Durham-Great Bay Rotary - Newsletter - Archive (Sep 16, 2009)

Pres Rich Introduced Bruce from UNH Catering. Announced that breakfast will cost $13.00. Blackout dates for Alumni Center are Nov 11 and Dec 9. Other arrangements will be made for those dates

The Rotary Foundation has granted our request for matching funds to purchase medical equipment for Abo El-Reesh pediatric oncology hospital in Cairo, Egypt, through the Foundation's. Our portion is $4000. $3500 was set aside from last year's budget and $500 will be added from this year's budget. The Rotary Club of Cairo-Zamalek, our partner in this matching grant, will donate $6878. The District will match our grant for another $4000 and the Foundation will add $9439 for a grand total of $24,318.

District membership seminar will be held in Portland on Oct 28. Membership Chair Bill D has asked each member to bring in the names of five companies which could be contacted about joining our Club. Learn more at http://www.rotary7780.org/MembershipSeminar.cfm .

Roadside cleanup will be held on a Saturday in early October. Details to follow.

Happy Bucks:

Frank daughter got married

John R scooter

Janet glad to be at the Alumni Center

Don good work to arrange the Alumni Center for morning meetings

Joe P grandparent passed

Deb glad to have breakfast with her husband from Dover Rotary

Henry Patriots win

John B good production at Ogunquit Playhouse

Program:

Warren Smith, Classification Talk

Thanks to Frank for inviting Warren to a meeting.

Warren was born in the Northridge suburb of Los Angeles in 1963. In '67, a quarter of his neighborhood burned in a wildfire. Three months later, LA experienced a dramatic earthquake which many of our members will recall.

In high school, Warren played bagpipes in the band and John Elway was the football team's quarterback. He left high school without graduating but was able to "negotiate" his way into Brigham Young University where he met his wife, Tracy, in a ballet class. Warren's oldest son, Brennan, is a sophomore at BYU and younger son, Alex, is a Junior at Oyster River. Warren received a degree from BYU in physics and Japanese. Following graduation, he did his Mormon mission in Japan where he became proficient in the language. Upon returning to the US, he was an interpreter for the Japanese team in the '84 LA Olympics

Warren worked in the semi-conductor field as an engineer and went to night school at BYU to obtain his MBA. It was then that Warren earned a Fulbright Scholarship to Japan to study why they were beating US companies in the semi-conductor arena. He worked in Japan with Mitsubishi and learned that the edge they had was from motivating their workers. With his engineering and business background and a now solid understanding of the Japanese language, he decided to become a translator. At this point, he enrolled at Harvard to get his PhD, taking some courses at MIT. His doctorate revolved around the interworkings of business management, engineering and cognitive psychology.

Warren now translates patents from Japanese to English. A challenge in the translation of patents is maintaining in English the ambiguity of the original. He's also an ISO-9001 consultant and consults on intellectual property.

Warren's Mormon religion is very important to him. His great-great-grandfather's brother was Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church. He teaches a high school seminary class. Hobbies and interests include martial arts, Contra Dance and flying. Warren and his family live in Durham.

Although he said he was nervous about his classification talk, it was energetic, interesting and well accompanied by a power point slide show. Welcome to Warren as the newest member of Durham-Great Bay Rotary.

Megabucks:

The pot rolled over.

Upcoming Programs:

Sep 23 Jerry Sedor to discuss "Covered Bridges"

Sep 30 Dick Umile, UNH Men's Hockey

Oct 7 Todd Selig, Durham Town Administration

Scribe...and...Prayer

Sep 23 Brian Brian

Sep 30 Deb Deb

Oct 7 Joe M Jud

Your Scribe: John B.