network.



The icebreaker was fun – it was basically all about picking on people (That is my way of saying I forgot the name of the icebreaker we played and I cant quite describe it). It was fun though – Michelle’s son, Will, handled the camera from multiple angles and we were lucky to have him act as color commentator during his moms speech. Alas the kids of the 00’s – They can simultaneously play Nintendo, listen to music and still pay attention to their parents?



The speech on patents focused on everything you ever needed to know from types of IP, reasons to have a patent, the hierarchy tree, common misconceptions by several involved parties, the rights provided by a patent, what makes an idea patentable, how to documents inventions properly, interactions with patent attorneys and patent examiners, US and International laws covering patents, litigation, patent invalidation, case studies on several patents, etc. Michelle was very knowledgable on the material and we were very lucky to have her. She answered tons of very specific questions and I’ll probably be pumping out two or three patent applications within the next year now that I know how to go about the whole inventive process. A fun patent just in case you were wondering? Look up US patent 6,293,874.




We had a mini intermission that allowed us to feast on the lovely Caribbean style delicacies prepared by Sade, herself an engineer at Cisco, after which we got into the speeches. Yawn. Yawn. Well, not really – with comical characters such as Alex in the crowd the candidate Q&A session was as entertaining as it was informative. I wont bore you with the details of the speech but we did have a promising group get on the podium and we believe that the upcoming year will be a great year for our chapter and we try and push through what should be the last of our infancy year.



See you all at the next meeting. Remember our monthly events:
Power Lunch – Every first Friday of the month @ 11:45AM – 1PM
General Body Meeting – Every fourth Saturday of the month @10AM - Noon

... Juneteenth 2007 ...

By Roger "Denny" Ramses

The shift started out a little slow but traffic picked up a little as the afternoon progressed. The people that we spoke to while we were at the booth were an interesting mix. There were a number of families with children that we were able to discuss the PCI programs with, and I think several of them seemed pretty interested in getting their kids involved in the programs. Actually a few of the parents and grandparents that I spoke to had already heard about the PCI programs at San Jose State and they were happy to find a way of connecting with the organization. The children and adolescents that came to the booth enjoyed the science demos despite our somewhat feeble attempts at explaining them.

There were also a number of people who came by who were either engineers or had relatives who were engineers. A lot of these people were also already familiar with NSBE and they were happy to discover the alumni chapter restarting. One lady who stopped by was actually a past member of the Silicon Valley AE chapter and she had some interesting anecdotes about days gone by.

So overall it was a good day and hopefully a few people will become affiliated with NSBE because we were out there. It might have been nice to have a little more visibility, but I think we were pretty successful anyway.

... June Power Lunch ...

NSBE folk seem to love bbq: Correct

Ijeoma is all about justice to the hardworking waiters and waitresses: Affirmative
Alex ordered fries and they were delicious: Wrong
Alex’s fries never left the kitchen: Correct
The fact that Alex didn’t get his fries makes Uncle Franks BBQ a bad eatery: Incorrect
Alex was mad he didn’t get his fries: False
Alex will be back at Uncle Franks and he thought it was the best food ever: Hell Yeah!


Dude on the far right of the picture didnt just pull out a huge booger: Correct
Dez didn’t like his smoked chicken at all: Correct
Dez likes most types of foods at most restaurants: cough cough COUGH COUGH
Jana’s name is spelt like the old Jana’s name: eeer, I don’t see how that couldn’t be any truer
Diego was all over his brisket: Incorrect. Diego was ALL OVER his brisket!
Elvis talks too damn much: Correct
Jennifer and Dez were playing with other people’s food: Correct



Uncle Franks BBQ is hidden behind a little dive bar: Correct
You have to walk through the dive bar to get to where the magic happens: Correct
Ola is ready to let the Nigerian Nightmare terrorize the masses once Season 3 indoor soccer starts: Correct
Jennifer is just about to achieve US traveler status: How am I supposed to know this?
Rene’ will sue you for $200: Correct
A lot of items above appear to be extremely random and out of place: Incorrect
NSBE folk really do love to do power lunch at BBQ places: Here’s the proof!