2000-01 Committees Organized

     President-Elect Don Steger has made his committee assignments for the 2000—01 Rotary year. Forty committees are responsible for the smooth working of our club and are the means of involving each of our members in club services and projects. Our committee structure has been developed over a period of many years and serves as a model for efficient organization of a service club. A roster of our committees and committee chairmen follows.

CLUB SERVICES
Avenue Chair, Dick Klingman

Archives ................................................... .Ronnie Pruett
Attendance .................................................... Mary Mack
Budget & Finance............................................. Jim Barnhardt
Charlotte Rotary Reporter ..................................... .Henry Bostic
Classification .............................................. Sadler Barnhardt
Club Awards and Recognition .................................. Paul Betzold
Club Roster ............................................. .William Loftin, Jr.
Computer Check-In ............................................ John Phillips
Fellowship ..................................................... Joe Becker
Food Service ................................................. Bob Freeman
Head Table ................................................. Tom Barnhardt
Health and Happiness .......................................... .Leiand Park
Honorary Membership ........................................ Martin Waters
Internet Home Page ......................................... Chase Saunders
Membership Development ....................................... Rex Welton
Music ...................................................... Thomas Moore
Program ................................................... David Anderson
Publicity & Public Relations ................................... Bert Voswinkel
Rotary Information ....................................... Worth Williamson
Rotary Magazine ..............................................
Sergeant-at-Arms ................................................ Jeff Searcy
Special Events ..................................................John Tabor
Visitors ....................................................... Lee Morris

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Chair, Frank Martin

Citizens with Disabilities ....................................... Michael Elder
Community Initiatives .................................... Mary-Stuart Brooks
Environment ................................................... Doug Bean
Interact — Myers Park ........................................ George Wilson
Senior Citizens .............................................. Richard Rankin
Youth Services .............................................. Alan Barnhardt

VOCATIONAL SERVICE
Chair, Herb Harriss

Career Information ..............................................Tony Zeiss
Employer-Employee Relations ................................... Jim Appleby
Four-Way Test. ................................................ Barry Miller
Trade and Professional Relations .......................... .Thomas D. Johnson

INTERNATIONAL SERVICE
Chair, Julian Aldridge

International Youth Projects ...................................Lamar Thomas
Representative to Foundation for Carolinas ........................Tom Burgess
Rotary Foundation, Pledge Support ............................. Donald Haack
Rotary Foundation Scholarships ............................... James Boniface
World Community Service ....................................... Ray Killian

SPECIAL COMMITTEES

Projects Committee ........................................... Philip Volponi
Literacy ....................................................... Ken Harris
Habitat ....................................................Tom Robertson

Meeting Report   May 16, 2000
By JULIUS  MELTON

     As our lunch hour progressed on this sunny but cool May Tuesday, we were watched over by President Worth and those who shared the head table with him, namely: Gib Smith, George Robinette, John Tabor, speaker Mike Eskew, Harley Dickson (invocation), Theresa Evans, and John Stedman. Jeff Searcy introduced our visitors; Howard Chadwick, song.
     The Executive Vice President of UPS, Mike Eskew, was our speaker, on the subject "A New Face of Commerce." He grabbed our attention right off by showing a 60-second, fast-paced video, and then pointed out that during that exact short amount of time 70 new businesses were created around the world, 36 more households were wired to the internet, 5 new domains were added to the web, 1,200 people took to the skies in planes, 30,000 packages were delivered, and $120 million dollars changed hands on the NY Stock Exchange — $240 million on NASDAQ! Then he expanded the time frame to his one-day Charlotte visit — 3 new businesses and 50 new jobs would typically be created in our metro area, $6 million more invested in Charlotte businesses, 500 jets taken off from our airport, 104 new residents arrived here, and 1,000 UPS workers would be about their tasks locally. Business is moving fast. No city is better situated than Charlotte to make the most of this.
     As an early example of business ingenuity from his native Midwest he told of Ward King, a farmer back in 1906, when the real cost of hauling a bushel of wheat ten miles on American dirt roads exceeded the cost of shipping it across the ocean from New York to Liverpool. Rain, making mud wallows of farm-to-market roads in the Midwest, so outraged King that he invented a primitive wooden device to drag along the dirt/gravel roads to help contour them to drain off the water, rendering them once more passable. This "King Drag" saved many farms, being easy to construct and copy. It kick-started road improvements, leading to Rural Free Delivery and much more.
     Present-day innovations equivalent in impact to the King Drag are digital technologies and supply chain solutions, opening up the virtual highways of the world. Alan Greenspan has reasoned that our long run of prosperity is a result of a new supply chain — perfect information, leading to near-perfect logistics, and near-perfect service. Greenspan sees this phenomenon leading to the "inevitable death of inventory," accompanied by an "extraordinary scarcity of risk." Three flows of commerce are "coming together at light speed" — goods, information, and funds.
     He sketched a "formula" which UPS believes will shape the future of commerce and the future of its businesses. It is composed of three critical factors — Time, Transparency, and Trust. All three focus on customers, for they are, indeed, now in the driver's seat as never before.

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     Providing detailed illustrations of each element of the formula, Eskew said "time" is now by far the greatest currency in the world. Managing the speed of business, getting to the market faster — and assisting customers to do these things — this is where money is made. UPS saw the new e-commerce and demand chain model taking shape almost fifteen years ago and got ready. Investing in sorting and scanning technologies, developing ways to collect detailed package information — these have allowed them to handle the 9 million packages a day which they not only deliver for and to customers, but which furnish data on which business decisions can be made.
     "Transparency" is the word used to convey the phenomenon of the customer's not really noticing or being bothered by the technology that makes possible this speed and accuracy. The technology and processes are "invisible." Also invisible are the former "borderlines" between the flows of goods, information, and funds. He told of a (fictitious) sporting goods firm which a traveler finds on the web while in Asheville on business. He decides after getting there to do some fly fishing before going home. Without a fly rod or time to search for one, he orders it online. The firm actually owns no manufacturing site, has no inventory, and no real estate (store). UPS is its partner and takes care of all that. The fly rod is in his hand, at his hotel, by the time his free time comes around. The funds are transferred instantaneously. UPS can even do financing and accept risk for the firm through its new USP Capital Corporation.
     "Trust" means, based on the intimate business experience a firm has with a partner like UPS, it may well see the wisdom of "outsourcing" more aspects of a typical transaction to it.
     A brief Q/A session followed Mike Eskew's prepared remarks. Some trivia: (1) UPS uses its tech wizardry in human resources to determine where skills may be found, who may need training, where new staff are needed, etc. (2) UPS did lose market share temporarily after the Teamsters' Union strike, but were back on track within two years. (3) With a huge fleet of planes unused on weekends, UPS has developed a charter service, outfitting certain planes with slide-in passenger compartments.

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