1/19(Tue.) Organizational/YoYo Culture (Host:Iris)

[Iris Wu]

Attendees: 24
Alex, Amy Chen, Blithe, Carmen, Carrie, Catherine, Jenny, Iris (Host), Jessica, Ken, Kooper, Linda, Lucy (New Comer), Luis, Morris, Rock, Sabrina, Shirley, Steve, Tashi, Tom, Toshi, Wenhan, Yvonne

Thank you for your participation in such a cold night!
I know some of you might feel obligated because you were called upon by my personal message!
(A trick for all the future hosts that you will need to learn. When you host a meeting, don't just sit there and wait for people to join, you need to fully utilize your network, and mobilize whoever you can ask to support you! Just kidding, but it is no harm to ask around. )

In the first session, we had pretty good discussion about YoYo's culture. I jotted down some notes: positive/nice-to-keep elements vs. negative/to-be-improved elements in YoYo culture, and what would be good action items for the up coming year:

Positive/Nice to Keep -

• - Friendly, warm,
  - members are reliable/dependable,
  - our forum has higher standards,
  - native speaker sessions are helpful,
  - we have more long term members,
  - our members do more preparation before the meetings,
  - our meeting is free format/style
  - error correction sessions

Negative/To be improved -

• - Meeting presentation time control and
  - fair practice opportunity for every attendee,
  - Need more social activities
  - Promotion for the club may not be enough
  - Other English Club has News discussion session

Action Items

• - More outings
  - Outing with longer stay (overnight)
  - Native speaker sessions
  - More member involvement and conversation practice in native speakers' sessions
  - Attract more young ladies to the club
  - Establish resource sharing liberary
  - Promotion for the club: Can try to put ads on PTT and Meetup

If there is anything I missed or something discussed in the group and not presented, please feel free to add. I am sure Tom and Tashi apprecicate your inputs and suggestions very much.

[Kooper]

One thing that confused me a bit in the meeting was the differences between "diversified" and "diverse." I heard people use "diversified" where I generally would use "diverse" only. So I googled and here is what I found.

"The difference between 'diverse' and 'diversified' is that 'diversified' implies more of a conscious effort to create diversity. 'Diversified' is used for things like stock portfolios that have many different types of stocks in them. 'Diverse' is used more in situations where items are naturally of many different types or accidentally of many different types. 'Diverse' is a very general word (it can also be used to describe the results of diversifying intentionally). 'Diversified' is used often as business or economics jargon."

"We have the adjective simple, and verb "simplify", which means "to make simple", and the participle (which can be used as an adjective) "simplified", which means "made simple". In the same way, we have an adjective "diverse", a verb "diversify", which means "to make diverse", and then the participle/adjective "diversified", which means "made diverse"."

"Well, there is a slight difference in meaning but nothing too profound. "Simplified method" implies that the method you're using is derived from one that was complicated. "Simple method" doesn't indicate either way."

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/ ... d.1068262/

The relationship between "diverse" and "diversified" seems to be just like that of "simple" and "simplified." So how do we express the idea of YoYo會員組成多元? I would use "Our members are very diverse" because I don't remember any previous leadership teams had made particular efforts to diversify our members. The diversity just comes by nature.

How about YoYo的討論主題多元? Would you say "Our meeting topics are diverse" or "Our meeting topics are diversified?"

[Rock]

From a diverse Yoyo English club come diversified topics.