Were you shaken by yesterday's earthquake? For the California transplants -- welcome to California! Hopefully, you now have a good quake story to share with your friends and families back home. You can share it with the rest of us at the November Power Lunch this Friday. Hope to see you there!
November Power Lunch
November 2nd
Corner Place, 2783 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
... October General Body Meeting ...
Renee insisted that her noble accomplishment be put on the blog so here it is. Renee won. Renee and Marcela won. Yes, yes. They did build the longest bridge that held the most weight equipped with nothing but 10 index cards and a foot of scotch tape. LaTasha and Alex did come through with the style points though – their suspension bridge held its own but it did fall short on the length requirement not to mention that Tari was a pretty tough judge. That was a pretty cool icebreaker – we were all given index cards and scotch tape and asked to build the longest bridge that could span two desks and hold the most weight.
A quick review of October’s events followed starting with the September general body meeting where our speaker, Mr Morgan, spoke of what it takes to transition from a regular 9-5 engineering/ science job to a community service role and why it is important for us as Black professionals to do so.
This months featured speaker was Mr. Paul Hart of the World Financial Group and he spoke of building wealth. Several money building vehicles were reviewed with a focus on what tax categories they fell into i.e. Tax Now, Defer Taxes and Tax Never. He spoke of looking up to people who have built their wealth successfully and attempting to mirror their decisions; a good example being the several no-maximum-limit life insurance plans with associated cash values and death benefits that a lot of people in power (over 90% of congress) own. He spoke on the importance of building accessible wealth and ensuring that you leave your family with wealth and debt. Am I being too generic without giving specific details on how you should invest? Its on purpose. I am just but a keyboard drone with no formal training on how to advice people on wealth building. Talk to Paul Hart about how to build you wealth.
We closed up by looking at the next series of upcoming events, as listed below. We do not hold monthly meeting in November and December due to Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and we also skip out on the January Power Lunch as well for similar reasons.
- 11/02: November Power Lunch at Corner Place, 2783 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA
- 11/10: NSBE Junior Meeting. The last meeting focused on Robots and Seitu Barron, one of our Mechanical Engineer members, presented and the kids got to make motors from scratch. The November meeting will focus on Computer Science and Engineering and Makinde Adeagbo, a facebook engineer will present on computers and the kids will write a couple of programs.
- 11/13: The BRN conference sponsored by Network Associates. Cynthia Wesley, The BRN CEO was at hand and she gave a moving speech on the importance of networking within and outside NSBE. Her speech on this was unrivaled and I have to say she did a great job getting everybody motivated about heading out to the conference. I got mine. Got yours? More details can be found on the BRN website.
- 11/16-11/18: NSBE Region 6 Fall Regional Conference sponsored by Microsoft. Bill Gates will be the keynote speaker and this conference should be one of the more exciting conferences that the region has put together in the past couple of years. Check out the website for the agenda and other details.
- 11/29: NSBE Happy Hour. Azucar is a great Cuban place in San Jose. They have some nice food for the hungry and apparently the drinks are to die for. 71 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA 95113
- 12/05: December Food Sort at the Second Harvest Food Bank, San Jose Distribution Site, 750 Curtner Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125
- 12/06: NSBE Social. Viewing of the “Color Purple” in San Francisco at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are in the $80 range.
- 12/15: December Holiday Party. A white elephant party where we get to close down the year in style, gear up for the Christmas season, exchange gifts and celebrate the friendships and relationships we have developed. Location TBD.
- 01/26: General Body Meeting. First of the 2008 calendar year.
A quick review of October’s events followed starting with the September general body meeting where our speaker, Mr Morgan, spoke of what it takes to transition from a regular 9-5 engineering/ science job to a community service role and why it is important for us as Black professionals to do so.
This months featured speaker was Mr. Paul Hart of the World Financial Group and he spoke of building wealth. Several money building vehicles were reviewed with a focus on what tax categories they fell into i.e. Tax Now, Defer Taxes and Tax Never. He spoke of looking up to people who have built their wealth successfully and attempting to mirror their decisions; a good example being the several no-maximum-limit life insurance plans with associated cash values and death benefits that a lot of people in power (over 90% of congress) own. He spoke on the importance of building accessible wealth and ensuring that you leave your family with wealth and debt. Am I being too generic without giving specific details on how you should invest? Its on purpose. I am just but a keyboard drone with no formal training on how to advice people on wealth building. Talk to Paul Hart about how to build you wealth.
We closed up by looking at the next series of upcoming events, as listed below. We do not hold monthly meeting in November and December due to Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and we also skip out on the January Power Lunch as well for similar reasons.
- 11/02: November Power Lunch at Corner Place, 2783 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA
- 11/10: NSBE Junior Meeting. The last meeting focused on Robots and Seitu Barron, one of our Mechanical Engineer members, presented and the kids got to make motors from scratch. The November meeting will focus on Computer Science and Engineering and Makinde Adeagbo, a facebook engineer will present on computers and the kids will write a couple of programs.
- 11/13: The BRN conference sponsored by Network Associates. Cynthia Wesley, The BRN CEO was at hand and she gave a moving speech on the importance of networking within and outside NSBE. Her speech on this was unrivaled and I have to say she did a great job getting everybody motivated about heading out to the conference. I got mine. Got yours? More details can be found on the BRN website.
- 11/16-11/18: NSBE Region 6 Fall Regional Conference sponsored by Microsoft. Bill Gates will be the keynote speaker and this conference should be one of the more exciting conferences that the region has put together in the past couple of years. Check out the website for the agenda and other details.
- 11/29: NSBE Happy Hour. Azucar is a great Cuban place in San Jose. They have some nice food for the hungry and apparently the drinks are to die for. 71 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA 95113
- 12/05: December Food Sort at the Second Harvest Food Bank, San Jose Distribution Site, 750 Curtner Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125
- 12/06: NSBE Social. Viewing of the “Color Purple” in San Francisco at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are in the $80 range.
- 12/15: December Holiday Party. A white elephant party where we get to close down the year in style, gear up for the Christmas season, exchange gifts and celebrate the friendships and relationships we have developed. Location TBD.
- 01/26: General Body Meeting. First of the 2008 calendar year.
Monday, October 22, 2007
... Silicon Valley AIDS Walk 2007 ...
Maybe not all bragging is bad bragging. TO celebrating a touchdown while his team is down 30 points = bad bragging. Some famous guy writing a book on how he would have done something bad to “someone he loved” had he done it … neither a good idea nor the good kind of bragging. Elvis doing his victory dance over Diego for beating him in the annual “lets see who will raise more money for a good cause –athon” … not classy but warranted, definitely not classy.
The day was as picturesque as can be … a great reminder of how good we have in it California … Jessica had her walking mojo on, Renee was in on a red clothing competition with a couple of other participants (Red apparently indicated support for AIDS), Alex V was the official walk hype man, Tari was the pretty boy (I kid you not on this one – one of the traffic control cops commented that he was “dressed for club AIDS walk”, Diego was late as always … where does it end.
So we may have set our goals a little too high this year. We came short of last year’s total money raised but the great news is that as a team we raised a percentage point of the total amount of money raised. We fell a little short given that African Americans make up 2.8% of the Santa Clara County population and that a huge number of all new HIV and AIDS cases come from within the African American community. I didn't say it, Oprah did. More work definitely needs to be done. No doubt about it.
The walk in itself was fun. We definitely had a good time hanging out and the trip to the Thai restaurant later on was a fun experience. HDTV football on big screen capped it all in a way that couldn’t be better summarized than by the mission statement itself … “positively impacting the community”
The day was as picturesque as can be … a great reminder of how good we have in it California … Jessica had her walking mojo on, Renee was in on a red clothing competition with a couple of other participants (Red apparently indicated support for AIDS), Alex V was the official walk hype man, Tari was the pretty boy (I kid you not on this one – one of the traffic control cops commented that he was “dressed for club AIDS walk”, Diego was late as always … where does it end.
So we may have set our goals a little too high this year. We came short of last year’s total money raised but the great news is that as a team we raised a percentage point of the total amount of money raised. We fell a little short given that African Americans make up 2.8% of the Santa Clara County population and that a huge number of all new HIV and AIDS cases come from within the African American community. I didn't say it, Oprah did. More work definitely needs to be done. No doubt about it.
The walk in itself was fun. We definitely had a good time hanging out and the trip to the Thai restaurant later on was a fun experience. HDTV football on big screen capped it all in a way that couldn’t be better summarized than by the mission statement itself … “positively impacting the community”
Sunday, October 14, 2007
.. Dezs Goodbye Dinner ...
New York: Congested, smelly subways, super cold, super expensive, …
California: Nice, clean, great weather, best place to be, …
Aaaaah, now it makes perfect sense why people move to New York. Blistering cold temperatures and smelly subways. Fancy job in a fancy building I guess is simply the icing. Dez, Dez, Dez. Where do we start? How about last game of soccer season 5 (games run for 40 minutes by the way).
20 minutes: NSBE is kicking ass. Score is 5-1
30 minutes: ooh dear, oooh dear, what happened? NSBE is down 6-8
33 minutes: Ola scores! NSBE is down 7-8
35 minutes: Henry scores! We are on a roll!
37 minutes: Emeka scores! We are up 9-8
39:37: All the action is happening close to our goal. Chris has that “I am ready to swat that ball into the bleachers look” and you can tell that this game is ours. Ok, so bad guy touches ball, bad guy kicks towards our goal, Dez has option to swat the rubber off the ball back into a Nigerian Para Rubber Tree but nooooooo. Dez does a cartwheel and a flip followed with a backwards kick as he falls onto the ground in slow motion kicking the ball into our own goal. In case you didn’t get the magnitude of his actions I’ll say this again in caps … OUR OWN GOAL! Night ends and the game is tied at 9-9. Thanks Dez.
Other than making us lose soccer games, Dez was an overall nice guy. Pretty ironic that he hosted Jana’s going away party who also left for the cold unexplored depths of North America. A lot of good times getting hustled for poker money, random bet money and of course the classic argument settler that came up all the time, “Trust me, I looked it up”
The goodbye event at Dave and Busters was fun! VIP seating, the whole crew showed up including a bunch of lovely TAN people, good food (well, depending on who ordered and what they ordered), CLASSIC conversation – Tiffany, Renee – Shall I go into details? And of course the usual games after dinner – basketball, air hockey, racing, the game where you have to shoot the zombies, Tiffany and Alex doing cool tricks on the camera … fun times.
Too bad it all had to end. Dez shed a couple of tears at the end … it was funny hearing him go in all bass “I’ll miss you guys” while sniffling. No big deal though, we’ll be waiting for him as soon as he realizes that the cold wilderness of New York + all the fancy wine and cheese parties in fancy buildings with fancy furniture frequented by people wearing fancy clothes is definitely not the place to be … after all, they don’t have space for soccer fields now do they?
California: Nice, clean, great weather, best place to be, …
Aaaaah, now it makes perfect sense why people move to New York. Blistering cold temperatures and smelly subways. Fancy job in a fancy building I guess is simply the icing. Dez, Dez, Dez. Where do we start? How about last game of soccer season 5 (games run for 40 minutes by the way).
20 minutes: NSBE is kicking ass. Score is 5-1
30 minutes: ooh dear, oooh dear, what happened? NSBE is down 6-8
33 minutes: Ola scores! NSBE is down 7-8
35 minutes: Henry scores! We are on a roll!
37 minutes: Emeka scores! We are up 9-8
39:37: All the action is happening close to our goal. Chris has that “I am ready to swat that ball into the bleachers look” and you can tell that this game is ours. Ok, so bad guy touches ball, bad guy kicks towards our goal, Dez has option to swat the rubber off the ball back into a Nigerian Para Rubber Tree but nooooooo. Dez does a cartwheel and a flip followed with a backwards kick as he falls onto the ground in slow motion kicking the ball into our own goal. In case you didn’t get the magnitude of his actions I’ll say this again in caps … OUR OWN GOAL! Night ends and the game is tied at 9-9. Thanks Dez.
Other than making us lose soccer games, Dez was an overall nice guy. Pretty ironic that he hosted Jana’s going away party who also left for the cold unexplored depths of North America. A lot of good times getting hustled for poker money, random bet money and of course the classic argument settler that came up all the time, “Trust me, I looked it up”
The goodbye event at Dave and Busters was fun! VIP seating, the whole crew showed up including a bunch of lovely TAN people, good food (well, depending on who ordered and what they ordered), CLASSIC conversation – Tiffany, Renee – Shall I go into details? And of course the usual games after dinner – basketball, air hockey, racing, the game where you have to shoot the zombies, Tiffany and Alex doing cool tricks on the camera … fun times.
Too bad it all had to end. Dez shed a couple of tears at the end … it was funny hearing him go in all bass “I’ll miss you guys” while sniffling. No big deal though, we’ll be waiting for him as soon as he realizes that the cold wilderness of New York + all the fancy wine and cheese parties in fancy buildings with fancy furniture frequented by people wearing fancy clothes is definitely not the place to be … after all, they don’t have space for soccer fields now do they?
Saturday, October 13, 2007
... October NSBE Jr Meeting ...
On October 13th, the students in NSBE Jr. had their first official meeting of the school year at San Jose State University. What is NSBE Jr. you ask? NSBE Jr. is the chapter based aspect of NSBE’s Pre-College Initiative (PCI) program. NSBE’s PCI is designed to encourage middle and high school students to excel in math and science and give them the tools necessary to successfully complete college. The NSBE Jr. meetings are hosted by mentors from both San Jose State University and the Silicon Valley Alumni Chapter.
The meeting began with students working through some difficult math problems. One student, Andrea, even volunteered to work through the problem on the board for the other students to follow along. After the students completed their math problems, we moved on to the meeting topic for the month: Robotics. Seitu Barron, a mechanical engineer and member of the Silicon Valley Alumni Chapter, spoke to the students about robots. His presentation included examples of robots in every day life as well as futuristic dancing robots.
Next month’s meeting will be on November 10th from 10 am to 2 pm at San Jose State. The topic will be computer science and the students will be coding their own programs. If you are interested in helping out, please contact Jessica Miller for details (jessica_miller_52@yahoo.com).
The meeting began with students working through some difficult math problems. One student, Andrea, even volunteered to work through the problem on the board for the other students to follow along. After the students completed their math problems, we moved on to the meeting topic for the month: Robotics. Seitu Barron, a mechanical engineer and member of the Silicon Valley Alumni Chapter, spoke to the students about robots. His presentation included examples of robots in every day life as well as futuristic dancing robots.
The students, ranging from 5th to 12th grade, also participated in an interactive activity designed by college students at San Jose State. The students designed motors using primarily a wire coil, magnet, and battery. Initially the task was difficult, but the students stuck with it and explored ways to improve their motors. By the end of the exercise, all of the groups had spinning motors. Some of the students were so proud of their motors that they took them home for further improvements.
Next month’s meeting will be on November 10th from 10 am to 2 pm at San Jose State. The topic will be computer science and the students will be coding their own programs. If you are interested in helping out, please contact Jessica Miller for details (jessica_miller_52@yahoo.com).
Friday, October 05, 2007
... October Power Lunch ...
Pasta? Or shall we say Jennifer’s home numero dos. My bad. That would be numero due for you Italian speakers out there. I have to say that the waitress here definitely knows the maitre d code of conduct pretty well unlike her. The aura was nice as always, good food, good people with a couple of very interesting characters … stress on INTERESTING. Several of the bigger SouthBay companies were represented – Space Systems Loral, Lockheed Martin, Abbott Vascular (formerly Guidant), Pioneer, SanDisk + of course we had a lot of the little small name guys around. We had a hiring manager from Space Systems Loral who brought with him several Electrical Engineering recs. that he needed to fill ASAP. You should definitely come and check out the next power lunch at the Corner Place in Santa Clara. These do serve as a great networking forum and you should take full advantage of it! Come out and meet some people!
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