Rotary Rays - August 24th, 2015
Rotary Minutes For Meeting Held Monday August 24th, 2015
Visitors were Rotarian Jacqui Murray from the Burlington Lakeshore Club her brother Ed Cowie (from here in Woodstock). Francis had her daughter Allison with us.
Announcements: Robert and Marjorie Reid are going to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and Michelle & Don Fulkerson their 39th anniversary. Paul Cuff is celebrating his 1st Rotary anniversary.
Sick and visiting-: Brenda from our music festival had a liver transplant and is doing well so far. She was very fortunate to find a donor.
Vanessa acted as our sergeant at arms. Philip’s daughter Ana was on the silver stage of the The Duke of Edinburgh's Award and that his younger daughter Emily went to Ottawa with her grandmother. Ted had to get away. Robert Reid celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary and Richard Holmes was very happy about something.
Student Exchange-: Francis reported that our new Rotary student will be arriving on August 25th and her name is Fuka Higashiyama and she will be going to CASS.
Jacqui Murray from Burlington Lakeshore said that Will Pugh is our district governor and he will be coming to visit us. District conference is September 18th, 19th and 20th. The Saturday and the Sunday we will be outside in a tent and it is One Hundred dollars ($100.00) for the weekend. They are promoting literacy and then there is a Ribfest in Burlington on Labor Day and that’s from Thursday until Labor Day Monday all sponsored by the Rotary Club of Burlington Lakeshore.
MUSIC FESTIVAL- Unfortunately Gary Baumbach has decided not to carry on his role in the Music Festival. Rosemary George says she would fill that role temporarily until we can get a permanent person and she will meet with the music teachers. We will review the 2016 appointments. We should consider whether or not the music festival should go from 3 weeks to 2 weeks because we are very low on some categories. However despite the attendance the finances are good. There is Eleven Thousand dollars ($11,000.00) in the operating budget and Seventy Six Thousand ($76,000.00) dollars in investments. The numbers are declining and so we have to look at that seriously.
Don Fulkerson and Francis Stevens have acted as joint treasurers for the last two years and our new finance committee is being set up with Don Fulkerson, Francis Steven, Liam McCreery and Ifhan Hudda. We are going to have fire side chats about new members.
President Ted played a video by Michael McQueen on membership and the role of Rotary today. It asked what type of new members we would like. As well he asked us to consider if clubs are adapting to change and to consider if clubs are the “Lego Team” of the “Mechano Team”. Or the “Bell Network” or the “Kodak Company” (the later in each case is no longer around) and so we have to have a clear picture of Rotary.
He gave us three habits of enduring companies and number one is recalibrating change in alignment with who we are. As an example, Kodak only considered themselves a film company (an next to no one uses film today) but if they had asked how they could have helped customers keep their memories they may still be in business today.
Rotary needs to consider:
1. What is our Rotary DNA: Our Values and Priorities. Our relevance cannot be compromised.
2. Reengineering: We have to reengineer. The rate of change outside often determines the necessity for change on the inside. Woodrow Wilson tried to make change as easy as we can but we are creatures of habit, we cannot lose our relevance. It is our most valuable asset but we need people with fresh eyes, new members; fresh eyes don’t know what they are looking at exactly and they ask questions like; why are we doing things that way? And we older Rotarians have to decide whether we are in a groove or in a rut. In days gone by artillery were hauled by horses and so there was an 8 second warning before they fire and long after horses left the scene people were still waiting 8 seconds before they fired the artillery gun and they had forgotten why they waited 8 seconds. So fresh eyes right away ring a bell to begin the meeting. Why do we spend money on meals? It is easier to give birth than to raise the dead so we will give birth to new ideas.
3. Reposition: Generation Y will give us a new opportunity. They are natural networkers and they want to give and 15% of the world population are under the age 30. We should be asking 5 questions to reposition yourself in your local community. It is very similar to sailing. If you have a headwind you must tack or go nowhere and we cannot fight against the winds of change but we can tack along to make progress in the direction that we want. If not we must be revolutionaries rather than evolutionary. What we find is old notes written on old school typewriters about people transporting disabled children. We still have a focus on children but we think about the elderly people as well. We are a service club and which are we service club oriented or fundraising club oriented.
And so next week we will have Will Pugh District Governor and Brian Bennett AEG.