‘Virtual’ Rotary meeting Monday April 20, 2020, 6PM.
 
We met using James Nevers’s Zoom account, with 31 people in attendance:   
 
James Nevers, Mike Hunter, John Pruitt, Stefan Landvogt, Amy Mutal, David Mutal, Margie Glenn, Rick Ostrander, John Woodbery, Monica Fratita, Brandon Honcoop, Joanne Primavera, Dan Bartel, Patti Smith, Terry Cole, Rick Walter, Rich Bergdahl, Gary Cohn, Dave Aubry, Tricia Stromberg, Russ Stromberg, Bella Chaffey, Cheryl Guenther, David Debois, Brian Tucker, Jim Meniketti, Bob Auslander, Ambareen Jaddi, Elizabeth Rusnak, Patty Sims, Steve Shinstrom.
 
At 6:10PM, we did the Pledge of Allegiance, standing, online. 
 
6:12PM – new member induction of Cheryl Guenther by Amy Mutal.
Announcements: 
  • The Club has sent two checks totaling $8200 to the Kirkland Parks & Community Foundation for Kirkland Nourishing Network.  With so many out of work due to the Covid-19 stay-at-home order, many people are struggling to put food on the table.  [In addition, the Kirkland Rotary Foundation has also sent $3500 to the same cause.]  Lots of food including much by Rotarians has also been donated to Hopelink.
James then set up short break-out sessions of four members each so we could catch up on our fellow members’ lives.  I was in a group with Bob Auslander, Ambareen Jaddi, and Jim Meniketti.  We are all doing reasonably well.  We discussed why there is such a huge disparity in number of cases between New York and California.  We discussed what experiences in our pasts might be similar – polio and measles in the 1950s were mentioned.  [Only us older folks could speak to that.]
 
Our regularly scheduled speaker was Stefan Landvogt, who works at Microsoft.  He gave an extremely informative talk about Virtual Reality [VR] – how he got involved in it, its history, what it means, and where the technology might be applied in the future.  It is definitely not just for entertainment.   Basically, VR means that everything a user sees is created by a computer.  As a corollary, Augmented Reality [AR] means reality is supplemented by input from computers and/or the internet.  Mixed reality blends both.  An old fashion Viewmaster is an early example of AR where two images cause the brain to see one 3-D image.
To be ready for the growth of VR, computers and internet connections must have greater speeds and capacities than many now have.  Only then will the user be fully immersed in a computer-generated world.
Gary Cohn briefly discussed our on-going scholarship program.  We are working with six local schools with what began as a $10K budget.  Thanks to the generosity of several Club members, we now have $20K to work with.  Because of social distancing requirements, our interviews will be done with platforms like Zoom.
 
Bob Auslander announced that the Salmon Bake will be at his house this year.
 
We sang Happy Birthday to Rich Bergdahl.
 
We discussed Duck Dash fundraising – we will need to inform donors that the race may not happen in the same way as before.  We discussed Bill Wood’s suggestion of putting the Ducks in the Kirkland Pool and then randomly pulling them out.
 
Our next meeting will be April 27 at 6PM on Zoom.
 
Meeting was adjourned at 7:27PM.
Respectfully Submitted:  Dave Aubry, Acting Scribe.