Newsletter - Archive  Apr 7, 2009

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President's Update:  Late March and April are action packed with Rotary events!!

Hi Everyone,

    Hold on to your hats!! In the last several weeks Rotary District 5320 has been in "fast foward"

training mode with the District Conference which convened at the Hyatt Newporter on March

27th to 29th and the District Assembly at Chapman University last Saturday April 4th.

    At this year's highly successful District Conference our club partnered with the Orange North Rotary Club to host a hospitality suite where we served our famous gourmet-lite chili with all the fixings and a failed attempt at Margaritas, due to a malfunctioning margarita machine.  Orange North served chips and salsa.  Special thanks to Steven Pollack, Bob and Ken Meyer, Lesslie Giacobbi, Jane McDonald, photographer Mark Schmidt and the Orange North Club members.  The booth also raised about $100 to help support the troops by showing a very poignant powerpoint presentation created by Bob and Ken Meyer. This year's event was exciting, fun and well attended with lots of great food, wine and fruity alcoholic libations prompting one slighty besoted attendee to proclaim that "Rotary is a drinking club with a serious service problem"  Mark Schmidt and I took lots of photos that you can see in the photo album section of the website.  I was able to attend the luncheon on Saturday and was glad I got the opportunity to meet and sit next to Max Klinger, the leader of a visiting delegation from Bavaria, Germany.  We had a great conversation and it's always great to get the perspectives of Rotarians from other countries and to realize how similar we are, and how the world needs the fellowship and cooperative efforts that Rotary creates.  The speakers were both funny and informative and if you ever get the chance to hear Diane Knight, the RI President's

representative, or John T Capps, a Rotarian from North Carolina, and his wife Jane, don't miss it.

    Last Saturday was the District Assembly at Chapman University and several hundred local Rotarians got to hear informative sessions on a wide variety of Rotary topics.  Club members attending were Jeannie Hankins, Jane McDonald, Millie Alexander, Greg Mills and Mark Schmidt.

I attended 3 different sessions, two dealt with websites and social communication using some of the newer internet groups- Facebook and Twitter.  The take home messages were:

1.  a good website is essential to club health and growth- to be good it needs to be current/updated regularly, have lots of flexibility for photos and videos and be easy to maintain by someone with

only basic computer skills. I'm happy to say our website meets these criteria. 

2. New members are likely to find your club by viewing your website- it's an excellent recruitment

device, but must be current to reflect positively about your club.  If someone contacts your club via the website respond; another great recruitment method.

3.There is a large Rotary presence on Facebook as a Fan Site.  Members can easily join this fan site to get updates directly from RI. It even allows members and nonmembers to make contributions to different Rotary programs, e.g. Polio Plus using Paypal.

The third session I attended was a preview of the Rotary Future Vision program that our club will be

participating in later this month.  We hope to have a great turnout for this event and develop a great plan to ensure our club's future growth and success.

Following the meeting Mark, Greg, Millie and I had a nice lunch at Papa Hassan's Restaurant in Old Town Orange. Mark Schmidt insisted we try their  "Heaven" dessert- a honey-water soaked piece of cake topped with oodles of whipped cream and grated pistacio nuts-  yum!!  Everyone in our group felt they got a lot of good information to take back to the club.

Our club is also going to have a very productive and busy month-here is a rehash of upcoming events:

April 9th-AM meeting at Rockwell's -topic: Club assembly

April16th- AM meeting at Rockwell's- topic: Altzhiemer's Disease

April 21st- Rotary Future Vision Workshop- Santiago Canyon College- 4:30-9PM

April 23rd- AM meeting at Rockwell's- topic: Personal and Business Ethics

April 27th- Monday PM- Paul Harris Award Dinner at  Rockwell's 6PM- 9PM

         Guest and Family members encouraged to attend

April 29th- Wednesday PM- Love Pack session- 6:30 Cerro Villa Middle School

April 30th- No AM Meeting

I'll keep you updated if there are any changes or new information regarding these events.

thank you,

Jay