Category: Speaker

Kevin Armstrong

June 7, 2015

The City of Palo Alto has partnered with twelve neighboring communities on a regional effort aimed at increasing residential rooftop solar installations. The new Peninsula SunShares program pools the power of individual customers, and reduces the advertising costs of the two solar companies that were selected, so that the two solar companies can offer a 15% discount off the normal market rate. Anyone living in the nine Bay Area counties (including Santa Clara and San Mateo) may enroll in the program, and receive a free no-obligation analysis and estimate from one or both of the companies. Registration in the program is available until July 31, 2015.

Kevin Armstrong (Program Manager, Vote Solar, www.votesolar.org) co-leads Vote Solar’s administration of group solar programs in an effort to help the solar industry reduce soft costs and Vote Solar’s partners achieve the goals of their climate action plans. He previously spent two years with the City of San Jose, and two years with the County of San Mateo, managing municipal renewable energy programs. He has degrees in Civil & Environmental Engineering and City & Regional Planning from UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

Humanist Community Forum (2015-06-07): Peninsula SunShares – Let’s Go Solar Together (Kevin Armstrong) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Prof. Martin Carcieri

May 31, 2015

Martin Carcieri (Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University) will discuss gender discrimination using what philospher John Rawls calls the domain of non-ideal theory, which deals with such basic questions as civil disobedience and militancy. Prof. Carcieri will raise the question whether a public employee, who witnesses his unit’s consistent secret discrimination in hiring against members of one gender, is allowed, by way of protest and compensation, to do the same in reverse within his sphere of influence.

Humanist Community Forum (2015-05-31): John Rawls and Gender Discrimination (Prof. Martin Carcieri) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Dr. Michelle Chappel

May 17, 2015

Dr. Michelle Chappel (an internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter-speaker and creativity thought leader with a Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton) will present ten creativity best practices for stimulating innovative thinking in teams based on techniques for producing great music. Learn how to establish highly effective harmonious business teams, as well as improve the creative dynamics of groups outside of work such as families, sports teams, and associations. Appropriate for non-musicians and musicians. (See www.michellechappel.com)

Humanist Community Forum (2015-05-17): How to Catalyze Collaborative Creativity Using Music Improvisation Techniques from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Ron Garret

May 10, 2015

Ron Garret (a software engineer and entrepreneur) will discuss and show excerpts from his feature length documentary “Grace of God”, which follows the lives of four long-term homeless men as the filmmaker struggles to understand what put them on the street, what is keeping them there, and what he might be able to do about it.

Humanist Community Forum (2015-05-10): A Documentary Illuminating Homelessness (Ron Garret) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Martin Squibbs

May 3, 2015

The evidence of neuroscience is revealing that most likely our conscious, thinking and feeling self, and our mind (which contains our past memories, knowledge and understanding, our future possibilities, and much more), are both in fact part of our remarkable, complex, living human brain. Humanist Community member and Board Vice-President Martin Squibbs will present a model of how he believes our mind, and our memories, function and form, and how such knowledge and awareness of ourselves might help human kind progress.