Silicon Valley NSBE Alumni Extension Blog

...2nd Annual NSBE BBQ!...

2008-07-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

The second annual BBQ of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the NSBE Alumni Extension was another great success! If you were there, you’d know that already. This time around we were in East San Jose, taking a reprieve from last year's location in super-South San Jose. For this year’s BBQ, we partnered with three other local organizations: The African Network (TAN), the Black Recruiter’s Network (BRN), and Onyx - Bay Area Black Professionals. The purpose of this event, as was the purpose last year, was to promote the recognition and existence of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the NSBE Alumni Extension. Every now and then, in the hustle and bustle of daily life, it's very refreshing to stop, take a deep breath, and say hello to those around you. As such, one of the most memorable aspects of this year's BBQ was the reuniting with familiar faces from events past.

The BBQ was held in the beautiful park known as Emma Prusch Farm Park. Why is it called a Farm Park? Because it's an active farm!! (Go figure, right?) The wild chicken, roosters, and the occasional roaming peacock certainly set the tone for the vibe of a farm. And those were just the animals that wandered over to our area. Additionally, inactive (active...?) barns dotted the park, and a fully functioning community garden served as the park's reception area to all park entrants.

Chapter Vice President, Alex, took one for the team and spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon absorbing and inhaling the heat and smoke of the grill. If only he had thought to bring a "Kiss the Chef" apron, perhaps he would have be better rewarded.... Ah, there's always next year.

Much of the day was spent hiding out from the heat. Though not oppressively unbearable, the warmth of the Sun was rather energy-zapping when one was exposed beneath it for a long period of time. Those who arrived the earliest, near the start time of NOON (yeah, I was late too...) took the brunt of it. Thanks, guys!!

Shockingly, given the amount of Africans/Caribbeans in attendance, a soccer game did NOT result. Perhaps it was due to the field being out of site of the eating area? We'll note this for next year. Instead, there was a makeshift Ultimate Frisbee game on the massive field. I think this game is gaining in unregulated popularity....

Since everyone was hiding out from the sun, card games unfolded. (Get it? "Unfolded"... that's original comedy right there.) The poker junkies huddled at their table, while another non-poker card game took place at an adjacent table. It's up in the air as to which was more riveting, but I'll just say that games involving real money are just a tad more enthralling. Personal preference.

People kept trickling in throughout the afternoon, which was great since we had so much food! Good food, too. (Wow, lots of double o's PROVE how good the food was! Ok, I'll stop now.)

A great time was had by all. If you were there, we -- NSBE Alumni and all partnering affiliate groups -- were glad to have you. If you weren't there, you'd better come up with a good excuse when we interrogate you under a bright light at the 3rd Annual NSBE BBQ!

Enjoy!

On a final note: Engineers should not be allowed on clean-up crews. See below.

... NSBE Happy Hour at Pedro's ...

2008-05-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday night saw the return of the NSBE-AE-SVC Happy Hour!! Set for 6pm on one of the hottest days in 2008, a small group met at Pedro's Restaurant & Cantina in Santa Clara. The muggy air made the concept of Happy Hour all the more appealing. Best of all -- we had a guest who heard about our Happy Hour social from Elvis!

Let it be known that Pedro's is always packed. It has the presumably enviable status as being the only restaurant available on its little street to cater to the business and tech professionals that work in the buildings nearby. Being that there's very little competition, the restaurant tends to get full rather quickly. This is something we (the first four to arrive) quickly realized as we took in the standing-room-only scene of the Happy Hour location. We roamed around a bit looking for a table, but there were none. Instead, we chose to embrace the heat outdoors and sit at one of the patio tables.

Here's where things begin to get interesting. After introductions were made, "happy" drinks were ordered, and the heat of the day was becoming more and more comfortable as the evening set in, we realized that our waitress (or is it "server"?) was lacking the essential skill of the let-me-be-nice-so-I-can-get-a-good-tip work ethic. "Susana" had a bit of a ... shall I say... attitude problem? She shockingly wasn't very interested in attending to our requests or even getting our orders right! (A virgin margarita was substituted for a strawberry daiquiri. Wait...aren't these the same thing?) And, yes - I know what you're thinking - we were being SUPER nice. One of us even referred to her by name (let's excuse the fact that it sounded a bit condescending), but she still didn't break a smile or look any less annoyed with us. She generally looked PO'd. Perhaps someone gave her some bad news before or during her shift. Perhaps, her boss didn't give her the raise she so clearly (note: sarcasm) deserved. Perhaps she had had enough of the day's heat and was suffering from a mild heat stroke before our eyes. We'll never know. And I couldn't tell you if this was happening at any other table. Susana can be seen "waiting" in the picture below.

Drinks and appetizers set in and our little group expanded to nine by the end of the evening. Conversations got louder and more boisterous, and split into two factions at any given time. Somehow, one of the guys had the great idea to poll the women's responses to questions he came up with. All I recall from his question pertaining to dating/marriage was that he ended up with three women staring back at him with a hint of anger in their eyes. Good times - you had to be there!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next event is the general body meeting on Saturday, May 24th. Please come and hear those who were nominated for Executive Board positions attempt to convince you (the voter) of why they should be chosen to be on the Executive Board in the 2008-2009 year.

... April General Body Meeting ...

2008-04-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday's General Body Meeting was a reunion of sorts. Our chapter had not held a general body meeting since February due to the NSBE National Convention in March. Before that, we met in January after two months off for holidays in November and December. All in all, it's been quite sporadic trying to see one another.

Saturday brought about a new room. Due to Santa Clara University campus tours (I think...) and other events, we met in a room reminiscent of a high school science lab instead of our usual one with individual seating. But the long desks of the science lab much more easily facilitated the workshop hosted by our guest speaker (more on that later.) Oh, and…science is awesome!!

The plan for Saturday was to raffle off an iPhone, participate in an interactive Toastmasters workshop, and nominate candidates for the 2008-2009 NSBE-AE-SVC executive board.

Let's just put it this way: it pays to check (and read!) your e-mail! Diego, our President Emeritus, somehow managed to get his hands on a brand new, still-in-the-box, iPhone. Why an iPhone? It was the best way to coerce the membership to submit their resumes to the chapter to be included in a resume CD as a thank you to our Banquet sponsors. If you're thinking, "Man, I don't want an iPhone!" or "I already have one!", you're dumb...or a liar…or both. SOMEONE would have bought it off of you, I guarantee it. I'm just stating a fact here. The lucky winner of the iPhone is pictured below...gloating at us. For what it's worth, please continue to send your resume to Diego.

Do you get nervous speaking in front of an audience? At staff meetings or at club (NSBE) meetings? Do you have trouble overcoming nerves when trying to express or convey an idea? Joining Toastmasters may be a way to improve your technique and calm your nerves, thereby preparing you for ANY (well, almost any...) public speaking event. Our guest speaker (whose name escapes my memory) is a chapter president of the Fair Oaks Toastmasters club. Toastmasters, an organization that began in 1924, has about 12,000 clubs internationally, all with the goal of helping its members enhance their ability to speak under various circumstances.

The guest speaker provided examples of the typical situations that nervousness creeps in when it comes time to speak. As it turns impromptu speeches are the most difficult ones to prepare for, the guest speaker provided a GREAT practice lesson. Brown paper bags were distributed to everyone in the room. The premise: Our chapter will be leaving for a year-long undersea research study. The activity: Talk about your item in the context of an undersea research study. The contents of the bags: Various office supplies!

Having just gotten riled up from our activity, we deposited all of that energy into nominating individuals for the 2008-2009 executive board. At the May General Body Meeting, the nominees will be given an opportunity to present why they believe they are the best candidate for the position they’re running for. Sounds like a great way to improve those speaking skills!

...NSBE (Literally) Saves the Bay!...

2008-03-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, the NSBE Alumni Extension took its power and influence to the streets and participated in a tree planting event hosted by the Save the Bay organization. Our planting location was the marshy area east of Palo Alto…or in East Palo Alto. Apparently, it doesn't take very long to drive to a natural wildlife environment because it was only within a few short turns off of Highway 101 that we reached our destination.

Roughly 25 people braved the mild winds and overcast conditions to populate the soil along an unpaved road with foliage, and of the group, six people represented the NSBE alumni chapter on a cold Saturday morning.

The next time you're out on a friendly/romantic walk (you know, whichever), be sure to ask which plant was put in place by the Silicon Valley NSBE Alumni Extension. It'll make you proud.

...Thursday Night Pub Quiz Smackdown...

2008-03-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you hadn't heard of a Pub Quiz before Thursday. But, if you ARE like me, that would not be a surprise. Essentially, a “pub quiz” is literally a quiz that takes place in a pub. Go figure, huh? Suspicion leads me to believe that pub quizzes were created by pub owners looking to increase patronage in the middle of the week, instead of just on the weekends. Throw in a “Happy Hour” and you’ve got attendees drinking in the middle of the week!

It turns out that Pub Quizzes are all the rage (well, they were as of the mid 90s, according to Wikipedia…) in Britain. Several years later, the game has crossed the pond (a.k.a. the Atlantic Ocean), jumped over much of the entire United States, and landed at Loft Bar and Grill in downtown San Jose. Teams are formed among the pubs attendees, and several rounds are played where a host asks various teams a series of questions. The teams work together – while still getting served dinner and drinks – to submit their answers for each round. If you like trivia, this is the game for you! Questions are pulled from a broad spectrum of topics, and the more teams involved, the more competitive it can all get.

A Pub Quiz outing is the perfect social event because you can invite lots and lots of people to participate, and all you’re simply doing is spicing up the staid dinner and post-dinner chit-chat. This is great for those who fail at social conversation. (Looks around sheepishly…) It forces you to open lines of communication with someone with whom you may have not yet spoken. See? It’s GREAT for NSBE-AE-SVC.

Thursday’s Pub Quiz brought out a large number of NSBE-AE-SVC members and quite a few guests. Meals and drinks were ordered, and a team name was decided upon. (“The Lofty Travistas”…no, not my idea, and the host couldn’t pronounce it. We’d have been better off being called the “Square Losers”. Sigh.) Microphone in hand, the game-show-ready host introduced all the teams (four, in total) and presented a series of questions. Round 1 challenged our retention of random-yet-useful knowledge (“What’s the capital of New Hampshire?” Don’t judge; you don’t know the answer either.). Round 2 challenged our recollection of famous movie lines. Round 3 gauged how much educational and trash TV we watched. (Who memorizes a picture of John Wilkes Booth?! My sister.) Round 4 tested our auditory absorption of current events.

All in all, there was a question for every single person – all twelve of us – to answer. Clearly, the more people you have on your team, the higher the winning potential. But one thing we learned is that the larger your team, the more challenging it is to communicate. You can’t yell, “Hey guy-on-the-other-end-of-the-table, what’s the name of that country next to Venezuela?”

Next time around, development of strategy will be our focus. For despite having twelve people at our table, we STILL LOST THE GAME!! Yeah, you heard that (read that…) right. A bunch of really loud guys (maybe there was a girl in their midst, who knows) at the bar beat our table by 3 or 4 points. And they got to have $30 taken of their bill as a reward! We only got $20 off of ours. *tear*

So now you know what a Pub Quiz is. Next time you see it on the NSBE-AE-SVC calendar, be there! (Or be square.)

...March NSBE Jr. Meeting...

2008-03-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

The March meeting was all about planes. The turnout was great; it was a meeting with mostly new faces. The students arrived to learn about geometry and they completed very difficult problems which had even the mentors looking at answer keys for help.

After math warm-up problems, the students took some time to get to know each other. The icebreaker involved learning facts about the other students. A few brave volunteers were able to recite three names of people they had just met that day.

The guest speaker for the March NSBE Jr meeting was Ben Henderson. Ben is retired from both the US Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration. He is currently a pilot and is in the process of starting a non-profit organization to teach kids how to fly. Ben spoke about being the best at whatever you attempt to do in life. He also answered questions ranging from how the average auto pilot works on planes, to how pilots can see in the fog. The kids enjoyed getting first -hand interaction with an experienced pilot.

After Mr. Henderson motivated the students about aviation, it was their turn to build their own gliders. The gliders were built from a single sheet of balsa wood, and they took many different forms. The April NSBE Jr meeting with determine which of the gliders flies the farthest.

Three of the students will be attending the National Convention in Orlando, Fl, thanks to Applied Materials. The students will have travel, hotel, and conference registration entirely paid for by the company. The National Convention will give the students an opportunity to learn about engineering disciplines, get hands on experience in various workshop sessions, and meet other young, bright minds from all over the country. They are very excited about their upcoming trip and will give an update to the group upon their return.

Please join us at the next NSBE Jr meeting on April 12, 2008.

...March Power Lunch...

2008-03-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

The blessings brought on by Thai food cannot be quantified. Good stuff. Cheap, too, depending on where you go. More importantly, such establishments are EVERYWHERE. There were three in the Sunnyvale downtown area that we met for the March Power Lunch meeting. Of the three, the March Power Lunch was held at Siam Taste Thai Cuisine restaurant along the popular Murphy Avenue.

As usual, everyone took their time gathering together. Eventually, people started to trickle in within a 15-minute span, 15-minutes after the time we reserved. By the way, I wonder what it’s like to be a restaurant owner or wait staff observing all of this: are they going to show up? Are they really going to need those many tables? How long before I start giving the three people sitting at a table reserved for ten the “evil eye”? My fear is that laws will be enacted by restaurateurs in an attempt to correct this phenomenon. What if someday laws exist that allow for reservations to be revoked if attendees don’t arrive within a specified period of time? Imagine if that happened to our Alumni chapter – would we ever have a Power Lunch again?? Think about it.

Seven people arrived for lunch. A pretty good number for lunch in (non-Santa Clara) Sunnyvale. All complained about the difficulty of searching for parking, but were quieted by the relative emptiness of the restaurant by the time of their arrival. (We arrived shortly before the lunch rush.) Mini-discussions were held. Unfortunately, a common trait among professionals when they get together is that they MUST talk about work. Incessantly. After that topic was allowed to die, we touched upon subjects ranging from TV (“Did you watch ‘Lost’ last night?”), to work start times (“I haven’t started work earlier than 10am!”), to weekend plans (“Blah, blah, and blah.” – um, I don’t remember anyone’s weekend plans…the artwork on the wall distracted my attention by that point) and, finally, to the climactic and semi-divisive Democratic presidential campaign. On the Republican side, we all – well, a small faction of the group – agreed on one thing: while John McCain may be a competent candidate, his wife sure looks scary! There’s something about too much black eyeliner with icy-blue eyes…she really should move to a dark brown. That was a free fashion tip. ;)

We eventually went back to the topic of work and its philosophical and socio-economic purpose. Large companies versus small companies: what is the amount of individual creativity/innovation does one “hand over” in exchange for greater benefits and relative stability? Ah, the question of the ages. Please share your answers in the comments section below. No, really. Go ahead.

The only complaint I have about our restaurant is the length of time it took for the waitress to take our order. Perhaps they wanted to be sure our group was complete, considering how long it took for us to convene. Perhaps they were swamped by the 12:30p lunch rush that developed in the midst of our pre-lunch conversation. And we did end up having to sacrifice an extra table after all. Perhaps our lolly gagging had something to do with it? How rare is it to see "lolly gagging" in a sentence?

Lessons from this outing:

1. Thai food is awesome.
2. Friday was a beautiful day to eat Thai food.
3. Eating too much Thai food will cause you to experience a food coma. (a.k.a. "The Itis") FYI.

...February General Body Meeting...

2008-02-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

Ah...another wonderfully great and useful general body meeting. Good job, Elvis...or Alex. Here's to whomever invited our guest speaker!

Yes, a great and useful meeting. I know, I know - the advertisement for the meeting stated that it would be a 'Tax Workshop". While under most circumstances, that tagline would succeed in scaring away many potential patrons, the turnout for the meeting was fairly significant. Perhaps the idea of doing "taxes" DOES have a lure of its own. Go figure.

The meeting started with a hearty breakfast featuring not-from-concentrate orange juice, miniature bagels, and Little Debbie snack cookies as a little extra gift...for myself. (As the meeting's breakfast shopper for the day, I threw in a little extra. :) ) Next was the ice breaker - always a ridiculously entertaining and energizing spectacle no matter who's running it. This time, Tari played the role of game show host. In honor of Black History Month, Tari attempted to be the game show host of a Black History Month trivia guessing game. The goal was to excite the audience by luring them into a(n educational) game show about modern and notable engineers and scientists, but he succeeded in driving a few people crazy with his sparsely explained "rules" of the game. Further complicating the game were the EXCESSIVELY COMPETITIVE people (cough, cough...Jeremy, cough, Renee,...cough, Seitu, cough, cough)!! After a while, I just sat back and watched the chaos unfold. Now THAT was awesome. Sadly, though, it looks like most of us need to brush up on our modern day Black History facts. Well, there's always next year!

Up next was our guest speaker from H&R Block, Master Tax Advisor Dan Hunt. Mr. Hunt selected tax topics that most affected the age range of the meeting attendees: student debt, participation in Employee Purchase Programs, stock sales, and 401(k) and other retirement program contributions. Mr. Hunt was a unique H & R Block employee because of his background. He had earned an engineering degree, worked several years (decades?) as an engineer, and then retired from industry. Now, in his retirement, he utilized his love - yes, LOVE - of taxes and tax preparation to the community by providing group informational sessions to the public. His goal is to educate his audience on the pros and cons that result from their financial decisions and to get them to start thinking about how they're going to prepare for the following year.

The response from the audience was great! Once everyone realized that there are many different ways to, uh, *cheat* the system, the level of intrigue was palpable. No, the most interesting blog read, but certainly a very interesting live presentation. He was armed with an abundance of tips. Basically, if you can funnel your money into retirement savings (which you can still do for the 2007 year by April 15th, by the way...) or if you donated a whole bunch of money/gifts to charity, you could move into a lower tax bracket and possibly receive a larger refund. Or you can receive tax credit for driving back and forth between jobs! Or you can be credited for your business lunches! Thus, the moral of the story is that life's a game of chess - there are just a few smart moves that will help you win. To much disappointment, Mr. Hunt had to leave. He handed out information about tax brackets to help in preparations for 2008 taxes.

To get in contact with Master Tax Advisor Dan Hunt, call 408.253.8871 and ask for him. I'm sure you'll jog his memory of who you are if you mention NSBE Alumni. Just a tip.

After the tax help, the meeting drew to an end. Here were the announcements:

- First Friday Lunch: Siam Taste Thai Cuisine in Sunnyvale on March 7, 2008.

- The March general body meeting is cancelled due to the NSBE National Convention.

- NSBE National Convention is on the week of March 19 - 23, 2008. (Please contact the chapter President, Elvis, regarding room availability and/or list of conference attendees.)

- NSBE-AE Silicon Valley Banquet is on April 5, 2008 @6:30pm. Stay tuned!!

Until next time, enjoy!

...Let the Webbing of Networks Begin!...

2008-02-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you mix a group of professionals, a nice restaurant, free refreshments, and wine? A networking event!!

Everyone who joins our NSBE Alumni Extension chapter says, “Yeah, I really want to attend this… yeah, I really want to volunteer for that…and I really want to network!” Perhaps it’s not stated with that much enthusiasm, but ask any member of the board, and they’ll confirm the truth behind that statement.

The NSBE response was to do it big: become a partner in a combined, multi-organizational networking event, sponsored by a major corporation, to acquire the full effect. Held at Il Fornaio Restaurant in Palo Alto, professionals from the National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA), the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), The African Network (TAN), and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), gathered in a covered (and heated!) patio area of the restaurant. Perhaps a few people *forgot* to RSVP because the room was a bit on the crowded side. The plus side to the large number of people was that it wasn’t quite as difficult as usual to strike up a conversation with a total stranger. It was harder work to stand in the corner and NOT talk to someone!

Host Qualcomm allowed everyone to freely mingle before they formally introduced themselves to the packed room. There were several employees dressed in Qualcomm apparel ready to answer questions about the company. They raffled off a Blackberry right at the start – just the right kind of technology to get everyone excited. They were also handing out USB flash drives and advertising their numerous job openings located in sites throughout the Bay Area and San Diego. Once the company introduction was complete, everyone was free to start working their net. (Get it? “net” – “work”??)

One couldn’t help but notice that initially, a large majority of the crowd stuck with their professional organization cliques…it was like junior high and high school all over again! Excessive shyness and/or discomfort, maybe? Who knows? But once everyone inhaled the available refreshments and loosened up on vino, intermingling began. Throughout the room, business cards were exchanging hands. It was great talking to different people about what they’re doing in their job and what they’re getting out fo their professional organization. (Don’t worry; I took notes.)

Networking is an artform that takes guts. You need guts to walk up to a stranger on the premise that the only thing you have in common is that you’re both professionals. You need guts to know what to say after initial introductions have been made, and guts to know when and how to end a conversation, hand over your business card, and walk on to the next person. It’s practice that can only be honed when used in a practical setting.

Major lessons learned:
1. Uh...I should probably start carrying around my business cards. Hm.
2. Practice, practice, practice!
3. When in doubt, just start talking to the person standing next to you!

... fast, faster, more faster, even more faster ...

2008-02-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

By Victoria Onyeabor

"Engy 500"

Mindful of the new California cell phone law, I scanned for blue and red out the driver's side window, while my right hand tossed my cell to its partner before deftly shifting up gears to narrowly cut off a blue Ford as I caught the 101 onramp with my headlights the way a sprinter catches a breath. The horizon of the freeway opened up before me, and I unzipped the rows of reflectors with a black knife shaped like a 2007 Sentra. Elvis' "K see ya" was squished between folding halves of my RAZR halfway along its trajectory from hand to passenger seat. My right foot earned free reign as I eyed Corollas carrying tired fathers home from work, and Camrys taking little Jimmys to their birthday dinners, my targets of domination. I checked the clock: after 7. I immediately weaved dangerously around an ambitious Hyundai Sonata to satiate my car's hunger for HOV diamonds. In my mind, I was already on the GoKart Track, the deathly stadium of impending collision with cackling whiplash curves, the Coliseum of man vs bloodthirsty speed demon.

In Fremont, the stately daredevils of NSBE's Silicon Valley Alumni Extension were already strapping up for the moment of truth. Gloves, helmets, blue flag means faster, black flag means faster, yellow lights mean...

FASTER

Breathless, I charged onto the makeshift track, blinded by streaks of beautiful brown as they dangerously embraced curves of tarmac. Within 60 seconds, I merged with the fast and furious, tracing the brown ribbon in an impossible loop, viciously pulling the rug out from under my brethren. Yellow flag…

Faster?

I cut off Elvo and Shred You 2 before competing for the inside turn with Brit, sending her on a spiraling collision course with the wall. Makinde the Raptor charged past me and Elvo recovered his rank as I fish tailed across the lane from a collision with Dan and Idleyute. Blue flag…

Faster?

The moderators were waving wildly, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the ear shattering rubber squeal of my determination, and the sputtering roar of mental machinery calculating every z-plane steering angle needed to achieve the desired x-y acceleration inside seven fellow engineering minds. I veered to the left, hogging the lane lest Disterics lap me, and focused my attention on Mr. Action. Back at the start of a long smooth curve, he floored the gas to edge up on Big Homie. I followed suit. Checkered flag…

It was over. We proudly marched from our steaming karts in slow motion and referenced the projected scoreboard for our respective judgments.

Fourth.

I’ll take that. The undepleted adrenaline demanded that we refuel at Dave and Busters. We drove in real cars on real roads like raving maniacs, and threatened the lives of those sharing the path between Lemans Karting and Dave and Busters like 16 year olds heading to the club. No one should ever drive a real car after GoKarting.

Over rigatoni pasta, chicken quesadillas, nachos, and colorful drinks, we introduced ourselves where needed and discussed the usual before launching into a heated debate over the appropriate dance floor approach of the male Homo Sapien. “He shouldn’t come up behind a female he doesn’t know,” “But it’s whack to introduce yourself first,” and “How do you make the front to back transition without looking crazy?” and “By the way, did you see those freaks ‘dancing’ behind the DJ booth at NSBE Nationals last year?”

It was late, it was Thursday, numbers exchanged, cold outside, last minute jokes, and back into the solitude of my black knife, cutting over the horizon of the 101 onramp on my way to an early Friday in my cubicle.

... February Power Lunch ...

2008-02-01T22:36:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this one was nice and intimate … one of those words they teach you in political correctness class. Translation – there was a solid group of four people at Vive Sol. I guess the smaller the group the better you get to know each other so it wasn’t exactly such a bad thing. Plus it works out pretty well for the crowd shy folk.

I’ll tell you what you missed out on though. You missed out on an opportunity to learn about:
1. How the post office guarantees that you get mail that is not laced with Anthrax
2. HD DVD vs Blu Ray. Who’s winning?
3. Core 2 Duo? Really? Intel – AMD … How about an old meaningless video to add fuel to this fire. Emphasis on old.
4. Why the powershot camera is so great! (Its not always about some sort of war be it an Anthrax war, DVD format wars or chip maker wars. We can all agree that Canon knows their stuff)

Next time? Lets lunch. 1st Friday of the month as always. Check the schedule here.

... January General Body Meeting ...

2008-01-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

After Friday's torrential downpour, we were unsure what kind of a turnout the first General Body Meeting of the year would bring. Fortunately, the sky was on our side. On Saturday morning, the rain of Friday night was a distant memory, and there were over 20 people who succeeded in showing up for the first meeting of 2008.

The first activity of the meeting: the Icebreaker!! Like most icebreakers, this one was designed to get to to know one another. Split into two teams, we played a game that was more or less the exact same as Two Truths and a Lie. We also learned that some of the general body members are really good liars, exceptionally crafty and evasive. Take note: this might be useful sometime in the future.

The game of Ultimate Liar segued into a bridge-building competition. How? A vague connection between correct guesses in Two Truths and a Lie and earning skewers for use in building a tower. Once the skewers were distributed, three teams worked to build their own Tower of Babel.

But the winner of the event was the only team that utilized basic engineering principles by starting their construction with a strong foundation for their tower. As such, their tower didn't fall over when it was time for it to be measured. Good job, (mostly) engineers!

Once the fun and games ended, it was time for the meeting's main draw. The president and vice-president took on the task of addressing the propositions that will be on next week's ballot during Super Tuesday. Armed with spreadsheets delineating the progress of the various presidential candidates, and PowerPoint slides noting the main ideas behind of several propositions, we headed toward an enlightening discussion.

Alright...so there were A LOT of propositions discussed at the meeting. Despite what people may say, it DOES pay to read through the Voter Guide shortly before voting day. If you HAD read through the Voter Guide AND attended last Saturday's meeting, we might all be a bit more knowledgeable for it.

Think about that. Then read your Voter Guide. Then think about whether or not you're going to the NSBE National Convention in Orlando, Florida. You better get on that if you are. Oh, and let us know so we know to see you there.

... Habitat for Humanity with NSBE Jr. ...

2008-01-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Our January meeting changed things up in an effort to give back to the community. We partnered with Habitat for Humanity to help build houses in Santa Clara. Whether climbing on a roof or hammering in countless nails, students gained an understanding of engineering in action and the benefits of helping others.

Please enjoy the pictures from the Habitat for Humanity day of fun, community service, and HARD work!

Isn't it a great feeling to know that you're sore from a day of hard work for the community?! Much pride goes out to the team who represented NSBE Jr. and our NSBE Alumni Extension chapter to the community.

... Second Annual Holiday Party ...

2007-12-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

The holiday party was fun! I would have stopped at that but I was told to provide more detail; it was really fun. Perhaps one of the more impressive things about the night is the amount of diversity represented at the event as far as fields go; your biotechs, defense contractors, strategy and operations, educators, your standard computer techies and even...even, professional athletes!

Before the food arrived, and before everyone was given permission to start eating, the networking opportunity was exceptional. There were new faces; attendees brought guests and long-lost people from general body meetings past. Oh, and a few people that were MySpace and Facebook stalked -- I mean, found.

The food – I’ll call it good. Scratch that – great. Anytime you get to eat a $30 meal – especially for free – it has to be great. Or maybe it tasted really great because they told me it was expensive? Apparently that’s what the Stanford guys want me to believe.

And of course there were your great classic dinner table comments – I would explain but I have to keep this relatively PG rated. I’ll let you try and catch them live next time. Then came the gift exchange. There was definitely the techie touch to some of the gifts – a pen radio and a holiday wouldn’t be a party without a guide to 1001 cocktails (That’s a different drink a day for 30 something months). To summarize, the event was fun and I can’t wait for next year's party.

... December NSBE Jr. Meeting ...

2007-12-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

Our December meeting started with a seminar on SAT preparedness. A guest speaker from KAPLAN described the new SAT and tips and tricks to improve your score. Once students were prepped for the SAT we moved into engineering design topics. Engineering design has many applications and the students were asked to apply engineering design principles when designing bridges. Four teams competed and had varying strategies to solve the problem given to them. The winning team discovered how to quickly and effectively carry out their design concept.

...San Francisco, Rain, and "The Color Purple"...

2007-12-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Whoo-hoo! I replaced my camera and now I have pictures!! But I really need to learn when to use flash and when not to. Hm... :-\

It was with great success that our NSBE Social Coordinator Renee managed to corral a group of about 10 people (it was hard to count – people scattered like roaches at the end of the show…) to a Thursday night showing of the musical “The Color Purple” at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. The unexpected complication of the night? Rain. Nope…rain wasn’t on my radar! (Get it? Radar for weather forecasting? No?) As we all know, fresh rain = slow drivers = accidents = extra time to get to S.F.!

From the time we parked until our collective butts hit our seats, there was the possibility of having to watch the show in the lobby. You guessed it – we were late. (Hangs head in shame, but rightfully blames the RAIN!) With the zero hour arrival of the ticket holder, plus the help of ushers along the way, we were in our seats only 5 – 10 minutes into the show. Best of all: our seats were awesome balcony-level, front row seats. Great job, Renee!

Depending on your familiarity with the book/movie, your enjoyment of the show varied from “Good” to “Great…and that guy was hot!” (The girls know what I’m talking about.) Even the people who aren’t usually fans of musicals thought the show was a great production. The set design was spectacular, using slight construction and lighting changes to relay the settings of each scene for the audience. I’m not going to give a point-by-point review of the show, but I will recommend that you see the production if you can.

One thing I will do is encourage you avail yourself to experiences in the Arts. Often, we tend to give it an offhanded thought – if we even think about the Arts at all. But for we mostly-technical types, it’s a worthwhile reality check to see (and support!) the products of our creative counterparts. And in the case of “The Color Purple,” how often does an all-Black show bring us together in the Bay Area? (That wasn't rhetorical – if you have an answer, please respond.)

... November NSBE Jr. Meeting ...

2007-11-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

Saturday’s November NSBE Jr. meeting on the campus of San Jose State University focused on the subject of computer science. Our NSBE Jr. Champion, Jessica, along with individuals from our NSBE Alumni chapter and from SJSU, came up with some great presentations and activities that seemed to get the kids excited about science and engineering concepts; either that or they were faking it and would have a brighter future in Hollywood.

A speaker from Yahoo! discussed computers and practical applications in which computer science is used. Students listened intently as they learned of everyday applications that used computer science to make them work. After learning about computer science, the students were given the opportunity to actually write their own programs. Students at San Jose State University led an exercise using a program called Alice, available at http://www.alice.org/. (There’s a GREAT promotional video available on the website for those who are wondering how this all works. Their future endeavors will incorporate The Sims computer game!) This software package allowed students to program virtual environments by using a drag-and-drop feature for programming. The virtual worlds created were both educational and entertaining.

Another activity that we all engaged in was the ‘Build-A-Bridge-That-Will-Hold-Massive-Weight-in-A-Relatively-Short-Period-of-Time’ Challenge. The techniques that the kids used to win the challenge were pretty interesting. The rules were not too stringent so the kids engaged in various over-the-top techniques to accomplish the complex task. This leads one to believe that these kids, while extremely motivated to follow the path of righteousness (we hope…), would be able to perform outstandingly well in future jobs by completing tasks “by any means necessary” with a few exceptions to the term “means”. We’ll see who wins the next event.

It’s the battle of the adults vs. the little whipper-snappers, the ancient-of-days vs. the Young and the Restless, the Dinosaurs (no disrespect to people 24 and above) vs. the newborns… Come out to the next PCI meeting to support your age group!!!!! Come out to support the Kids!!!!

November Power Lunch

2007-11-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

Where was everyone today?! The November Power Lunch was pretty incomplete without you. October's Power Lunch had an enormous turnout - we started getting our hopes up. These are some mighty attendance fluctuations; you'd better have a good excuse the next time I see you...

A group of six (then eventually five...too bad you had to go, Renee...) met at Corner Square restaurant for some Korean BBQ in Santa Clara on a beautiful warm and sunny afternoon. The problem: it took a bit of driving and a hefty amount of squinting to find the correct location of the restaurant. Perhaps next time we should let everyone know that we're going to a shopping center!

All in all, the food was great; everyone (except Jessica who got Mexican food next door) thought their dish was good. I'm sure most of us (but not Jessica) would go back there again.

Post-Earthquake Checkup...

2007-10-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

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

... October General Body Meeting ...

2007-10-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

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.

... Silicon Valley AIDS Walk 2007 ...

2007-10-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

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”

.. Dezs Goodbye Dinner ...

2007-10-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

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?

... October NSBE Jr Meeting ...

2007-10-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

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.

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).

... October Power Lunch ...

2007-10-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

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!

...September General Meeting...

2007-09-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

One of us has GOT to bring a camera next time!

As just exclaimed, the absence of a camera was unfortunate. Now, there’s no visual documentation of Alex’s violently competitive Bring-This-Item-To-Me ice breaker game, no chronicling of the speaker from the Silicon Valley AIDS Walk Coalition, and no evidence of the ubiquitous presidential handshake between Elvis and our featured guest speaker, Mr. Morgan. To those who missed the meeting, all you’ll remember is that it was a rainy Saturday. Too bad, but I’ll do my best to summarize what you missed.

So what game was Alex making us play? You really had to be there. First, the room was split into two groups. We were given a vague reading of the rules – an item would be called out; it was each respective team’s job to provide the item. Simple enough, right? Not when rules were created spontaneously! Who carries their passport with them? Who notifies their roommate – also on one of the teams – to bring a textbook to the meeting? Who suggests that said roommate get the textbook out of their backpack and uses it to score points? The answer to all of these questions is Alex. We’ll be sure to keep a strong eye on him during all future ice breakers….

On to more important business…

By now I hope you’ve heard of the Silicon Valley AIDS Walk Coalition. Why? For one, this alumni chapter has a team set up for you join. The purpose of the Walk is to raise money for local organizations to use for HIV/AIDS education, awareness, and prevention programs that directly serve residents of the Silicon Valley. Speaker Ray Mueller shared the history of the walk as well as the organization that runs it. As of this writing, Alumni Chapter President Elvis Kibiti has raised the most amount money for the team. But don’t give up yet…there is still PLENTY of time left to beat him! The Walk is on Sunday, October 21st, 2007. Get started.

Ever thought about using your engineering degree for something outside of the corporate world? Guest Speaker Mr. Morgan shared his personal story of his transition from a traditional engineering job (the desk, the cubicle, the long hours…) to a community service job that utilized his experience and background. He is now a happy educator at Evergreen Valley College. You never know when school will come calling your name!

Reminder: AIDS Walk – Register or donate. Those are the two options.

...September Power Lunch...

2007-09-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

Looking for a great start to your month? Well then, check out our monthly First Friday Power Lunches!! Here’s a recap of our last outing:

For our September gathering, a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon greeted the NSBE alumni guests at Athena Grill, a Greek-cuisine restaurant located in Santa Clara. The lack of parking in close proximity to the restaurant was the first clue about the massive popularity held by this lunchtime Greek eatery. (Let’s all pretend that it being the ONLY restaurant on the street wasn’t a factor....)

Our illustrious Social Coordinator had enough foresight to secure a reservation, but the group still had to squeeze through the several-people-deep line to get to our table. Once seated, and after a bit of a delay due to miscommunication, plates of Hummus and other delicious Greek delicacies wafted their scents from the table. Here’s a helpful tip for future gatherings: if you ARRIVE early, you EAT early!

By the way, who can explain what Skordaliá tastes like? How about the (presumably) yummy Meltizanosaláta? No one? Hm. Hummus is easy – I can figure that one out on my own. The following can be forwarded to the owner: How about menus with pictures?

Please come out and join us for the next NSBE Alumni adventure in eating. The next Power Lunch will be on October 5th. Visit the NSBE-AE-SVC website more information.

... summer 2007 barbeque ...

2007-07-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

Dday’s here. Or rather summer bbq day is here. 115 “I will be there” responses on the evite. More like end-day. Well the preparation – it went something like preparation, preparation and more preparation. I won’t bore you with the details but some takes are definitely worthy of the mention – Diego and the 50 pound pickle jar, Alex monkeying around the park trying to set the tarps on the canopies with the angry deprived park lady breathing down his tail. I guess Tarzan in sunglasses was never that popular. The generator that never happened because angry fun hating person, see park ranger lady with deeply rooted issues, just happened to have an issue with fun in general. How about Marcela, Tiffany and the tomatoes. Big up to them. Who knows how much worse my burnt burger would have tasted if I didn’t have all the tomatoes and bbq sauce to soak it in … mmm bbq sauce … mmm Tony Tek’s jerk chicken. Big up to Tari, Dez and Alex for handling the smoke generating task with such tenacity and yet quite a high level of dignity.

Lovely day as always – we pride ourselves in being a California NSBE Alumni chapter. The Seattle chapter’s been thinking of moving south. Good call. We were lucky to have a pretty good location at Lake Almaden Park. The lake, the ducks, the wind, the grass, the beach, the volleyball pit, the people. Sounded a lot like the definition of heaven. It was a great day and unfortunately there were a couple of hiccups in the early setup stages – The park ranger wasn’t exactly in love with our generator nor did she appreciate Alex climbing up the canopies to set up the tarps. This all led to a majestic quest to acquire IPod and battery powered speakers to make up for the music deficiency which in itself turned up to be a two hour effort that came up short.

No need to worry though – a bunch of intelligent people ready and willing to mingle, next thing you know the conversation was … literally out of this world. A couple of people were going all off on rockets and you would have thought Jessica was ready to perform a stent installation operation right on the grill. Such intelligent people. Join NSBE and let it rub off on you. The lack of music didn’t hold anyone back – Football came first and Carlos was not shy on showing off those high school wide receiver moves. Seitu showed some promise of maybe making the JV waterboy all star team and Diego definitely throws worse than my little sister’s little sister. And of course NSBE is not without comedians … or not so funny volleyball referees.

“THIS TEAM MUST ROTATE”, “THE BALL IS FOULED”, “THIS REFEREE CAN BE BOUGHT” … these few sentences, or should I say SCREAMING SENTENCES describe Janelle’s tenure as volleyball referee. I won’t go into questioning her abilities as the last thing I need is a fine from USA Volleyball for decrying one of their valued refs. Volleyball though was comedy from Tari getting smashed on by Seitu. Let me rephrase that … Tari getting SMASHED on by Seitu. Joy had some serve moves, would have been nice if she kept the ball within the lines. Angela … Angela … I’ll skip the comments this time around to save her from crying. Ijeoma though came ready to BRING IT. Chenece … It would be kinda nice if you remembered what team you played on. Tiffany, Sean, Trish, Emeka and the rest of the crew did a great job cheering on the sidelines. It really added to the essence of the game. Plain magic. Dez, Akili, Rommell, Elvis and Tari – remind me again why it is that you don’t work as liars? These dudes argued everything from how much the total numbers of sand grains on one side of the court affected the game outcome to how many fingers most people are born with.

All was not lost though as in the world of double dutch you trip, we all know you tripped. Sand had nothing to do with it, there are no disputable court lines and no replay is needed. I take that back … a replay IS NEEDED to determine exactly how Tari jumped into that super tight space in between Elias and Janelle. Seitu was obviously frustrated on the sidelines as someone always tripped the rope before he could get to jump in and Ugo constantly tripped in up and pretended that she didn’t even know what happened. And why again do most of us work as engineers and not liars in courtrooms? Sean was getting pretty pissed at the kids who were throwing their shoes at the ducks and I thought that he was gonna pull a WWF move on one of the 50lb kids.

Unfortunately the day had to end and we closed it up with some dominoes, card and board games and not forgetting some soccer. I mean what kind of day would it be if Mohammed didn’t get a chance to show off the skills and you know Tiffany had to run over the dudes. She really tried to milk the “I am a girl I can play soccer, I am not physical move” … yea right. Its 2007 honey and girls do all sorts of things this century you know.

All in all it was a great day. We were honored to have the NSBE Region 6 Alumni Extension Chair Elect, Darrell Porcher, fly in all the way from San Diego just to attend the barbecue and we did get a whole bunch of new faces and people. Thanks to the Stanford SBSE crew as well as the San Jose State BASE representatives for representing the collegiate chapters. We are very excited to have kicked off the 2007-2008 year in such fashion and we do hope to see most of you around for future events. Remember we have general body meetings every 4^th Saturday of the month. Next one will be on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 10:00 AM to 12:00 Noon at Santa Clara University in BANNAN ENG, Room 326. Hope to see you there. For more pictures, check out our website.

... TRAITOR, TRAITOR ...

2007-07-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

Traitor : a person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc AKA betrayer, backstabber, double-crosser, renegade, fifth columnist; turncoat, defector, deserter; collaborator, informer, mole, snitch, double agent; Judas, Benedict Arnold, quisling; informal snake in the grass, two-timer, rat, scab, fink

Well the Black Stars came out strong this week. Quite the way to get the third indoor soccer season rolling. The first 5 goals were scored in the first 10 minutes of the game. Many many more were yet to come. Tiffany, Ola and Emeka were on full showoff mode on offense each dropping a couple of goals. What made the night exceptionally memorable was perhaps the second goal where the traitor (name withheld – we will not give him/ her the honor of being mentioned on this blog) who now plays for the other team hit the ball off Ola for the lovely assist. Or maybe it was Tiffany’s goal that went right between Traitor’s legs. Or it was Emeka’s fast moves that broke Traitor’s ankles.

Lovely game. A good NSBE thrashing with a message maybe – Go against your family and you are bound to lose. Support your people. The schedule is out and available HERE. Come support the team and let Dez know if you would like to play on the team.

... june general meeting ...

2007-06-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2007-06-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2007-06-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

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

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!

... May General Meeting ...

2007-05-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

You know its gonna be real live any time a speaker comes and the first thing they say, or rather scream is WHOOOOOSE HOUUUSE! six house. Charles Lassey of Mili Group Inc, was quite the speaker, a very knowledgeable region 6 NSBE alumni – you would after all expect this from someone who is closing in on a decade of experience in real estate in addition to owning millions of dollars worth of real estate in California.

The icebreaker was entertaining – your basic intro with a couple of questions designed to make it interesting. Now we all know that Seitu and Rommell’s favorite dates are the ones they don’t have to pay for; Angela certainly doesn’t think a date without meaningful conversation is a date and Marcela is sadly letting the outrageous gas prices get in the way of her happy dates – Tiffany on the other hand … slow your roll girl … first date in Hawaii is a little … yeeer.

Charles and Rommell (Rommell was assisting Charles with the presentation of materials) did a pretty good job and they put up a captivating show (not like there were lions jumping through rings of fire or anything). Among the key points Charles stressed on were (and of course this is his opinion based on his experience):

- Ignore all the negative rep. the media is spreading on real estate and real estate investing. The best time to get into real estate is always now

- Shoot to pay the interest and not the principal first

- Borrow smart

- Make sure you get the most bang out of your buck. Financing 10 houses with a million dollars down makes more sense than paying off one house worth a million dollars (There is some math involved in this)

The presentation is available on the NSBE Yahoo Group

As always the meeting was a blast. The nominations went smoothly and speeches/elections will be held during the next meeting. Feel free to nominate anyone or yourself for any of the following positions before the next meeting if you wish to (President, Vice President, Communications Chair, Finance Chair, Membership Chair, Programs Chair, PCI Chair). Look out for the following upcoming events:

June 1^st 2007: Power lunch at Uncle Franks BBQ in Mountain View.

June 16^th & 17^th 2007: Juneteenth festivities at Cesar Chavez park. Silicon Valley NSBE will have a booth and will display a line following robot and hold workshops on sensors.

June 23^rd 2007: June meeting. Nominated candidates will present their speeches and voting will take place. In addition, Michelle Galloway, an attorney and a lecturer at Stanford and Santa Clara University (also a member of the Silicon Valley High Tech advisory board) will give a presentation on patents.

July 7^th 2007: Annual Summer BBQ. Location TBD

... May Happy Hour ...

2007-05-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

By Diego Dimes - El Presidente

El Torito was the spot for our second Happy hour. Dave and Busters was suggested again but we decided to try something new. Plus its like pulling teeth trying to get a table at D&B. Jennifer was right on time and Tari was about 2 hours late…anyone surprised? Everyone was scared to be the first one to order a “real” drink until Craig stepped up to the plate. The ice was broken and house margaritas began to flow. On the rocks or blended at $3.95 you got a lot of bang for your buck.

The conversation was stimulating as always (That is what happens when you mix intellectuals and margaritas). Topics ranged from mergers and acquisitions to the Detroit Pistons spanking the Chicago Bulls. The wait staff was kind enough to place us directly in front of the big screen TV. We promptly requested the station be changed from baseball…yawn…to the NBA playoffs. The recent college grads and the seasoned professionals showed up to this one. We are thinking of replacing some of our power lunches with happy hours. What do you guys think?

... May Power Lunch ...

2007-05-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

You win some, you lose some. We partly lost one. Maybe we should ban the man upstairs from crying – this rain thing seems to get too much into the way of a lot of thing; traffic, outdoors playtime, makeup, May power lunch coming out party, restaurant seating … Yes. Rain does get in the way of restaurant seating.

Faultline Brewing in Sunnyvale is an okay joint, their portions may be a little questionable … but then again if you are a pig (like me) then everyone’s portions are questionable; but some are more questionable than others but I digress. Faultline is an okay joint … except for the maitre d who was more of an embarrassment to the holy code of honor that all maitre ds live by. Her vision of seating the masses during the Friday lunch rush was exceptionally flawed and for a minute I thought she might want to test the waters that are “how high can my pitch really go”

Rough start – smooth ending. Good conversation as always. Great food. Scratch that. Rationed great food. Sad to see that the famed research triangle park may soon be responsible for poaching Craig but … we’ll try and survive. Got any favorite places you would like to suggest for power lunch? Pass the word on. See you next first Friday of next month.

... april general meeting ...

2007-05-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

By Tiffany Taubodo, Communications Chair

Since we failed to observe National Nutrition Awareness Month in March, we decided to recognize it in the month of April. We were greeted with a very warm welcome from our President, Diego Dimes as we realized that the two rooms that we normally hold the meeting in were already occupied. Diego quickly responded and found us another room. Once we secured a room, the breakfast buffet began. The breakfast spread included fresh tasty bagels with an assortment of cream cheese and an assortment of seasonal fresh fruit.

After a nutritional breakfast, our speakers Carolina Brochado and Lorraine Damiani from the Nutrition Education Action Team spoke to us about "Nutrition and Chronic Diseases: "How can you avoid them." They provided us with handouts, showed us serving sizes of food and were very willing to answer all of our questions. For those of you who were unable to attend the meeting, you missed a treat. Please take a look at the following websites to become more aware of nutrition and how it effects you.

www.americanheart.org
www.diabetes.org
www.mypyramid.org
www.dietfacts.com

Following this, we had a programs update. Be on the look out for our upcoming happy hour and elections announcements. The meeting ending with an excellent Unity Banquet slide show presentation and the Ipod Raffle. Seitu has great luck and pulled his own name out of the bag for the Ipod Raffle. Congratulations Seitu!

... Unity Banquet ...

2007-04-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

By Diego Dimes, President

It has been 5 long years since the NSBE AE SVC held their last Unity banquet. This was the staple event for the alumni extension in which they gave away scholarships to the best and brightest collegiate and high school NSBE members. This was a special year because it is the first time in 5 years that the NSBE AE SVC has been active. The tech bust destroyed the chapter in early 2000. Since then the new board has been working to revitalize the chapter. When the board decided to have the banquet there were many dissenters. People told us we were too young of a chapter, we weren’t going to be able to get the sponsorship, we didn’t have the membership, maybe we will be ready next year and many other negative remarks. Needless to say we didn’t pay attention to all those who doubted us. The banquet chair Jessica Miller put together an outstanding banquet.

The site of the banquet was a beautiful banquet hall in Sunnyvale, The Historic Del Monte Building. This was not just a hotel with a big room but an actual banquet hall that only caters to large banquets. Leslie Stoval a veteran radio personality from the bay area was the MC for the night. She added a touch of personality to the event.

There was a great mixture of NSBE Alumni, Students and Professionals. Attendees came from the Silicon Valley Alumni Extension, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, San Jose State, Berkeley, San Francisco State, San Jose City College, Canada College as well as from the East Bay PCI chapter. The sponsoring companies: Cisco, Genetech, HP, IBM, J & J, Abbot Vascular, and Kaplan also sent representatives.

The keynote speaker, Forrest Williams, had some strong words for the attendees. He stressed the importance of NSBE stepping up and taking leadership roles in the black community. NSBE represents a large segment of the next generation of black leaders. If NSBE members do not fill the leadership and mentorship roles in the black community many of them will remain unfilled.

Several students left the banquet with a good reason to be happy. Unity scholarships were awarded to 7 deserving collegiate students. The award recipients were each given a $1000 dollar scholarship presented by the sponsoring company. Other smaller dollar amounts were handed out to other students/ persons who excelled in specific categories. Students were awarded in the areas of technical excellence, creative expression, community service, and academic excellence. However, it wasn’t just the college students that benefited on this night. One alumni member left with a $1700 scholarship from Kaplan to pay for grad school prep courses.

The night ended with everyone’s favorite dance, the electric slide. This banquet was a testament to the power and potential that NSBE has. NSBE-AE-SVC was able to go from not having a chapter 10 months ago to hosting a banquet with over 100 attendees; sponsoring attendance of all college and PCI students, and giving away over $9000 in scholarships.

... march general meeting ...

2007-04-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

Writer: Angela Adaure Uzoma

Have you heard of Google? Its name is thrown around in the news every now and then, but you know never know with these startups. Well, the little company known as Google hosted our fine organization’s March meeting at their company headquarters in Mountain View. We were greeted with a very warm welcome consisting of correctly-spelled nametags, an abundant breakfast spread, as well as a first-class conference room for our meeting. Our hosts were pleased to be partnered with a NSBE group so…we’re definitely going back! A big round of applause for Miss Sun-Hee and Sir Taylor for playing such lovely hosts!

Molecular Diagnostics…what does that mean? It’s a project that Elvis is working on, and also the title of the presentation he gave at the meeting. In an attempt to introduce more hard-hitting and technologically-focused discussions to our monthly meetings, Elvis bit the bullet and put together an astoundingly detailed and (shockingly…cough, cough…) interesting yet informative explanation of his personal contributions to Cepheid, the company for which he works. Got questions about molecular diagnostics? Talk to the guy in the glasses covered in UCLA paraphernalia.

Also discussed were the changes to the GRE taking place over the summer of this year. A representative from Kaplan (code name: Kaplan Kelly) spent time going over the exact changes that will be incorporated in to the revised version of the GRE.
Breaking News!: It turns out that the new GRE will not happen after all. (No More New GRE!)

The meeting wrapped up with a reminder to sign up for the Walk for Education at nsbe.org and to RSVP for the NSBE Alumni Banquet. Please sign up for both!

... April Banquet ...

2007-03-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

The Silicon Valley NSBE Banquet is coming up! The Silicon Valley recognizes the best and the brightest college students in the Silicon Valley area. It provides a forum to network with NSBE members, industry professionals and great young minds. There will be a number of choice companies sponsoring the event … I technically can’t release the names but I’ll be good and drop a hint: Some biiiig companies whose names start with a G, another that starts with an A, the all ever famous H, not forgetting that one company L, and … a pretty good lineup so far. List is still growing ... please pray that I don’t lose my job for leaking this info.

When: April 14th 2007, 6:30PM – 10PM
Where: The Historic Del Monte Building, 100 S. Murphy Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086

Who (Speaker): San Jose City Councilmember Forrest Williams
Who (MC): Leslie Stoval host of 102.9 KBLX's "The Quiet Storm"

How much: Collegiate Students – Free; SV NSBE Members $30; Non Members $55

RSVP HERE

... March Power Lunch ...

2007-03-04T22:36:00.000-08:00

Mexican food’s great. Pedro’s is a great restaurant. I guess we made power lunch history by heading back to a location that had already hosted us in the past. For those who don’t recall, the August 2006 power lunch was held at Pedro’s. As always, the food was great and everyone was just feeling extremely comical – Craig … Craig … we’ll leave it at that. What happens at Pedro’s stays at Pedro’s … but I just had to knock on Tari for getting punched the hell out by a comeback comment made by Angela … that was funny … in the spirit of the whole you had to be there to get the benefit of the joke, I’ll leave it at that. Zuberi asked for a special shout out considering this was his first power lunch so ... here's your shout out brother man. Next lunch’s coming up on April 6th. Got a location in mind you would like to propose? Leave a comment.

... february general meeting ...

2007-02-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

Cynthia Wesley is a great speaker, that is a given. We were lucky to have her grace our February meeting. Cynthia founded the Black Recruiters Network, BRN, with the primary purpose of providing mentoring and training support to Black Staffing and Human Resource Professionals in Silicon Valley. Her focus on this lovely Saturday was leadership – How to be a leader at work. Several good questions were tabled during the presentation and there were several memorable comments as well. We definitely all know that “testing Devaris’s gangster” isn’t exactly the way to go at work coz he will let the “educated gangsta” out on you.

As always the company was lovely, food great – thanks Jen for the great sandwiches. As far as meetings go, we’re gonna put a spin on the March meeting. The March meeting will be held at Google – Google is sponsoring it all, the food (they got some great chefs), the location, the projector … everything. March 24th 2007, 10PM … you know the location … shouldn’t be too hard to find on Google maps.

... Goodbye Jana ...

2007-02-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

Food and drinks: May be $200 or so
Money that changed hands at the poker table: Damn I lost!
Dez hosting Jana’s send off at his place: Priceless
Jana leaving for Toronto: Devastating … aye.

Thursday the 15th of 2007 will definitely be remembered as the day Jana decided to run off from lovely Silicon Valley for the cold unknown and unforgiving slopes of Toronto (we all know the story of the Spanish explorers who got to present day Canada and said “aca nada” which means “nothing here” then turned back to continue exploration of present day Estados Unidos aka USA and South America) … that said, we are still trying to understand why Jana’s moving to Canada – now a move to South America would make sense but Canada … catch my drift, aye?

Regardless of all this, a send-off for Jana was in order as she prepares to veer off into the wilderness of unexplored aca nada. Kindly enough, Dez prepared the goodbye Jana shrine over at his place – quite the memorable night – Emeka and Brittany will definitely be remembered for the elevator Kodak moment scene, we all know that Tari nicknamed the phrase “Jana is cool” and everyone knows that Corey could never break Vegas even with the best good luck charm one could ever ask for (Jana).

We will definitely all remember Jana for the great person she was (and still is) during what felt like a really short stint with the Silicon Valley NSBE Alumni chapter. She always had the smile going, she played every sport you could think of on this earth – MVP a couple times over at soccer, shooting fade away jumpers over Diego, etc. We would like to wish her all her best in her endeavors in Canada and pray that she doesn’t forget us as she gets ready to take over the institution that is Accenture.

Peace out Jana. You are the best and we all love you the mostest.

... February Power Lunch ...

2007-02-10T18:46:00.002-08:00

I guess soul food does the trick when it comes drawing the crowd. February’s power lunch at H Butler’s turned out to be the best attended power lunch we’ve had in our 6, 7 month history. We definitely pulled a bigger crew than the last supper crew – too bad our event wont forever be immortalized in lovely paintings that grace walls all over the world but … we try. I would believe that engineers who feel the need to take crazy poses over lunch photos will definitely NOT go into helping the declaration of this lunch event as a historic, landmark, “once in a lifetime”, “you had to be there” occasion … but that is a story for another day.

Intel definitely came out strong and so did Rockwell Collins. It was nice that the Intel people who showed up had never met before (they all work at the same site but … Intel’s huge). Of importance is the opportunity the connection presented and a possible job change opportunity that rolled in as a bonus. Aaaah, the joys of power lunch + soul food. Keep eating, we’ll keep connecting.

... Soccer Season Closing ...

2007-02-10T18:46:00.001-08:00

Goooooaaaaal. That was literally the way season 1 of soccer ended for the Black Stars. Elvis just felt the need to show off, the Kenyan Killer they call him, by taking up an ESPN top ten moment spot by scoring the last goal of the season with 4 seconds left to go in the game.

The season was really great and was surprisingly oversubscribed. The number of people who wanted to play was waaaaay more than the number of allocated teams spots and it was really nice to see that kind of enthusiasm. Jessica did a great job organizing the whole tournament, getting us to practice and the likes … some of us of course felt the need to take the Iverson path … “we’re talking about practice. PRACTICE”. Dez . We were definitely not your standard polished pro English Premier Soccer League team when the season started but we definitely improved as the season progressed. There were tough times when other teams had us in a tough spot (talk about Robo Girl … but that is another story)

The girls really came through for the team and we lost a couple of soldiers in the good fight – Erica went down in game one of the season and Marcela in the last game of the season. They managed to somehow hold it all together for a good 40+ minutes with no rest – hats off to all the girls, Lisa and Jennifer#2 on defense, Jana, Jennifer#1, Jessica and Renee on the goals, Marcela on handling the whole floor, Jo and Adrienne with the lovely pom poms. Not to forget the dudes – Seitu aka “like glue”, the Nigerian Nightmare trio Dez, Ola and Tari, the Kenyan Killer Elvis, Diego aka D Maradona. Big shout out goes to out goalie Chris who scored all the way from our goal – not to forget all the spectacular dive saves … that’s a true hero man.

All in all, it was a great run. Kudos to all the players, the cheerleaders, the cheerleaders at heart as well good old David Silva over at MVP Arena not to forget our worthy opponents all through the season who made it the exhilarating experience that it was. I guess in the wise words of NSBE we could call this “an experience that positively impacted the community – the NSBE community as well as all the others who had a jolly old time participating in the games”. Marching on to season two …

Nov 10, 10:25PM - Black Stars 1 vs Relentless 8
Nov 17, 10:25PM - SVSE 10 vs Black Stars 4
Dec 1, 8:45PM - Black Stars 2 vs Smack! LE 9
Dec 8, 7:55PM - Black Stars 8 vs AC Milan 2
Dec 15, 8:45PM - Black Stars XX vs Benchwarmers XX
Dec 22, 8:45PM - Black Stars XX vs Relentless XX
Jan 12, 7:55PM - Sports Basement SV XX vs Black Stars XX
Jan 19, 6:15PM - Black Stars XX vs Smack! LE XX
Jan 26, 7:05PM - Black Stars XX vs AC Milan XX
Feb 2, 7:05PM - Black Stars XX vs Benchwarmers XX

Season Record XX-XX

... january general meeting ...

2007-02-10T18:45:00.000-08:00

placeholder

... december holiday party ...

2006-12-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

As always the holiday party was an exciting event – a nice combo event held to usher in the holidays, to celebrate some of our member’s birthdays (apparently we have about 10 members who were born in December) and to welcome the new NSBE graduates to the alumni chapter. We won our soccer game the night before … 11-5. Straight bullying!

Thanks to Jessica for cooking the main course, two turkeys frozen over a whole month (Thanks Guidant!), Diego for hosting, Tiffany for the decorations and everyone else for their help in making the event a success. As always there were the usual memorable moments … talk of sibling rivalry/ love and car (read as violence) from waaay back in the day, Tari and his lovely teddy white elephant gift, Renee and the 10 year old zip drive, Seitu and the Panasonic batteries (not even energizer). Good times. Fun times.

... gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaal ...

2006-12-09T18:51:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately I didn’t study journalism in school and as such I cannot describe the first win by the Black Stars (there is actually history behind the choice of the team name) with as much color and emotion as a sports writer would say when Michael Jordan hit the game winning shot, when Peyton Manning obliterated defenses with a record number of touchdowns, … you get the picture. The moment was as epic as any other when the final buzzer sounded and the black stars prevailed 8-2. There was no confetti … I think we were robbed on that. Now that we finally have a win this would be a good time to share the results from the past couple of games we have played.

Nov 10, 10:25PM - Black Stars 1 vs Relentless 8
Nov 17, 10:25PM - SVSE 10 vs Black Stars 4
Dec 1, 8:45PM - Black Stars 2 vs Smack! LE 9
Dec 8, 7:55PM - Black Stars 8 vs AC Milan 2
Dec 15, 8:45PM - Black Stars vs Benchwarmers
Dec 22, 8:45PM - Black Stars vs Relentless
Jan 12, 7:55PM - Sports Basement SV vs Black Stars
Jan 19, 6:15PM - Black Stars vs Smack! LE
Jan 26, 7:05PM - Black Stars vs AC Milan
Feb 2, 7:05PM - Black Stars vs Benchwarmers

All games are held at the MVP arena on Friday nights. You should come out and check it out. Be sure to bring your pom-poms. Team spirit was well alive during this magical night, Tari on the sidelines doing the ESPN play by play announcements, Chris screaming “Go show off” all the way from the goalie and I believe that all goals were actually scored by the girls. Part of the feminist agenda “ … score all the goals in Coed soccer leagues”

Needless to say, the ambiance at the dinner table was fabulous. Applebees – we ate good in the neighborhood all the way till the restaurant closed. Quite the way to close out a winning night. Next up – The bullying of the Bench Warmers, December 15th @ 8:45. No feel good movie comeback by the benchwarmers this time around – just straight ballyragging!

... Golden Harvest Food Sort #2 ...

2006-12-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

The food sort activity this Wednesday was definitely much cleaner than last time. Renee was a little bit disappointed that it wasn’t as challenging as it was the first time around; damn overachiever! Diego actually pulled his act together, showed up on time and spent a record 0 minutes on the phone. Now if that doesn’t define success I don’t know what does. Dinner afterwards at Olive Garden was spectacular. I guess they really do make you feel like family there. I wont get into details but talk of beef medallions, the four ladies from sex in the city and waterfront properties had a lot of people cracking up ... some a little bit more than others ... being easily amused isn't exactly the worst thing that could happen to somebody.

This time around I thought I would present some statistics just to show what effect such an event has on our community. After all, any event held in the name of NSBE should be geared towards fulfilling the mission statement … the relevant part here being “… and to positively impact the community” Now the definition of “community” will vary from person to person … I’ll let you pick your own definition.

A lesson in demographics …

Ethnic breakdown of people receiving aid from Second Harvest
40% are Non-Hispanic White
38% are Non-Hispanic Black
17% are Latino or Hispanic
6% are American Indian, Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

Breakdown of the US population by race
60% are Non-Hispanic White
12% are Non-Hispanic Black
14% are Latino or Hispanic
14% are classified as other

From this, we can see clearly that the black population is much much more reliant on food donations than any other racial group within the US. Gone are the days when we sit down and rely on African American public figures to help drive a positive socio-economic within our community– the Martin Luther Kings have been replaced by the Flavor Flavs, the Mohamed Alis have been replaced by the Mike Tysons and so on and so forth. NSBE IS trying to mass produce the new age MLK’s; are YOU on the bandwagon?

... Golden Harvest Food Sort ...

2006-11-15T23:50:00.000-08:00

The scene takes place in San Jose at the Golden Harvest food sort facility (wait – isn’t Golden Harvest a Kung-fu movie studio? How ironic). A large warehouse sits in the background, filled with all that warehousy stuff – cool little forklifts that they will not let you touch – but they are more than happy to drive them around the place with those buddy buddy looks on their faces expressing sheer delight over the unimaginable amount of joy and happiness they derive from pulling donuts in the forklifts.

Stage goes dark (or rather suns sets completely). 6 o’ clock just hit. The staff at the facility waste no time in breaking up the volunteers into little functional groups. They read what must have been a good two pages of directions as they attempt to explain how the evening’s activities will be carried out. Nobody listens. In an out of the other ear as expected. Total chaos starts to reign …

Loud Voice 1**: 4BBE56M … To the right, 7NSB9767H … in the other box.
Even Louder Voice 2**: Which one was the veggie can again
Medium Pitched Voice 3**: 4BDA56N
Normal Voice 2: Ok
Extremely Loud Voice 1: Wait! 4BDA56N goes in the beans pile not the veggies pile
Voice 3 (with a tone of accomplishment engulfed in confusion): Damn! Ok.

Diego walks in late with his cell phone sandwiched between his ear and shoulder …

The food sort activity was pretty fun. With people like Dez trying to “hook shot” cans into containers and Zack showing up like the block monster he is. The theme of the night was basically number and letter combinations. Lots of combinations each corresponding to something different; beans, veggies, mysterious stuff (I am not kidding on this one), beans with labels, beans that needed labels that weren’t just beans, … the list goes on and on. As always, we took the regular corny “look at me, I am sorting cans” photos that we use to blatantly show you much fun we are having. We closed up with a good old family style Italian dinner at Buca di Beppo. Fun times. All in the spirit of impacting our community positively.

Diego walks out with his cell phone sandwiched between his ear and shoulder … Stage goes dark.
** The pitch and or tones of the voices may have been slightly exaggerated

... Friday Soccer Season Opener ...

2006-11-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

Well well well. Game numero uno was quite the game. First, kudos to Erika for her bravery out on the field. It really is a jungle out there. The game went well, we definitely had the largest supporting crowd of all the crowds that showed up – team sprit was high, you couldn’t have asked for a higher morale level from the team. Several stars shone and we truly had a memorable night. We learnt of our strengths and weaknesses; all a learning experience that should definitely make us a stronger team. Hats off to the team and all the supporters. See you all next Friday.

... who reads this crap anyway? ...

2006-11-07T23:35:00.000-08:00

I’ve been wondering the same thing. Better yet, who writes this crap anyway? I thought I would take a different approach and post a different kind of entry … you know … something a little bit more techy (for all the guys and gals out there who like to have a Rubik’s cube thrown their way every now and then)

So I track the hits on this page, you know, all that little stuff down to the color of “insert very personal clothing item name here” you were wearing when you got on this page – just kidding. Breathe in. Anyway, among the stats that I pay attention to are: the number of hits, the region of origin and the blog retention rate.

The chart above indicates the number of hits/ our retention. The plotting is done on a week-by-week basis and among the points of interest are the spikes at W31, W34, W38 and so on. These correspond to periods following our major events such as meetings and stuff – makes sense as this is when we would usually send a nice little email saying that the pictures and event update are available on the blog (quite the sleazy way of stuffing the ballot box and getting more “hits” on the blog)

The pie chart above breaks down the numbers – you know – the ones who have stuff to do and the ones who have even more important things to do i.e. read this blog on a regular basis. We see that about 50% of the users are “first time users”. This is a little bit deceiving in that the counter relies on IP addresses and cookies to determine whether someone has visited the site before. In case of the latter, situations where browsers do not accept cookies or regularly dump their cookie loads (I don’t understand why one would not want cookies or even worse why you would wanna dump cookies esp. the heart shaped ones! Mmmmmm. Cooooookkiiies) would throw off the actual number while in the former, visitors on dynamic IP’s e.g. the AOL guys or internal company networks would record as “new visitors” even though they had checked out the site several times.

The short: At least 35% of the visitors read this blog on a monthly basis and another 20% read the blog on a biweekly basis.

Lastly, we see that we have some good faithfuls over in Chile and in the UK checking out the blog. Power to the world man. If you haven’t bought onto this globalization thing yet … you might just wanna jump on the bandwagon … it’s for real. Trust me. The previous months have recorded visits from France, Japan, Tanzania among others. At the end of the day though, we see that the biggest spender is the San Jose resident commanding a whopping 50% share of the blog traffic. Yay for good old Silicon Valley – After all we are Silicon Valley NSBE Alumni aren’t we?

Enjoy the corny ending and have a great week/ weekend!

... black stars ...

2006-10-31T23:04:00.000-08:00

THE NIGERIAN NIGHTMARE. Need I say more? Hopefully Devaris wont sue me for using his coined nickname. The soccer practice was some good stuff – went through the regular small talk after the meeting – all that bonding stuff and then … we moved on to enjoy the heavenly nickelodeon day. Jessica was not smiling on the field – she had us doing drills; no smiles; no warm fuzzy “you have it in you’s”, “you can do it” … just plain cold heartless drill sergeant attitude.

We got to vote on the team color and name; red and black stars respectively. Kwasi was pretty stoked about the team name (for those of you who don’t know, the Ghana team is called “The Black Stars”) – Do you think that it is ironic that he was wearing a Ghana Black Stars Jersey at the park?

Anyway, the games are gonna be every Friday starting on the 10th of November. We are a coed team signed up at the MVP arena. If you would like to join, Jessica’s the contact (littlejp52@yahoo.com).

The practice session was great. We held it at the park next to Rivermark Plaza (this should be the location of future practices I believe??) after which we all strolled over to Jamba Juice and Chipotle for a good filling and some team bonding conversation. Games start 11.10.06 – If you are down, you know who to call. With the NIGERIAN NIGHTMARE aka Dez on our side + the KENYAN WANNABE NIGHTMARE at goalie all other sides are guaranteed to flop. Guarantee!

... october general meeting ...

2006-10-31T22:16:00.000-08:00

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.

... Silicon Valley AIDS walk ...

2006-10-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

The AIDS walk event was a fun event. The day wasn’t exactly the warmest day ever and the 8AM advertised start time was a little – whats the word – perhaps this would be best summarized by a phrase delivered by a Silicon Valley CEO in response to late meeting times “I don’t wake up that early. The creatures of the night scare me and I’d rather be up once the early birds have finished killing them off.”

Kick off time was at about 10AM and I am more than glad to say that we overshot our $1000 goal by at least 50% (The final numbers are not in yet but we got a rough $1600 count on the monies raised). Thanks to everyone for making this possible. The whole walk was supposed to be a wonderful 6 mile walk but some of us (cough cough) took the shortcut to the shortcut and they walked for a total of 0.5 miles (talk about creatures of the night who had to wilt away so that the real CEO’s could come up and get the work done).

The walk was enjoyable; there weren’t too many complaining about aching body parts at the end of the walk which is a good thing. The conversation was very exquisite and it is amazing how much we as a group tend to have in common (this can be scary). We found a nice balance to this by agreeing to disagree on several issues (which is a great thing because the last thing you want is a non-diverse thinking group of people trying to make a change within a diverse population).

The food aspect of it was great as well – the committee in charge of the walk put a great continental breakfast selection, they fed us along the way, we stopped at starbucks (it is essential to support a Magic Johnson venture especially when walking for AIDS/HIV) and we finally threw down good old Mexican style at LaVictorias. I have to say that at the end of the day, nothing topped the conversations we had during the course of the walk (FYI: A 6 mile walk is a nice way to get to know someone as it translates to a good two hours of talk time) and at the restaurant over lunch. This was definitely a great way to help positively impact our community. Coming up we will have a general body meeting on the 28th of this month. This month’s feature speaker will grace us with knowledge on patents i.e. how to go about patenting ideas, knowing whether your idea is patentable, etc, etc. See you on the 28th! ☺

... october power lunch ...

2006-10-06T18:06:00.000-07:00

Well I guess fads will always be a part of life … you know, everything from those huge fly glasses to Africa being the “place to be” for celebrities to those all so common corporate action acronyms we have come to be so accustomed to – you know – the SMARTs (Say, Mean, Achieve, blah blah blah), FLOW (Feel, Love, blah blah). I guess one thing you could say they all have in common is that they all allow us to measure something of importance given the circumstance (you know – the more kids you birth in Africa the cooler you are, the bigger your stunna glasses the more … etc) and in the corporate atmosphere those little action acronyms usually involve the setting of a goal, the drawing up of the game plan, the implementation and finally the evaluation of how close one came to achieving their goal.

I digress a lot. Power lunch was over at a Mongolian BBQ place in Santa Clara a couple of blocks away from the DMV. I personally have been to this place several times and one thing I have to say about the owners of the place is that they are definitely the most chipper people I have ever met. They are always smiling, always so friendly, the food is nice, the bathrooms have that freaking soothing nature music that makes you just wanna sleep in there or something (insert your favorite activity here). No I have not been paid to endorse this place. I will let YELP do the advertising.

Well power lunch has quite some ways since June. I remember 4 people showing up for the first one! That was something. Since then the attendance has held steady between 8 and 10 attendees. One might say that we are definitely not growing in power lunch attendance numbers (statistically this is true) but I defy that thought process and declare the power lunches a huge success. What amazes me about the power lunches is that ever since June, I have always met at least one new person whose name was not on any NSBE roster that I have seen in my short NSBE years. What makes this a big deal is the fact that I know a WHOOLLE ton of people (being a member of the board and having access a lot of databases) yet new people always show up somehow from somewhere out in the blue.

Generally most of the people who show up meet at least three new people every month (if not 8 or 9). You could call it NSBE speed networking without the pressure. Subjectively speaking, I can only say that I am awed at the success of this event. With every first Friday of the month comes an automatic addition into the tighter circle of my associates, the people who will most likely play a very instrumental part as I advance onto the next step of my career, people who I play soccer with in the parks on weekends, people who inform me of events from which I grow in multiple facets of life … put it plainly - it is ridiculously amazing.

OK, corny touchy feeling post is over. Enjoy the pictures. Stay safe. See you next power lunch on either the 3rd or 10th of November (FRC will be held from the 3rd to the 5th of Novemver and as such the power lunch may be moved). Stay safe. Play smart.

... meeting numero uno baby! ...

2006-10-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

OK OK. Go easy on me. Well the update is finally here so hopefully everyone can now go easy on me on blog updates. I have a job, a wife and kids (well I don’t really have a wife unless you call a car a wife and my beat up 20 inch black and white TV + my JVC VHS deck kids)

Well we had out first general meeting on the 23rd of September. It was held at Santa Clara University, Bannan Engineering Room #325, 500 El Camino Real Santa Clara, California 95053. Curious why I have the whole address up on the blog?? Well that is because we will be holding all out meetings at this location from this point onwards. The building is kinda funky (you know how those engineers like to model every simple task into a full blown Rubik’s cube solving session) and for future reference you might wanna have someone’s number just in case you get lost within the building.

The initial intention was to actually combine the meeting with one more summer barbeque given that we had an extremely successful bbq in May when we officially kicked off the alumni group … long story short – we decided to do a breakfast event instead as this is the format in which all general body meetings will be modeled after.

The hot items on the agenda were a good old intro session. The icebreaker was interesting – something about everyone standing in a circle and adding an adjective (noun, shmoun, whatever) in from of their name e.g. adventurous Andrea, dynamic Dez … and everyone in the circle had to remember not only everyone’s name but also the little adjective the person chose to put in front of their names. Needless to say it got very comical. The meeting featured and explanation of our goals as a chapter, the things we have accomplished so far and upcoming stuff. (the powerpoint preso is available HERE)

Our first speaker was Mr Zuberi White who spoke on investing. He definitely oozed pure wisdom, Wise man I tell you. His stuff was solid and participation from the meeting attendees was great. Couldn’t have played out any better than it did. Our good friend Devaris threw in a lot of tips – he definitely has walked the investing earth and all in all it was a very informative session. Towards the end of the meeting suggestions were taken on future topics and some of the ones that seemed to shine were patents, real estate, handling workplace drama, diversity at work, interview techniques, even more about investing, …

At the end of the day, the meeting was great – good attendance, great company, ridiculous stories (you wont believe half the stuff that is out there), comedians all over the place, great vibes – very lovely event. October’s meeting should definitely be something to look forward to.

Well – talk about history is over. Lets talk about what’s coming up.

10.06.2006 – POWER LUNCH (yes, this is like in two days from now)
Well, you know what power lunch is all about. How about I tell you where its gonna be. Drumroll please! We shall be having Mongolian BBQ. The location is over in Santa Clara at 3380 El Camino Real, CA, 95051. Time: 11:30 – 1:00PM. Click HERE for more on this place (BTW, my picture is on the wall in this place)

10.06.2006 – In conjunction with San Jose State BASE, we will be taking a couple of PCI kids over to EA Sports so that they can see that it really isn’t all that bad being a geeky computer engineer.

10.06.2006 – Ira Dearing who happens to be a very important NSBE associate who is also on the San Francisco Opera board invites us all to attend THIS free opera event at Stanford.

10.08.2006 - One of our members, Kevin Jones, invites everyone to show up for a play "The taming of the shrew" put up by the African American Shakespeare Company. Check out THIS link for more details.

10.15.2006 – In an effort to give back to our community, we will be participating in the annual Silicon Valley AIDS walk. Please join us in supporting this cause either by:
1. Joining our team “NSBE Silicon Valley Alumni Extension” HERE
All the materials you require to solicit monies are available from the web address above or you can download them from our yahoo group

2. Sponsoring any of our walkers. Click HERE and take your pick

... September power lunch ...

2006-09-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

How about we pull out the big fish and fry it whole – just because we are in the big leagues. Santana Row’s Straits café was this months venue for the Power Lunch. Everyone in the South Bay knows about Santana Row and all the great things it has to offer. Lunch was lovely. Not much more I can say to that. This time around Hewlett Packard had the greatest representation and we had a member present from a new continent – Europe.

There were a lot of new faces at this event which is a good thing. This goes to affirm the "assumption" we had when we first started doing chapter events “Different things will appeal to different members, some want to network, others want to give back, others want to socialize (yes yes Networking and socializing are two different things – At least in my book) … ” And once again, the numbers did increase from the last power lunch we had! One of the funniest scenes at the table was when we started exchanging business cards – There were so many of them flying left and right. It was all about classic duck and cover moves – talk about total chaos.

Next power lunch will be coming up on the 6th of October. Hope to see you there.

... August Happy Hour ...

2006-08-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2006-08-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2006-08-09T06:46:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2006-08-04T18:37:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2006-08-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

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.

... boys night out? ...

2006-07-30T02:23:00.000-07:00

Thursday July 27th

So the first thing you will notice about this entry is that it is backdated. Well (shuffling feet and playing with fingers while grinning sheepishly) DAMMIT! I was too lazy to write up this post on Thursday ... some might say I wasn’t in the perfect state of mind to do so ... they don’t know me. They don’t know me! They can’t judge me ... ok now I am borderline losing it.

Well this is the "San Jose Grand Prix" weekend and about everything happening within downtown is all being marketed as "the opening act". Among the "opening acts" were this week's Music in the Park event starring the legendary Don Carlos. So me and a couple of us alums went out to the park for the concert. The atmosphere was great, the people were friendly (classic Reggae concert atmosphere) and the barley-based refreshments went down real easy in one hella classic California summer evening. We then followed this up with another performance by the Santana tribute band at the "Music in the Dark" event. The percussion performance put up by those guys was incredible - of course Santana’s guitar black magic is on another galaxy but ... another great show.

As the night was still young, we decided to move on to one of those places where they dim the lights and for some reason the lights are multicolored with music a couple of decibels higher than the norm playing, couple of screens here and there and highly distilled beverages on a discount if you flash that college ID which has been invalid for a while now. Great place. Great people. Nuff said. Close up the night at a Mexican restaurant (all this is still in downtown San Jose) where it literally took them 15 minutes to make one soft taco - I could do that in my sleep for the record.

Music, refreshing beverages, great company, great food to cap it all off. Now that’s what you call a good day ... which makes waking up on Friday to go to work a horrible afterthought.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/SVC_NSBE/

... humble beginnings ...

2006-07-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

So we just had our alumni executive board meeting and we discussed the agenda. Nothing unusual really, some talk about new board members, something about achieving a recognized non profit status, updates on AIDS walk, game night details, RLC stuff ... you know really mind blowing kind of stuff. The meeting was cool, lots of jokes as usual - Akili and Sean always get silly.

Anyway, I cant remember the exact series of events that led to the moment where idea of a blog was brought up, about all I remember is Drew saying "And we had always thought of having a NSBE blog" - Drew was the last SVC NSBE president before the collapse of the chapter - and I thought that it was a very noble idea so ... here we go!

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/SVC_NSBE/