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Packing Food Parcels for the Salvation Army

Posted by Boyne Drummond on Jun 17, 2020

The club has agreed to assist the Salvation Army Manukau packing food parcels.

Details of their food parcel programme can be found at https://www.salvationarmy.org.nz/get-help/welfare

We have initially committed to two events, on the 16^th and 30^th June.

A team of 12 club members with two residents from Epsom lodge attended the first event yesterday. We started at 10am and were finished by 12.30pm, having stopped for a few minutes for a quick lunch. The Salvation Army provided a light lunch and some drinks which were very welcome. We packed 140 boxes of non-perishables in less than two hours and then re-stocked the shelves ready for the next team.

The packing arrangements are similar to our Xmas Hampers project at Royal Oak and once again we demonstrated our expertise for this type of project.

We have another team ready for the 30^th and the plan is to have a group of about 25 members who have done the project which gives us the

capability to assist the Salvation Army on a continuing basis, at this stage we expect that could be once per month for the rest of 2020.

Phil O'Reilly ONZM

Posted by Martin McGahan on Jun 13, 2020

Phil is the Managing Director of Iron Duke Partners. He is a global business leader and advocate. He is Chair of the Board of Business at OECD,(a representation of businesses in OECD member states), based in Paris. Phil is involved in the work of the B20 - advising G20 leaders. He is formally a member of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). He has acted in a governance or advisory capacity to a number of New Zealand and overseas organisations in areas as diverse as trade, sustainability, diversity, pay equity, manufacturing, tertiary education, child poverty and the future of work. Until recently, Phil was a member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) based in Geneva. Previously he was Chief Executive of BusinessNZ, New Zealand’s leading business advocacy group, representing thousands of businesses of all sizes.

In a wide ranging and informative address, Phil covered the geo-political environment in light of Covid 19 and how it could affect New Zealand and our ability to trade around the world. How the big two, USA and China, will likely use their influence to leverage future trade access and diplomatic connection.

He talked of Australia being the bright spot for us, having remained largely open for business through C19, and the immediate benefits likely for us. As a small trading nation we need our borders open to sell to the world. We need to put faces in front of faces to make the impact we require to survive.

On local politics Phil emphasised how our PM is the centre of focus, but he doesn’t think this will last. He is concerned about the government’s attitude to business, but did make the point of highlighting Grant Robertson as being a good friend of business in these times. He talked of how Covid 19 helped re-glue an otherwise disfunctional administration.

Artificial Intelligence - The Rise of the Machines

Posted by Martin McGahan on May 31, 2020

Scott Houston...You might say Futurist.

Artificial Intelligence—The Rise of the Machines!

Scott is a technology entrepreneur and he gave us a challenging, thought provoking and very enjoyable address Monday evening on a subject many probably don’t wish to think about.

What is Artificial intelligence?

The are three main components

1. Computer Vision ie, facial recognition, recognising one animal from another, or inanimate objects.

2. Natural Language Processing—Meet “Ella”, electronic life-like assistant. You can find her at national police HQ, Wellington. This medium, with CV applied helps to develop sentiment analysis by looking at emotional responses such as happiness, anger etc.

Follow this link to see an example of the future interaction we can

expect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5w0oRDOrt4

Scott is a technology entrepreneur and he gave us a challenging, thought provoking and very enjoyable address Monday evening on a subject many probably don’t wish to think about.

3. Automated Machine Learning—

understanding words/figures etc, large data as applicable to say stock market data, financial data, retail analytics. Then training models to ultimately make predictions.

Scott talked of the AI Pipeline: Train—Neural Networks - Learn Predict -Re-train

Scott went on to talk about the impact of AI pre and post Covid 19 on the future. The picture spells out the potential effect.

Newmarket Primary School

Posted on May 24, 2020

It’s said a day in politics is a long time….and so it proved this week!

We were all looking forward this week to hearing from Nikki Kaye, MP for Auckland Central. Unfortunately, Nikki didn’t find her way to our Zoom meeting. it’s fair to say, now we know why.

Instead, we were lucky to have Dr Wendy Kofeod, principal of Newmarket Primary School, and Gayle Hackwell chair of the Board of Trustees, join us. In Nikki’s absence this turned out to be a great opportunity to re-connect with the school on a broader level and for Wendy to share with us what the school has been doing lately, including dealing with Covid 19 and its implications. Rotary Newmarket has a very long and solid association with the school and we have been able to assist in many ways over this time. From digital learning centre (a ground-breaking project for the school with ongoing development streams), garden shed/environment project and assistance to students to advance their education.

Professor Des Gorman

Posted on May 18, 2020

Prof. Gorman’s address on the Club's meeting via Zoom last week was refreshing, challenging and constructive.

Prof. Gorman called on biblical comparison to illustrate how NZ has dealt with Covid 19, citing the “Flood” as his reference point:

Before the Flood: NZ was not prepared for a pandemic, and delayed acting, to our disadvantage. We relied on WHO issuances, which were slow, misleading and actively counterproductive to managing this event.