LAMORINDAN 7-9-10

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Mark Roberts let us in on Putt's Law, which posits: "Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand."

I'm not sure I understand, but I can manage.

VISITING ROTARIANS

Don Anderson- Orinda
Mike Heller - Lafayette

GUESTS OF OTHER PERSUASIONS

Bill Wigman - 2nd time visitor
Dennis Kurimai - likewise

BIRTHDAYS, ANNIVERSARIES, AND OTHER MISCELLANEOUS GOODIES

None this week. Oh, well.

THE GUARD CHANGES, PART II

"We're going to get better." Thus spake President Peeks. His challenge to all of us is for each of us to look back on what we did last year and do just a little bit more this year. At least as important, he wants us to do it in the spirit of his motto:"Have fun, get it done."

There was a contingent that tried to change it to "git 'er done," but it appears that Prez Peeks is not a Larry the Cable Guy fan, so "get it done" it shall remain.

Thomas announced his five goals for the year, and worthy goals they are.

Goal #1 Improve on the good things we did last year. For example. We are going try to do two - count 'em - two fundraisers. Motorama will be held again and we are also going to try do something with the Lafayette Wine Growers Association. TGITLFOTM, the Non-Denominational Holiday Formerly Known as Christmas Party, more of the HOME Team and other projects - all will be happening and improved upon.

Goal #2 Do at least three "meaningful" International projects. We've gotten away from International stuff recently and King Thomas wants to increase our presence in this important part of the Rotary world.

Goal #3 Three new community service projects. That's pretty self-explanatory.

Goal #4 Make a significant contribution to Polio Plus. Rotary International two-thirds of the way to raising the $200,000,000 needed to trigger the Gates Foundation matching donation. We will need every dime of that to achieve final victory over polio and we are too close to let this victory slip through our grasp.

Goal #5 Make a local non-Rotarian a Paul Harris Fellow. Any ideas as to whom it should be?

Thomas didn't announce it, be he also has a sixth goal. A prayer, really. It's the same one that has been on the lips of every Club President of every Club since the Original Four got together in Chicago in 1905: Please, (fill in the deity of your choice), don't let it fall apart on my watch.

And who is going to help achieve these lofty goals? In theory, all of us. But the front line will be the new Board of Directors. They are: President-Elect Alex Arnold; Treasurer Ernie Furtado; Secretary Chuck Yeager; Special Assistant to the President Hays Englehart; Community Services Director Dave Waal; International Services Director Gillett Johnson; Club Services Director Mark Roberts; Communications Director Ron Brown; Foundation Director Cal Lee; LSR Endowment Chair Paul Bettelheim; Program Director Steve Ware; Development Director Krysten Laine; and Past President Advisor Pat Flaharty. With a leadership team like that, how can we fail to have a great year?

EXCHANGE STUDENT, ANYONE?

Just like last week, International Services Director Gillett Johnson stood up today to ask us if we want to host an incoming student this year. The Wares have volunteered to be a host family, but we need more. This can be a fantastically rewarding experience, a chance to make a very real difference in a young person's life and to promote international understanding. Seriously. Interested? Contact Gillett.

HOME TEAM ALERT

The HOME Team is about to kick off its first full year of service. Next work date is July 24.

Here are the rest of the dates. Please mark you calendars so you can come out and help. This is one of the best, easiest and biggest impact feel-good projects you will ever take part in. So here are the dates:

September 18
November 13
January 8
March 5
April 30
June 25

See you there. As always, it's BYOT (Bring Your Own Tools). Doing so encouraged, but actually not necessary. Hays has tools up the wazoo. Just show up ... and be prepared to roll up your sleeves. This is a great thing we are onto. Let's expand our reach.

HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU WON'T GO AWAY?

John Fazel refuses to go quietly into that good night. He pulled off yet another so-called "last Presidential duty" by handing an award to Ron Brown for his Communications Director accomplishments last year. Ron, being the sort that he is, tried to deflect the credit to his staff, but said staff was having none of it and left Ron to face the music (and the rotten tomatoes) by himself. Now are you done, John? As Ron walked off with his plaque, Tom Black inquired (rhetorically), "Ron, are you going to photocopy it for the other newsletter team members?" Sure, when pigs fly (and we cease being wiseguys.

PROGRAM

What do J.D. O'Connell, Elizabeth Jensen and Sarah Stocker all have in common? If you guessed that they all were part of this week's program, you be right. More importantly, they are all part of an exciting new local electronic communications vehicle in the form of LamorindaPatch.com.

Whazzat? It is a "hyper-local" website that combines journalism (Mr. O'Connell is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist with gigs at, among others, the San Francisco Examiner when it was a real paper) and public input. The key is "hyper-local." With few exceptions, Lamorinda Patch is about Lafayette, Orinda and Moraga, period. An exception that proves the rule is the reaction in downtown Oakland to the Johannes Mehserle verdict. There was some coverage of it because the unrest had potential impact on Lamorinda BART commuters who had to go through the affected area on there ways home. But the focus is Lamorinda.

Lamorinda Patch and Mr. O'Connell's involvement are the result of a happy coincidence. It turns out Mr. O'Connell had already started something very similar called "East Bay Daze." This blog tried to provide what Mr. O'Connell thought was missing -- a web presence aimed strictly at the Lamorinda area. It caught on, growing to about 125,000 visits per month, with about 24,000 unique viewers. Not only were locals reading it and posting on it, but former residents were checking in to keep up with the old home town.

East Bay Daze attracted the attention of two other important sets of folks: advertisers, and the Patch network (for lack of a better term). It turns out the Patch people had a very similar vision with Mr. O'Connell, only on a national level. No, not a national blog, but a collection of sites devoted to a single, journalistically underserved town. (LamorindaPatch is one of the very first Patches to cover more than one town, but Mr. O'Connell argues, and the Patch folks came to agree, that Lafayette, Orinda and Moraga are so closely tied and have such a regional identity that covering all three in one Patch made sense.)

On June 22, 2010, East Bay Daze entered the history books and LamorindaPatch was up and running. It has tools that the old blog did not, such as a directory which local businesses and organizations use. Sort of the equivalent of taking a minimal Yellow Pages listing and, at no charge, turning it into a customized quarter page ad.

It is also perfect for service clubs. (Anyone know of any of those in town?) They can advertise what they are doing, when their next fund raiser is, what the next project is -- the possibilities are endless. LamorindaPatch actively wants these items.

This fits in with Mr. O'Connell's stated model for LafayettePatch: it is trying to be journalistic, local, content-driven, and responsive to what the community wants and needs to know. It also fits in with the overall model of the Patch people, who have started a number of Patch websites around the country. By design, a Patch website will serve a non-major town, on the theory that the non-major towns are much more likely to be underserved journalistically.

We also heard from Advertising Director Elizabeth Jensen, who talked about the money side of the Patch. In short, they are looking to sell advertising. So who would want to advertise on LamorindaPatch? The business person who wants to target Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, and nowhere else. Or who wants to expand their territory into Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda. In short, anyone who wants to focus their ads and not waste money paying for advertising that is going to cast a wider net than they can hope to profit from.

And yes, LamorindaPatch can provide hyperlinks directly to your business's or your, dare I say it, service club's website. Ads can include coupons. And LamorindaPatch has the analytics built in to provide data on how many people are clicking through to your site and from where.

Sarah Stocker rounded out the team, giving us some technical information that this reporter could not hope to understand, but adding up to something very clear. These communications artisans will work with you to make your ads work very hard and to make the interface with the website simple, intuitive, rewarding and designed to get you quickly to exactly the information you want about your hometown. Hard to beat, wouldn't you say?

Thank you, Mr. O'Connell, Ms. Jensen and Ms. Stocker, for coming to tell us about this exciting new venture. One more reason to live in Lamorinda.

CALENDAR

7/13/10: Board Meeting - 7:00 am - Orinda Prudential Offices

7/16/10: Colleen Calahan, Health Care Reform

7/23/10 Jeff Weiss, Caldecott Fourth Bore Project