[Nfbsf] Minutes for last month

[Jim Barbour]

Minutes for February 9th, 2014 NFB San Francisco Chapter

Attendees:
Ed Vaughan does not watch TV or Movies but was just in South America. He saw penguins and traveled around Cape Horn. Ed is also starting a blindness support group at a senior center in Redwood City.

Kate Williams visited the JCC South American Wine Tasting.  She enjoyed the movie Boyhood.

Sarah Hadsell likes to watch "The 100" which is a futuristic TV show about what
happens after the humans destroy the earth.

Christina Daniels recently watched a documentary about voice over artists.

Josh Glatt lives in San Francisco and enjoys The Amazing Race.

Richard Tijerina enjoys watching spiritual CDs.

Jim Barbour lives in San Bruno, misses Comcast cable, and recently watched "The Imitation Game"

Lisamaria Martinez is visiting from the East Bay chapter.  She was watching "Life Unexpected", but it ended quickly. She's now watching "Ugly Betty."

Lily Liang lives in Berkeley and is watching Tiny House Hunting.

Tim Elder lives in Fremont hardly watches movies and TV shows.  The last movie was "Pitch Perfect"

Announcements

Looking to build up the telephone committee.  We'd like to actually have a person reaching out to potential members.

   Tim, Jim, Ed, Sara, and Christina have volunteered to help on the committee. Thanks everyone!

Please spread the word about NFB National Scholarships.  Applicants can find the applications here http://www.nfb.org/scholarships Applications are due by March 31, 2015.

Reservations are open for the 2015 National Convention.

Information about the Jernigan Scholarships for first time attendees can be found here... https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm15/bm1501/bm150113.htm

Even if you plan to get the Jernigan Scholarship you should make your own reservation.  Information about reserving a room and registering for convention can be found here.  https://nfb.org/convention

Here's an excerpt from the page...

The 2015 room rates are singles and doubles, $82; and triples and quads, $89. In addition to the room rates there will be a tax, which at present is 13.5 percent. Make your room reservation as soon as possible with Rosen Centre staff by calling (802) 204-7234.

Jim made a motion to allocate $500.00 for a grant to allow a first time attendee to go to national convention.  This scholarship will be awarded by the NFBSF board. The motion passed.

Last month there was some concern at our chapter meeting about social security funding issues.  Tim talked with Lauren McClarney and we are watching this, but it is not yet an area of concern.

The Uber hearing is coming up on March 3rd.  We have a case coming up against Uber because they are not appropriately training drivers regarding service animal access.  If you're interesting in Service Animal issues, the next hearing will be on March 3rd, at the San Francisco Courthouse at 450 Golden Gate at 1 P.M.  Tim will be arguing the motion.  Lots of of interesting legal issues involved here.  Stay tuned for more.

Please bring your $5.00 in NFB of San Francisco dues to the next meeting.

Also, we will do elections next month.  Anybody may serve.

The board positions are...

President:      Tim Elder
Vice President: Ed Vaughan
Secretary:      Jim Barbour
Treasurer:      David Chan

2 open board positions which are currently not filled.

Washington Seminar went very well this year.  We covered the issues last month.  Now the Washington Seminar is over we really need help building relationships with our congressional representatives.  If you'd like to help calling congress, explaining our issues, and generally being a part of this year long effort; please let someone on the board know.  

Fund raising is how we're going to get people to convention.  We'll need to come up with ideas for fund raising.

2 ideas that Tim brought were...

  1) Going to rotary club, talking about blindness, and making an ask for donations.
  2) NFBSF members could work with "Blindness Cafe" as wait staff and donating the proceeds to the NFBSF.

"Blindness Cafe" is a "dining in the dark" activity where folks eat dinner in the dark.  Tim, Jim, Jim's wife, and Bryan Bashin attended a "Blindness Cafe" event last week in San Francisco.  This event was not a blindness immersion event.  Instead, they treated it more as a sensory deprivation exercise, where the entertainment was some very clueful blind folks answering questions about what it's like to be blind.

There is concern that other dining in the dark events have treated blindness as a joke or as shock entertainment.  We, the NFB, very much want to avoid associating with these negative types of dining in the dark.  Those of us who attended "Dining in the Dark" did not feel this was that type of negative event.  

Ed also suggested hiring a professional fund raising.  Eric Holm, past president, did this and the chapter found the results very satisfactory.

Jim suggested also raising money by taking chapter members to an event and having members pay extra to attend the event.  For example, rent a bus to go to a winery and pay an extra $20 per member to go.  This was not received well as the chapter felt that it would be better to fund raise from outside the chapter.

Bay to Breakers Centipede

Cindy Fassler did a great deal of research on the "Bay to Breakers" centipedes.  Tim is going to write her a "thank you" email.  We are very sorry she couldn't be with us tonight.

NFBSF would like to do a walking centipede of around 15 or 16 people at this year's "Bay to Breakers" race.  The race will be on May 17th.

There was a lot of discussion about logistics.  Right now, we'll probably do the centipede with some type of center tube with walkers on either side of the tube holding on.  We'll probably arrange for a few spotters off to the sides of the centipede to help coordinate and direct participants.