On this very snowy Friday, a surprising number of Rotarians braved the elements to attend to-day’s meeting. President Brewster called the meeting to order at 12:30 pm. Invocation: Teresa Kmetz delivered the invocation for the day. Patriotic Song: Ken Beachler introduced the song, America the Beautiful Introduction of guests: With Lisa Smith’s microphone assistance, Jack Davis introduced George Loomis, today’s one and only guest who was visiting Rotary for the third time. Remembrance Report: On behalf of Dick Ammons, President Brewster announced that the health of the club is great. Announcements: Rotary Club of Lansing Foundation president, Nick Heriford, announced that the application process for local grants is now open. Application access is available through the Rotary Club of Lansing website, lansingrotary.org. A word of caution is that it is best to ac-cess the link through a computer because the link is not available by smartphone. Nick asked Rotarians to point local organizations in the direction of Rotary so that they, too, can apply for funds—but only after carefully studying the areas of relevance. Applications are due by March 16th at noon and grant awards will be announced in May or June. Kevin Schumacher announced what he called an advanced Loftus Day directive, in other words an opportunity to submit a paragraph long bio containing little known facts about of one-self without a name attached—for inclusion in the Rotogram. The purpose of this offbeat bio is to increase Rotogram readership by seeing if Rotarians can guess who the description is for. The Rotarian who guesses correctly wins a $10 gift card to Biggby’s. If NOBODY guesses, as happened today, the person who submitted the description receives the gift card. Today’s win-ner was Julie Pingston, who told about traveling to Peru without her parents’ knowledge and who, as her last supper in Peru before returning home, ate ‘guinea pig’. Nobody in the club guessed that this description matched Julie! Special Music: While the club missed John Dale Smith’s background music today, all were treated to a special musical guest who was introduced by Courtney Millbrook of the Lansing Symphony. Courtney’s guest today was Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, a world-renowned violinist who will be performing with the Lansing Symphony tomorrow evening. Susanne, who was born in Shanghai, raised in Toronto, and now lives in Paris, will be be performing the Mendelssohn Vi-olin Concerto tomorrow evening. The symphony orchestra will also be performing pieces by Mo-zart and Korngold. Based on the wonderful music that followed, it is clear that this is a concert not to be missed! While almost anything about her can be learned on Wikipedia, Susanne shared a few additional details. First, as a child growing up in Canada, her reward for practicing violin 4-5 hours per day was tobogganing on a hill next to her home. She loves the snow and even invited Rotarians for a snowball fight after the meeting! Second, Susanne knew no English when she first arrived in Toronto and it was her father who taught her to play the violin. Her first public performance, in frigid Thunder Bay, was a duet with her dad when she was five. After their performance, when everybody clapped, Susanne had to ask her father what this clapping meant. He explained that applause is a sign of appreciation that, like music, speaks its own universal language. Our guest artist then shared a concerto segment that will be performed tomorrow night, one her father began teaching her, phrase by phrase, at the age of eight. Each time she returns to this concerto, she discovers new things about it, and considers it filled with life and love. Susanne played it magnificently and, many years after her very first performance, clearly understood the club’s appreciation when everyone clapped so loudly at the end. Speaker: Chair of the Month and Chair of the Day Anne Cauley introduced today’s guest, Mark Alley. Mr. Alley is the Vice President of Global Protective Services and Public Affairs at Emer-gent Biosolutions. After receiving his BS from Ferris State and his MS from MSU, Mr. Alley was with the Lansing Police Department for 24 years (including ten years as Lansing Chief of Po-lice). Since being introduced to Emergent Biosolutions by Anne Cauley and starting there in 2010, he has managed corporate protective services, business continuity, emergency manage-ment, internal and external communications, and charitable giving at the Lansing location. Mr. Alley’s talk was called “Security: It’s as Easy as 1-2-3”. He talked about the need for compa-nies, large and small, to protect their assets from a variety of incidents, including crimes against property, assaults, fire, workplace violence, terrorism, bomb threats, civil unrest, and suspicious mail. It’s not just about you but also about your employees. How comfortable are you with them? Does their security mindset match yours? To protect your people and assets, a first step is to develop a security plan, the process of which will help your company to identify its weaknesses. Employees must be trained on this se-curity plan and reasonable steps must be taken to address the weaknesses that have been identified. Mr. Alley has available for Rotarians a security plan template and instruction manual. To receive this template and instruction manual, simply email Mr. Alley at alleym@ebsi.com or phone him at 517-327-6824. An important takeaway from this presentation was that a layered security approach is best. Each layer alone can deter or prevent an incident but, in combination, the security value is multi-plied many times over, creating a stronger and harder to impact target. Among the security measures discussed include closed circuit television (CCTV); access card systems (in place of keys); perimeter protection (including a variety of fences with different heights and protections at the top like Razor Wire); crash rated barriers (in which higher K val-ues correlate to an ability to withstand impacts at higher speeds); perimeter intrusion detection systems (such as a shaker wire system or underground fiber optic cable); long range motion de-tection, infrared beam sensors, and virtual fence alarms (that include video analytics and micro-wave beam sensors); propriety or contract security officers (armed or unarmed, uniformed or uninformed); and metal detectors and x-ray scanners. Local police or sheriff departments are a great source for conducting security assessments free of charge. Also, partnering with other businesses can help towards defraying security costs. The following are some excellent resources: - City of Houston Preparedness Videos: Access at http://www.readyhoustontx.gov/videos.html
- Run. Hide. Fight.—This is a video about what do do if you ever encounter an active shooter. Mr. Alley called it realistic, excellent. very practical, and a great resource.
In closing, Mr. Alley reminded our Rotary club that a committed criminal will figure out how to get past even the most extensive security measures. Adding security infrastructure can be ex-pensive and comes with service contracts and repair and replacement costs. Be sure to under-stand your total cost of ownership prior to buying and know ahead of time who is going to be monitoring the security systems you put in place. In lieu of a speaker’s gift, President Brewster presented Mr. Alley with a coin demonstrating Ro-tary’s 4-way test and told him that money will be donated to the club’s Bio Sand Filter project in the Dominic Republic. President Darwin adjourned today's meeting at 1:30 p.m. |