Ray Ward Speaker and Rotarian

Ray is a former Rotary club president and currently sits on seven District 5180 committees. He is the chairman of the District Website Committee and serves as an instructor for Super STRS classes. He has been selected to chair the 2016 District 5180 annual conference in Berkeley. Ray is a Rotary Facebook pioneer and has amassed over 4,000 friends. He also uses LinkedIn, multiple Twitter pages and a number of other digital applications that he didn’t have time to tell us about. Ray is passionate about Rotary membership. More members will bring in more money which will help us create a better world. Social media can help us get more new members.

In Rotary, we have to communicate in ways that connect us with people, but communications and social media have changed radically in the past decade. For example, many teenagers do not respond well to the telephone and email, but are enthusiastic about text messaging, Facebook and Twitter. Aside from teenagers, a significant percentage of the population is enthusiastically communicating using Facebook and other new types of social media. Therefore, Rotary clubs must use the new social media to communicate broadly and effectively. “Facebook is like a giant perpetual cocktail party” Ray showed us a photo of his family taken in the 1950s. He had never seen it until it was posted on Facebook by one of his relatives that he had not seen or communicated with in twelve years. Essentially, Facebook provided Ray with a very memorable photo and, at the same time, helped him become reacquainted with an old friend. “Get yourself onto Facebook. It will enhance your life and then it will help you enhance Rotary.” Facebook is both social and useful ! Using Facebook, Ray sells event tickets and gathers crab feed donations. Our club recently reached about 1,800 Facebook users with a single, posted photograph. Be sure to share our club’s website with all of your friends so we can catch the Roseville club. Remember, people are using social media to shop our club. Using Facebook is really easy According to Ray - There are three buttons on Facebook that we need to become acquainted with to increase our social outreach: Like, Comment and Share. Ray has four separate Facebook pages (his company, our club, District 5180 and his personal page) and he spends no more than five to fifteen minutes per day communicating with his 4,000+ friends through his four Facebook pages.

Digital Media And Their Importance for Rotary Clubs

Here are some things you might want to know about social media:

• Facebook now has over 1 billion monthly users • Half of all Facebook users have more than 200 friends • There are over 10 million Facebook applications • The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55- 64 year age group • 93% of all marketers use social media • 23% of Facebook users check their account at least 5 times a day • 4.2 billion people access social media with mobile devices • 60% of Google users login at least once a day • About 46% of web users use social media when making a purchase

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS If you are planning to attend Mike’s demotion dinner, please notify Maggie immediately – assuming you have not already done so. The cost is $50 per person. The date is June 28 at Sudwerks in Folsom. The club dues are $180 per fiscal year, payable as $90 in Jan and July. This includes your subscription to The Rotarian Magazine. Dues invoices will be sent out through QuickBooks by Treasurer Nancy Regan. So you will be receiving another invoice soon.

The Board asks that we each be an “Every Rotarian - Every Year” (EREY) by annually donating $100 to the Rotary International Foundation. We would also like to see members donate $50 to the Fair Oaks Rotary Foundation every year. RI is encouraging us to have an accurate member count before the beginning of our new fiscal year July 1. To facilitate that we ask that you make your first dues payment during June, so we’ll know our club member headcount.

Book Sale Volunteers are Needed To Help the Friends of the Fair Oaks Library

The Friends of the Fair Oaks Library (or just “Friends”) will be holding their “Time to Buy for Summer Reading” Book Sale on Saturday, June 7th and Tuesday, June 10th. Volunteers are needed. Our two library grant projects could not have been completed without significant financial support from the Friends. Their funding for our projects was raised by book sales just like this one. Please support the Friends and the Fair Oaks Library by helping with this book sale. They are looking for volunteers who are available for any of the following days, times and duties. If you would like to help, please contact Cliff Straehley at (916) 962-2069. Cashiers/Volunteers may take one book for each hour shift they work, excluding Better Books. Setups Thursday, June 5th, 4:00 – 6:00 PM. Ten volunteers are needed. We will be setting up the tables and moving the boxes of books from the onsite storage shed to the appropriate area in the sale area in preparation for Friday’s day of setting the books out for display. We’ll also be moving books from the sorting room shelves to the tables. Friday, June 6th, 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM. The Library is closed during this time, so enter through the Community Room door facing Fair Oaks Blvd. Ten volunteers are needed. If you have a specific area you’d like to help organize (history, fiction, multi-media, gardening, crafts, children’s) please let someone know. Preview Sale Saturday, June 7th, 9:00 – 10:00 AM (Friends of the Library Members & Book Sale workers only) Enter through the door facing Fair Oaks Blvd. This is your chance to shop early for the best titles. We need two cashiers, and a general help person who will check memberships at the door. Public Sale Saturday, June 7th, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM We need 6 cashiers, 2 for each of three time slots: 10:00 AM - Noon, Noon- 2:00 PM and 2:00 – 4:00 PM. We’d also like a few volunteers who will help restock the tables and tidy the books as items are sold, as well as help shoppers. Public Sale, Half Price Day Tuesday, June 10, 10:00 AM – 8:00 PM. We need 10 cashiers, 2 for each two-hour time slot: 10:00 AM -Noon, Noon-2:00 PM, 2:00 – 4:00 PM, 4:00 – 6:00 PM and 6:00 – 8:00 PM. We’d also like a few volunteers who will help restock the tables and tidy the books as items are sold, as well as help shoppers. Takedown & Book Purge Wednesday, June 11, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM. Books need to be boxed and boxes need to be labeled. Purged books are available free to volunteers (no limit). We need approximately 10 volunteers.

MEETING NOTES

Warren McWilliams For his Sunshine Report, announced that Bev Mark likes to hear from people. If you know Bev, please give her a call. Then, during introductions, Warren concluded his intro of Greg Herrick, a visiting Rotarian with the complaint, “Right in the middle of my dinner, too.”

Howard Papworth Howard got a chance to draw the Ace of Spades and win $210. Howard waited … and waited …. and waited ….. while someone looked for the deck of cards, which was never found. (Ed Note: We all waited.)

John Brothers will be next month’s Little Genius. So hold onto your hats wallets

Past President Dan Smallhouse presided over the meeting while current President Maddox relaxed in Australia. Clearly nostalgic about his year as club president, Dan had a great time running the meeting.

This is photo of Nick Broad, a new member who probably has not yet had his photo in the Acorn.

It was a quiet evening for Little Genius Joe Horyza who only fined everyone in the room a couple of times and then moved on to happy fines.

Except for Bob Vogel, who was singled out and fined because he was “asked for some stuff” but didn’t have any stuff and therefore had to pay a fine for not having any stuff.

Blaine Lamb paid a happy fine because of his excellent lab results.

This happy fine is so unusual that I suspect the notes are wrong, but here goes anyway. Beth Wilcoxen paid two $10 happy fines. The first was for Damir Besirevich’s presence at the meeting. The second seems to have been for Damir’s impending early departure from the meeting for a “hot date”. This feels like a mutually exclusive “glad you’re here” and “glad you’re leaving soon” – unless Beth was happy for Damir because he had a hot date.

Shelley Mathews paid a happy fine because she delivered Mike Maddox to the airport on time for his flight to Australia. This may not have been such a good thing. The photo on the right was taken a couple of days ago in Australia. Mike is having so much fun down under that we’re afraid he won’t make it back to Fair Oaks in time for his demotion dinner on June 28 - assuming he ever comes back.

THIS WEEKS GUESTS Greg Herrick, a visiting Rotarian Virginia Grabbe, Honorary Member Lucy Martin

OTHER HAPPY FINES Dave Claugus – for being able to meet Jeanne Maloney’s grandkids. Virginia Grabbe – who was happy to be at the meeting. Robb White – for having the best seat in the house, next to Virginia John Brothers – who was also happy to be at the meeting. Ray Ward – for attending what sounded like a Rotary dinner of some sort. Nick Broad – for a golf tournament.

CAPTION CONTEST Once again you have a chance to win a drink by creating a funny caption for either of the two photos shown below.

Create two award-winning captions and, this week only, and you will win not just one, but two, free drinks. There is the possibility of also winning a free dinner if one of your captions is sufficiently funny.

Just in case Ray’s speech on social media increased your interest, here’s a graphic that shows a number of broad social-media categories and applications for each of the categories.