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Our big push right now is to recruit volunteers to help man our booth at the Copenhagen Convention. Although we had to notify RI by the end of March who would be assisting there, it’s not too late to sign up, if you’re planning to be at the Convention. Please let Secretary Sally Platt SEPlatt@cs.com know your name and Convention Registration Number. The last is quite important, as RI will only allow registered attendees to go in the House of Friendship, let alone help out in the booth. We are starting to get programs lined up for the ICUFR Conference in Ithaca, New York in October. We hope to have a videoconference with a Rotary club in Bosnia, which should be a pretty interesting presentation. Also, although not strictly a “computer” program, Irwin Taranto has offered to share pictures from his trip to Antarctica last December. Some of us have seen these photos, and they are pretty spectacular, with lots of penguins running around (along with the people). Hopefully you will see some new features in the newsletter this month; but carrying these forward depends on contributions from you, the reader. Please contact Editor Carl if you have anything you think should be included in the next issue. |
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What is on the Website: | ||
Check out the rest of our website. Many Thanks to Robin Chapple for his webmaster expertise. He is doing a magnificent job of cleaning up the website, which was suffering from input by at least 4 previous webmasters, and not enough output read that as deletions. Robin’s first idea to me when he agreed to revamp the website, was to simplify all the pages, which you will see he has done beautifully. The Text that you will find comes from all the rest of us so we can’t blame him for any additions, commissions, omissions, deletions etc. And, I guess you can come to me with any suggestions, changes, or problems, which I will either correct or pass on to Robin. The MAIN Page is designed to tell you quickly where ICUFR comes from, what we are all about, what we have to offer, and how to join. Once one has checked out the front page, the most important things on it are the links: The “Navigate Here” link is a Drop-Down that shows you all the many special Folders/Pages that are on the website; Once you realize how big the website really is, you may wish to only see what is new, so go to the right side to “Click here to Watch ‘What’s New’ Everyday” which will tell you anything that was added to the site; Then there is “Click here for our Current Newsletter” so you can go right to it if you missed the email version, and/or want to see any pictures that were included. The “Navigate Here” is a Drop-Down where you will find folders/subjects: ABCs of Rotary, Achievements, Archives, Conferences, Communications, Computer Tips, Contact Us, Forums, ICUFR, Officers, Invocations, Join ICUFR, Library, Links, Mailing Lists, Main Index, Membership. Newsletters, Photos, Rotary International, Send a Postcard, Welcome. Check a few: Archives link for everything from Achievements, to History, to Bylaws, to Main Index to find a “Search” window. ICUFR Officers link to see what we look like, and for email links. Photos link to see a few other members’ photos and information. More are welcome. Check several names to see what kind of info we are looking for. Links for many links to important Rotary International and other sites. If anyone has any suggestions on Folders/Subjects to add, email me at ccardey@verizon.net |
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For openers, here are a few “must see” discussions: 1. How is your district addressing the issue of abuse and harassment protection? 2. The Dictionary Project: How does Rotary use it? 3. The 4-Way Test -- Not just for Rotarians! 4. Your Club and Academic Scholarships and Awards. 5. District Governor - member of RI or Your Rotary Club? So … no more excuses! This Forum is YOURS! All you have to do is follow the links above to get connected to the online world of Rotary. What are you waiting for? Sally Platt PP, ICUFR Secretary |
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DIFFERING VIEWS ON DISTRICT CONFERENCES Messages flowed thick and fast during March as members compared their experiences of District Conferences. Some consider them to be little more than a weekend jolly, primarily for Fellowship. Others appreciate the 'Rotary Content' in the weekend. Yet more would never consider attending! Conference Budgets vary hugely between Districts, some exceeding US$100,000 and there was some disquiet from members who were unhappy at their funds being used to subsidies a weekend of entertainment for a relatively small percentage of the District membership. Typically, District Conferences appear to attract between 8% and 12% of the District membership. That said, few objected to official guests being funded with District cash. Like a great many other issues within the world of Rotary, opinions were divided between the Old World and the New. Whilst one UK DG was reported as saying: >I have asked the Conference Committee to look at the format which has been unchanged for donkey's years. It is not a Conference as we do not confer or conduct any business.< And Sally wrote: >The theme of the conference was "The Magic of Rotary" and I have to say that the entire weekend was, indeed, a magical experience. As I listened to the other speakers (most of them chosen from within the district), I was absolutely in awe of their presentation skills and the way they could take a seemingly ordinary Rotary topic and make it sparkle.< DUES ONLY MEMBERS Earlier in the month there were some fairly firm views expressed about the Rotarians who pay their dues but rarely attend meetings. Many readers found it hard to square this attitude to the 65% attendance rule. Opinions divided between the cash value of these 'supporting' members and the Fellowship that most Rotarians feel is an essential element of the spirit of Rotary. CHILLED LINGO The appearance of our first Icelandic member brought a spate of welcome messages for Vigdis Stefansdottir and was quickly followed by lessons in the structure of family names in Iceland. One polyglot member successful put his foot in his mouth by inadvertently making a somewhat outrageous suggestion as he tried to translate a phrase in Vigdis's language. (If you missed it, tough, I ain't telling!) And just for the record, Vigdis is pronounce with a soft 'g', like the 'g' at the end of gara[g]e. NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK Sally reminded us that whenever her Club gets an influx of new members, they are appointed to a special 'newbies' committee. Overseen by a couple of established members the 'newbies' are tasked with organising a specific event. This gets them involved in the life of the Club from the very beginning; gives them immediate ownership of a project and quickly develops their contacts within and without the Club. THE NUMBERS GAME The month ended with a discussion and a shower of obfuscation over how to obtain and to use individual RI membership numbers. Each Rotarian needs to acquire his personal membership ID number in order to access such information as his/her account with the Rotary Foundation and certain other areas within the RI website. Since the individual ID number is as valuable as a banking PIN#, they are not published or generally distributed; each user must apply to RI for his/her own number. (In the English US version anyway, the Members ID number is shown on “The Rotarian” magazine.- Editor) Compiled by Peter Sotheran - (This is still being discussed on the rotary@taranto.com mail list. |
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- Is It Real or Just a Figment of a Fevered Imagination |
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Good evening, Mr. president, fellow Rotarians, my name is Jeff Goodley, a member of the Rotary eClub of London Centenary, and ‘Electronic’ Rotary club which means that I am not really here at all but only a virtual projection? Star Trek fans among you may well know that portable holo emitters have been available for some time and I am of course using this technology to appear before you this evening.
Just like yours our club is a part of RIBI, we have committee chair people; we work in our various communities, raise money for the Rotary Foundation and other causes, just like you. Administratively we are part of D1130 in London, but technically our geographical footprint covers the whole of the UK. Some of our members are international commuters with residence and business connections across Europe, but all of them with a foot, or a toe in London. We are currently canvassing members to see if we want to extend our boundary to accept fully international members or not. The jury is still out. London Centenary is part of the new pilot projects launched upon an unsuspecting Rotary world by the CoL a couple of years ago. Born out of co-operation between the two Computer using fellowships in Rotary, ROTI (Rotarians On The Internet) and ICUFR (the International Computer Users Fellowship of Rotarians) of which I have been a member since 1994. RI commissioned an enquiry into ways of taking Rotary to a wider audience using more up-to-date modes of communication. I was fortunate to be invited to join the steering committee The Rotary Cyber Club Committee under the chairmanship of the late Rtn John Coenders from Ontario, Canada. The committee was made up of the inevitable number of Americans J but with members in New Zealand, Australia, France, Japan and Shanghai in China. Not only did we take the club constitution and byelaws apart and put them back together so that could be used by on line and other ‘new style’ clubs, but discussed and produced resource material for all aspects of Rotary life on line. Our model has even been used to form the Rotary club of the Outback, which meets on radio over distances of hundreds if not thousands of miles. The biggest challenge is and still remains how to attract and vet new members, followed closely by how to retain and motivate the members you already have, but then you REAL ‘Bricks and Mortar’ Rotarians haven’t solved that one yet and you have only been at it a hundred years… Avenues of service has not been as difficult as it might be imagined, Foundation and charity work has been, to be quite honest a simple matter of putting up a web page and getting it on the search engines. Money has been rolling in for as many projects we want to name, over £100 in February alone for our main Adopt A Minefield project, just from people who want to make-up attendance with us. Our web traffic has shown a 30% increase month on month since we opened and with this level of increase we should be able to show a £1000/£1200 pa income just from the website make-ups alone. Community was an area that we thought would prove difficult, but that too is really quite simple. Those that live in London have been able to work together on projects just as any other RC, often co-operating with other clubs. Members like me, who live in different communities work in their home areas and report in on our club site. I work with the Air Cadet Organisation in the Spalding area, another member is a volunteer paramedic in Germany, and one member is running in the London Marathon on April 23rd and donating funds to the YMCA where he lives in Central London. (I have sponsor forms if anyone is interested in helping him. J) The techie side for those technophiles out there really IS very simple. If you visit us at www.erotarylondon.org you will see that we run a simple site linked to modified PHP forum board. We are very lucky in that our webmaster, Rtn Stuart Grove, is a web professional and he is able to maintain and modify our site without difficulty. The difficulty is the amount of time it takes and I know you have web pros here, I am sure they will testify as to how long it takes to write code for the simplest site. Club business and committee meetings take place in the closed part of the forum, by email and on chat systems like Skype, MSN and Yahoo. That’s about it really, there are 27 clubs in the Cyber Club project, including 6 in the USA and 4 in Brazil, 1 in Finland Several in the Far East and Australasia with us, the only one in RIBI. Jeff Goodley Founder Member & President Elect 2006/7 - |
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Being a journalist myself I think that it is possible to get information in papers by keeping in mind that journalists are usually a bit busy and value some help. Therefore it is good to write the article in full, do it in the same style as the paper uses, but if possible have either a funny streak or something that grabs attention in other way. A picture (good picture with full resolution, 300 bp at least) with attention grabbing capture is good as well and will increase the possibility that the article will be printed. Always remember that every paper has its own code of what is newsworthy and go by that. Also, that some of what you may not think of as news, can be news in the ears of someone that has never heard of it before. The shorter you can write - the better. That is, within the limits of getting the points of the news! Usually the space is not much but if there are many small articles printed, it is better than having one big one as continuous advertisement is better than one off. Sorry for my lack of good English, I have the excuse of being an Icelander and English not my first language. Vigdís Stefánsdóttir - |
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1. PC World’s March 2006 Anti-Virus Program evaluations. The 110 programs tested came out in the following order, with the PCW Rating beside each one. Notice that the free AV programs have dropped down to 7th or worse:
2. WARNING: Hackers Take Advantage of Microsoft Security Bug Risk Level: Medium The discovery of an unpatched bug in Internet Explorer allows attackers to take over PC's. This has prompted Microsoft to caution its users. While Microsoft has been analyzing the vulnerability to develop a security patch, compromised sites are being used by hackers to launch attacks using the flaw. More Information Computers running affected versions of IE could be infected after opening an email or visiting a website carrying malicious code. Once infected, the computer could be taken over by a remote attacker, who could steal data or use the infected computer to attack others. Microsoft is warning users to exercise caution when opening email messages, and web links in email messages, from untrusted sources. There are no patches yet available to plug this hole. Both home users and businesses are at risk of being exploited. Users who do not have a firewall and anti-virus program, and users who surf the web and open emails without care are at a much higher risk of being compromised. According to Microsoft Security Response Center Blog, Microsoft is working day and night on development of a security update for Internet Explorer that addresses this vulnerability. It remains unclear whether Microsoft plans to release the fix in its next scheduled security update, 11 April, or whether it is considering an out-of-cycle fix release. What to do: INVISUS currently detects all known malware exploiting this vulnerability. . Update your INVISUS Anti-Virus. . Update your INVISUS Anti-Spyware. . Do not open any emails that are from people you do not know. . Do not click on any links given to you in an email. If you were expecting the link to be sent to you in an email, then open an Internet Browser and type the link in manually. (Alert Release Date: 3/27/06) Created by INVISUS® Copyright © 2006 ( Editor’s note: I use this security program myself, and although you don’t, the information and warning to “Update” your own security programs is still valid. DO IT REGULARLY. |
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Website re-construction continues We have the website to make available to our members, a large amount of information both current and archival. Although it is being rebuilt, it is open for use. The site is for the use of all our members, and your help and suggestions are always welcome. Web Helpers needed: Once you see how big it is, you will see that it is far too difficult for one person to keep it current and updated. We are asking for different members to take on a job of “Web Helper”. Each Helper would take the job of watching one or two folders or pages on the website, to watch for news or items that could be added, or to be sure they are not getting out dated. How about a Link Helper to review, update, add, and to be sure that there are no broken web address (URL) links. If you are willing, please send an email to Carl P Cardey, Editor with your requested folders/subjects |
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ICUFR Newsletter We are always in need of articles of interest that can be included in the email newsletter which is sent to our members monthly. (The newsletter is also posted and archived on the ICUFR website, along with any photos, that can’t be sent in the text-only email version) A Few Format Requests: Please Do NOT send articles in PDF format. Send the original document in *.Doc or plain *.txt format, and images/photos as attachments. I have broadband and can accept at least 10MB at a time. Photographs always make an article more interesting and are encouraged. Our Graphics editor asks that you follow these basic rules. He requests that a statement from you that images are Original, NOT cropped, NOT optimized and NOT adjusted in any way. Sending a reduced size leaves no room for any action by us to make changes to suit the web page. Image management is a skill. Also images ‘embedded’ in a document bloat the document. Text only, even a Word document, and separate images are the target. Remember, this is your newsletter. The more you send me, the better it will be. |
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Really? - NO I am REAL Rotarian, just like you. I bleed, just like you.. AND I dry up when addressing groups, just like you J 
I have read some of the posts regarding expanding membership and the reaction of the media to articles.
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