Meeting Minutes - 25th April, 2011

(I should start putting in an "Attendees" section in here.)

8:08PM Start
8:10: Introductions:
- Hayet (sp?); French Tunisian, company is new in region; does PR for Samsung, World Economic Forum, and others.
- Puja (sp?) From L'Oréal; was with them in Canada, came to Dubai in December.

8:13 New Member Pinning
Matthew (one of the new members) tells story about how he got randomly pinned into a french soldier's team who had the same name as him at a VIP event in Abu Dhabi.
Niki predicts that Karim will have a beard when we see him next, because it's been so long since we've seen him (meaning he's been really busy - and, if he's been too busy for Rotaract, then, obviously, he won't have had time to shave for the last two weeks).

8:17 Karim Arrives
Pinning Ceremony commences. (And Niki was right. Karim shows up with a beard. Good to know that service above self still applies in Rotaract Jumeirah;))

8:20 Report on Fashion Event
- All the stuff we were working on last week is good. However, we've hit a possible snag:
- Islamic Affaris is ok with the program, but there's a third-party organization, security, that might veto it.
- We planned this right: we started talking with Islamic Affairs 3 weeks ago to make sure everything would go smoothly, so we are heading over there first thing in the morning tomorrow to sort it out and make sure we have the permissions we need.
- Everything else has gone amazing: we've got Saatchi, Time-out, we're going on 20Something on Dubai 1 on the 9th of May; a documentary is happening made by a Palestinian-American filmmaker who just did a documentary in Qatar about Sheikha ___'s (name?) charity work, and was passing through Dubai on his way to another shoot in another country for a few days when he found out about Senses and decided to do a pro bono documentary short on them. We hope we'll get to air a few seconds of the documentary or something on Dubai 1 to raise awareness for Senses!

8:28 Report on Entrepreneurial Mindset Event
- The committee met Friday.
- We need corporate sponsors for food, raffle prizes, and the T-Shirts with motivational quotes that we want to give everybody.
(Hopefully these will be more motivational than the shirts that my buddy and I tried to print in Cairo when Barrack Obama was about to be inaugurated into the White House, "في ٢٠ يناير، ما فيش بشكلا" (On the 20th of January, no more "Bush" problem - it's a pun in Arabic.) (Since we don't speak Arabic very well it might not even be a grammatically correct pun, but oh well) On the back they were gonna say, "اوباما يبارك فيك" (Obama Bless You) - but we didn't know if that would be sacrilegious (and we were lazy) so we never actually tried to get them printed.) Oh, I digress, back to the minutes!
- We want to target educational companies as sponsors because they'll be trying to reach the demographic that we'll likely get.
- 8:32 - We met with 3 out of the 6 speakers already, 3 more to go this week.
- 8:34 - Marketing & PR is assigned to Tomell and Karim; May 11th we'll go live with the marketing campaign.
- Sponsorships is assigned to Mathieu & Fyca
- Speakers is assigned to Josh & Varun

8:35 - Questions
- 8:36 - Ticketing & donations may require a license for the speaker or something - we'll find that stuff out when we meet with the hotel tomorrow.
- 8:41 - Here's an idea, we were in touch with the company called "Motivate" (Is that the link to the right "Motivate"), maybe they'd be interested in this event from a CSR perspective.
- 8:43 - Have you heard of Guy Kawasaki?
"Of course."
Do you think he's out of our league for this event?
"Yes"
Oh. . . . Lets make a new event after this one focused on Guy Kawasaki!
(Read his Bio or the Wikipedia entry on him)
8:45 Input from Sevan, the club president:
Rotary year ends in June: election time. Mehdi is club services director: recruitment, elections, etc. He came to me to talk about it. Nominate selves. More upcoming.
8:47 Meeting Adjourn.

Comments: What a good feeling! Everyone around the table sat back and just breathed, it was a breath of fresh air to have a meeting end early. It's the fruit of all the work that Sevan and all the other people in the club have done - I remember the "Crisis" meeting with Sevan some months ago when everything seemed out of steam and we weren't even getting together to talk about things - and so Sevan called a townhall meeting with everybody to talk about it. And then, in the face of some heated discussion, she worked through things and applied every suggestion and this what came out of it. We've got a feeling of accomplishment: things are moving forward, we're busy, and we're facing some hard challenges, but the feeling around the table today was that we're ready to face those challenges.
Now, that feeling wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the enormous amount of work that Sevan and Khadra have been putting into the charity Fashion show, and the support of everybody else for both the Fashion Show and the Entrepreneurship event. I am seeing people grow more confident as they start to feel that they have the ability to succeed at the tasks they're given - and everybody is energized by the successes of everybody else.

Now, I know a lot of things are hanging by a thread, and we could be right back to having to scramble to make things work out, but I'm seeing dreams come together and I'm excited about that, because for every dream that we make happen, Rotaractors that come after us will be able to dream bigger.

We had a lot of fun tonight, fed in no small part by the positive attitudes of the guests and their hosts, so thank you to everyone who was there, I look forward to seeing you next week!

Meeting Minutes - 4th April, 2011

A HUGE thanks to Miriam for keeping the meeting on time and on topic. We left refreshed.

8:00 Eat, Drink, & Network

8:10 Scheduled Start-Time

8:12 Start: Agenda

1. Exercise (not the physical kind, rather, the "use or application of a faculty" kind.)

2. Video

3. Caribbean Update

4. Committee UPdates

6. Video

8:13 The Exercise:

1. Summarize why you joined Rotaract in less than 25 words.

2. Put in two words about what you want to achieve.

3. Write down what your community service passion is.

8:16 Video 1: A club promo. Full video is ≈5min., showing 1st 2 minutes. Let it load while we do Caribbean update.

8:17 Caribbean update. May 6th. Meydan.

Silent Auction. Buffet. Dancing. Costumes from Brazil & Trinidad. Steel Pan Drums. Same DJ as last year (he was great.) Ad for the Rotarians. Ad for the General public.

8:19 2 things we need: 1 auction item from each one of you.

8:21 Invite anyone. There's 15 items on the Buffet plus desserts. Can invite friends on Facebook. OK Mag. will have it the last two weeks before it happens. For Senses.

8:22 Discussion on the night; we get flyers for the event.

8:24 Video. District 7070, 2008 Rotaract Club Promo. Habitat for Humanity. Tree Planting. Bottle Drive.

8:27 Mehdi; Club Service

8:28 New Internet, homepage.

8:30 Calendars.

8:33 Gannter project manager, currently in Beta & Free.

8:34 Pay it Forward Update

Business plan has been tweaked to be generic. Had 2 meetings with a restaurant that is almost a go-ahead: I picked places because I like them and I know the owners.

8:39 Pro-Dev Event: The Extraordinary Entrepreneurial Mind

8:42 Mehdi; Gant Charts for Project Managment.

Tracking & Task Assignments

8:45 Community Fashion Show Report

Met with Red Crescent, they will do all the registration, etc. We go through the ministry of Islamic Affairs. However, one snag: Can't serve alcohol at event. Which wouldn't be a problem, except our current venue is in a bar. Need to either move the venue from the bar or change the venue if they won't close the bar for us.

8:47 Discussion, on the Fashion show - we have tons of sponsors; Canon, Pace e Luce Salon, ...

8:51 Further discussion on Fashion Show

8:55 Wrap-up by Miriam.

8:56 Note by Sevan, the Club President; we've got a list of on-site logistics we need done for the fashion show, we'll share that with you.

8:57 Miriam: Thanks for the updates! We wanted an update from the International Committee but no one was available.

8:57 TED Talk Excerpt: Daniel Goleman on compassion

There was a very important study done a while ago at Princeton Theological Seminary that speaks to why it is that when all of us have so many opportunities to help, we do sometimes, and we don't other times. A group of divinity students at the Princeton Theological Seminary were told that they were going to give a practice sermon and they were each given a sermon topic. Half of those students were given, as a topic, the parable of the Good Samaritan: the man who stopped the stranger in -- to help the stranger in need by the side of the road. Half were given random Bible topics. Then one by one, they were told they had to go to another building and give their sermon. As they went from the first building to the second, each of them passed a man who was bent over and moaning, clearly in need. The question is: Did they stop to help?

The more interesting question is: Did it matter they were contemplating the parable of the Good Samaritan? Answer: No, not at all. What turned out to determine whether someone would stop and help a stranger in need was how much of a hurry they thought they were in -- were they feeling they were late, or were they absorbed in what they were going to talk about. And this is, I think, the predicament of our lives: that we don't take every opportunity to help, because our focus is in the wrong direction.

9:00 Stops the Vid, (it's a taster!), Intro's the guest: Ibrahim, interning at PR company in Dubai and hopes to find a job and be able to stay!

21:01 End.

Post-Meeting Conversation:

1. I talked with Miriam about having profiles of all the members with their name, country, company you work for.

2. I thought of getting people within Rotaract to give feedback on each other's resumés, but then I thought: Perhaps we could make a list of people's LinkedIn profiles, and help each other work on those as well. And then link to those profiles from our members page.

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