Presented by the National Society of Black Engineers.

Learn how to effectively
communicate in your TC environment! Join us for a candid discussion with a panel of Directors, SPEs and Primary Examiners on Thrusday, January 30th from 11:00 am to12:00 pm at the Randolph Building conference room, 1D04.

Don’t forget to attend Coffee Break tomorrow Tuesday Jan 13th to meet our new board of directors and discuss ideas for the new year! Rumors say Larry might be bringing brownies, who’s in?

Larry Sternbane, Chair

Jahangir Kabir, Vice Chair

Michael Tzeng, Secretary

Yaira Resto, Advisor

Steve Spar, Treasurer

This year has been a very productive one for Lambda! We started off making an informational video for the agency along with all the other affinity groups to let new employees know about us. Guess what? The video has been finalized and is now in use by the HR team. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can see it here! After our screen debut, we gathered together in April and participated in the Dining Out For Life event at Freddie’s Beach Bar in April, followed by our own USPTO Community Day.

Fast forward to June, we had our LGBT Pride Day event where the agency’s former Director, Todd Dickinson and our very own General Counsel at the time Bernie Knight were the guest speakers along with Deputy Director Teresa Rhea and Bismarck Myrick, Director PTO’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity.

 Later on in August, the International Food Sampling Festival was a great success, on our part thanks to our guest Nicolas Coletto and to Danny Leung for bringing him in to present the great Italian Fusion flavors we featured at our table. In October, a few of us went to see the Laramie Project at Ford’s Theater and recently in December, we all joined once more for our Annual Holiday Lunch. Not to mention the bi-weekly coffee breaks and other gatherings our members participate in smaller groups. It was a fun, busy year and we have many more ahead of us. Thanks always for your support!

Something for Everyone. Admission is FREE to All. Register Today!

g.life is a specialized, pop-up exposition of epic proportions designed to inform, educate, and entertain the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied community of the multitude of businesses, products, and services of which are available to them in the Washington metropolitan area.  This one-day event, proudly presented by the Capital Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, provides the unique opportunity for national corporations, local companies, entrepreneurs, and LGBT organizations to showcase how their products and services positively impact the community while showing their commitment and support of the LGBT.

This comprehensive event is as multifaceted as it is exciting!  From innovative displays to educational seminars to live entertainment, g.life brings them all together to energize, enlighten, and inspire its’ participants.

Something for Everyone. Admission is FREE to All. Register Today!

Hope you can make it…(Live or via Webcast…)

Via WebEx:

• Event number: 994 954 000
• Event password: 12345

Captions can be accessed here.

To join the teleconference only:

• Join the event then provide your to receive a call back. Alternatively, you can call Webex at 1-571-270-3000
• Follow the instructions that you hear on the phone. Your Cisco Unified MeetingPlace meeting ID: 994 954 000

For More information:

http://ptoweb.uspto.gov/ptointranet/index.htm

Mental health adviser and former Miss New Mexico Ane Romero will speak at the USPTO today, November 5, from noon to 1 p.m., in Madison Auditorium North. All members of the USPTO community are invited to attend.

Romero will discuss and share effective tools for recognizing the warning signs of mental illness, identifying risk factors, learning help-seeking behavior, addressing crisis situations, and stress management.

Romero is the founder of the mental health and wellness blog See, Believe, and Achieve and is certified in suicide prevention through the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program. She has served as the national spokesperson for the 800-YOUTHLINE suicide prevention hotline, and is often called to speak on the subject of mental health at schools, government agencies, and community events.
For her contributions to mental health policy, Romero received the 2011 National Excellence in Federal Government Leadership Award from the National Resource Center for Hispanic Mental Health. She is currently a senior legislative assistant and mental health adviser on Capitol Hill.

American Sign Language interpretation and WebEx services will be provided.

This event is sponsored by ResponsAbility, the USPTO affinity group committed to disability advocacy and awareness. All USPTO employees and contractors are welcome and encouraged to participate in ResponsAbility regardless of disability status.

Lambda has been communicating with the office of HR to ensure explicit inclusion of our issues in Employee Assistance Programs and policies. Representatives of all the major insurance companies and benefit departments are ready to answer your questions about coverage, premiums and our newly acquired benefits for our families.

We need volunteers to represent Lambda during the National Engineers’ Week (E-Week) 2014. Planning meetings are underway for next year’s events to take place from February 16-22, 2014. If interested, contact Sally Oh, at the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity to receive an invitation to the next planning meeting.

====Update 10/24/13
A message from Sally Oh:

Hello everyone, we are just getting started with planning E-Week 2014 and we hope that your organization will be involved in some capacity. For those who are new to E-Week, please find attached document with some background information.

E-Week 2014

This year’s theme will be focused on “Bionic Limbs.” If you have not had a chance, please check out the video:  http://www.nbclearn.com/innovation.

We have the Madison Auditorium reserved on February 19^th and 20^th, so the E-Week program will be on one of those days.

School Selection

This year, we are hoping to have the groups involved in the selection of the schools and/or organization that will be invited to participate in the E-Week  program. The plan is for each affinity group (that wants to) to select their own school/organization that they would like to partner with.  They would then go to the partner school /organization (or have the students come here) prior to the E-Week event in February and conduct prep lessons*.  An example of what the prep lessons can look like (this is not the real lesson plan, that will be decided by the curriculum committee):

• Lesson #1:  Innovation Overview
  1. Introduction to the USPTO and Intellectual Property
  2. Science of Innovation Overview Video
• Lesson #2:  Introduction to Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kits
  1. Familiarize with the kits and the programming software
  2. Build basic robots using the Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kits
• Lesson #3:  Introduction to Bioengineering and Bionic Limbs/Exoskeletons
  1. Lecture on Bioengineering
  2. Bionic Limbs video
• Lesson #4:  Build Bionic Limbs/Exoskeletons using Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kits

*These Prep lessons can be done all at once during a single visit or scattered throughout multiple visits.  It’s solely the choice of each affinity group and how they wish to work with their partner school/organization.  What’s easiest for them.  The key is to make sure that the students learn the content of each lesson plan. 

Action Items:

• Please discuss with your group’s leaders to see if your group can commit to doing these prep lessons prior to E-Week. The format of how you do the lessons will be up to the groups (ex: 4 times for 1 hour, 2 times for 2 hours, etc.) If your group can provide enough people to do the lessons, which will be provided, please let us know by COB October 30^th.
• If your group can commit to this, please provide the name of the school/organization by COB November 6^th. We will provide a flyer and model invitation for your use. In thinking about which school to invite, we ask that you consider looking for a school that has Title 1 status; has underserved students and; has an interest in STEM education. 

If your group is interested but may not have enough manpower, please consider partnering with another group to work together. J It is also worth mentioning that if your group does not have the resources to work with a school/organization directly, you can still participate in E-week planning and help with the day of activities.

Curriculum Development

If you are interested in working on the developing the curriculum for the prep lessons and the E-Week event, please plan to attend the meeting next Wednesday, October 30^th, a meeting planner will be sent out separately. Please note that this meeting is only to discuss the curriculum and there will be meetings in the future to discuss further planning.

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding E-Week. Thank you!

 
Sally S. Oh

EEO Manager (Diversity Programs)
Office of EEO and Diversity
US Patent and Trademark Office