The MCAI board meeting was called to order by President Dennis Backer on Wednesday August 3 at 7:00 p.m. Dennis suggested that members and guests introduce themselves. Those who attended were Bill Brown, Bill Enis, John Primm, John Coleman, Grace McKay, Emmett Kesel, Travis, John MacMahon with his guest Kelly, Larry Goldsmith, Ellery Truesdell, Teri Tieman, Beverly Turner, and Tina Wilson.

The first topic of discussion was our mixer that will take place on August 17th at the Waters restaurant in Irvine.  Everyone congratulated Travis on his 60 second audio video promotion, advertising the mixer. We thank Teri Tieman for her press release, and we also thank Susan Macintosh for advertising it in the Tuesday blast. Teri mentioned that it is advertised at meetings and mixers dot com. We all agreed that this is a business networking mixer, and we hope to see many people from  various organizations there, and people are encouraged to bring 50 to 60 business cards. Dennis mentioned that Karen Carlsen, networking guru and author, will be the main speaker and that she has short little exercises and ice breakers to help all of us to get out there and network with our fellow professionals in the industry. There will be a raffle with a DVD player as the grand prize. The price is $10 for members who pre-pay, and $15 at the door. The question came up about RSVP’s and the fact that Pay Pal was not functioning properly. Grace said that she would work on getting that difficulty resolved. Organizations who have been contacted are the American Marketing Association, Media Alliance of Orange County, and Women in Film,  and it was suggested that we ask them to distribute our promotions to their lists as a courtesy. Both Dennis and Teri mentioned that an HTML email needs to be put together. John Coleman mentioned that once a week, that there should be a special promotional email put together that could be forwarded to the list. It was suggested that there be two emails sent out each week, plus one the week of the event. It was also decided that if Pay Pal was not up and running the way it needs to be, that RSVP’s should be emailed in. Dennis mentioned that the point to this type of mixer is that it will attract other people besides people from our organization, opening up the possibility for potential members.

Then we discussed the swap mete, which will take place on Friday September 16th with Beverly Turner as chairman.  Beverly said that we have not begun signing up sellers yet, but that the meeting would run from 7:00 in the morning until 2:00.   Larry mentioned that the PVN members  are committed to putting out fliers at different locations. He is also distributing fliers to QTC and AV Partners. Beverly said that everything needs to be set up at least 30 minutes to an hour before the event. Beverly suggested advertising the swap mete in the Penny Saver, but Dennis felt that it might be better to wait until after the August mixer since we are concentrating on advertising that at the present time.

Dennis said that the main purpose of our meeting was to talk about programs and ideas for future meetings to educate, inform and to heighten membership interest. He suggested that everyone come up with a list of ideas for the programming committee. John Coleman mentioned that we still need assistance on putting the September meeting together. Some ideas that were brought up for next year were having small business people come to talk about how to market your own small business, and how to organize. John Coleman said that we need to rotate our topics from month to month, some being creative, some being technical, and that we also needed to find new locations. Primary Colors was suggested as a possible location to be looked at, and also, the Irvine Arts Center was suggested to provide space so that through advertising, we could bring more people in. Everyone felt that this could appeal to a broader audience. It was also suggested to have a possible meeting where someone from the Newport Beach Film Festival could give a talk on what  a digital film maker may have to do to get their film entered in to the festival. Another suggestion was to have a program one evening discussing the overview of production in Orange County from advertising to production to training to creation and corporate marketing. Everyone agreed regarding the fact that we need to build on our campus liaison program, and there was also a suggestion regarding another Look Next conference.  Quite a few ideas were discussed, and everyone felt that we had a very productive meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m.

Tina Wilson, Recording Secretary