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President Benjamin Fisher presided over the hybrid meeting at Hillel UCLA. PP Marsha Hunt and PP Steve Scherer attended online.
Benjamin reminded us the 2024/2025 Rotary theme this year is “Magic of Rotary” and then thanked Chuck McCreary for greeting, Christine Clayburg for leading the pledge and, PP Mark Rogo who shared his thoughts about Dr. Myron J. Taylor’s book Rotary’s Four Way Test of the things we think, say or do.
Benjamin announced the upcoming district assembly Saturday May 17th at 8:00 am at Woodbury University and the 2025 District Conference June 12 to 15th at the South Coast Winery Resort & Spa in Temecula both of which President Benjamin will be attending.
PP Steve Day presented a Paul Harris Fellows +1 to club member Dave Stover. UCLA Rotaract Zach was also in attendance.
Today’s speaker Mark Nicholas was introduced by President Benjamin Fisher as John O’Keefe could not make the meeting. Mark is an attorney by trade who graduated from Syracuse University College of Law where he oversaw legal issues for Brokerage Compliance at ING North America with over 1mm direct and indirect retail clients. For years he advised and consulted artists and businesses prior to becoming a full time creative! Mark was also a sound technician for bands such as 10,000 Maniacs and Meatloaf. Fun fact about Mark: he’s also been a voting member of the Grammy’s for 15 years. He is currently a content creator/photographer where on average he takes 50,000+ images per year, produces hundreds of videos and has his own studio called Manhattan Beach Studios. You can rent a stage to host a podcast, take commercial photographs, host a live event or video production. Mark is the son of loving parents and the grandson of Holocaust and Ukrainian survivors who passed without archiving photos and videos with lost history. Thus, his interest in photography and preserving his and his family’s legacy.
His talk was titled “Are We Destined to Lose everything?” His answer is we could if we are not careful in preserving our family digital photos, videos and other docs. This could be the first generation in human history to lose the vast majority of its history. Legacies can vanish if you don’t understand how to preserve your pictures and videos now by taking action.
With phone cameras we are taking more photos than ever before. The problem is more photos are taken in one day than were taken in the first 100 years of photography. 39% of phones have no backup. Families print less than .01% of photos taken. Most phones show multiples of the same photo (delete, you only need 1 photo). Print out your photos and make a book to keep elsewhere or give to several people so your legacy will live on. Use expensive non-destroyable paper and ink to print the pictures on. What is saved is being lost by lack of planning. We need to limit the number of important photos we save and make sure they will be safe for future years and can be easily searched for. We need to limit the number of important photos we save and make sure they will be safe for future years and can be easily searched for. Some of the solutions include digital/cloud backup (iCloud, Drive, Dropbox, Box), individual services (Smugmug, Flickr, UTube, print books and prints), Records – Shared Life Access (Share links, Share books, Share information) and Digital Planning including broad access.
There are so many myths including “digital is safe”. E-signatures are permitted to allow expedited commerce, but adequate protections are in place only to verify the signature and not to retain it. PDF wills are not valid and absent a registry, easy to lose with limited access, and easy to fake. Digital files are rarely accessed effectively by survivors and can be easily manipulated. This is why you need a back-up plan and now.
It was a well-done presentation and interesting while being scary all at the same time. I had no idea the photos on my phone have a limited shelf life and need to be saved elsewhere. I am going to look into saving all of my important documents today!
Next meeting is Thursday, May 22nd with speaker Monica White President of the Santa Monica Rotary Club and a holocaust survivor. Monica’s tale of surviving the Holocaust and living in an asian community growing up is both fascinating and emotional. Perfect for a movie! The meeting will be at Hillel UCLA and on ZOOM and you should plan to attend as this will be memorable.
The meeting was adjourned by President Benjamin on time.
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