January 3, 2006
Who can believe it – 2005 is over! For MCA-I, it was a year that brought exciting transformations, both to our local chapter as well as nationally.
Here are a few highlights:
1. Jobs and More Online. MCA-I New York teamed up with ProductionHub to bring you daily listings on jobs, industry news, equipment, and events. The listings change every day, so check our Web site regularly at www.mcainy.org, and click on the links under “Industry Resources” to see what’s new.
2. New York Member Directory. Your chapter leaders are working on a searchable online member directory, where New York members will be able to provide information about their services, links to their Web sites, and demos of their work. Look for this exciting new feature in the coming weeks.
3. Health Insurance. MCA-I National is now able to offer a comprehensive (full or partial, depending on your needs) health insurance plan. Please read the announcement by our national president, Dr. Alan Richardson in this issue or visit National at www.mca-i.org.
4. MCA-I at GVExpo. National wants to become “the Voice of the Industry” and occasionally forms strategic partnerships with other major organizations as one way to achieve that goal. Last month MCA-I was represented at the Government Video & Technology Expo in Washington, DC www.gvexpo.com, the largest, most focused event representing the exploding markets for government AV, video, broadcast, digital signage, collaborative conferencing, multimedia & technology – a $9.4 billion market. MCA-I members received free passes to this expo.
5. MCA-I at NAB; Golden Reels. If you’re planning to attend NAB in April 2006, make sure you visit our booth. We’ll be on the floor, leading seminars for media professionals, and presenting our Golden Reel Awards. Click here to enter your work, and watch for convention details in the coming weeks. If you’re not yet an MCA-I member, join now at www.mca-i.org so you can take advantage of the members’ preferred rates – as well as the numerous other member benefits MCA-I offers.
6. New Film Festival. In 2005, our local chapter founded and produced a new international film festival “Stories from the Field, the First United Nations Documentary Film Festival” in partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information. Honorary committee members included feature film director and producer Sydney Pollack, documentarian Albert Maysles, and UN Under-Secretary for Communications Shashi Tharoor. The Festival was so successful that it is now an annual event.
This year’s Festival will be on April 22-23, 2006.
Last year’s competing films were all UN-produced; this year the competition is open to the public. You can view clips of last year’s winners and read about the 2006 competition at www.mcainy.org/unfilm.
Stories from the Field also brought together an amazing group of volunteers – some old members, and many new ones – all consummate professionals who believe in the spirit of the Festival, and without whose expertise we never could have pulled it off. A big thank you goes to all of them.
The Festival focuses on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals www.un.org/millenniumgoals, which were signed onto by every United Nations Member State. In this issue, two volunteers, Mariana Pagliere and Tim McNany share their personal stories as Festival volunteers.
In addition to attracting many new members, the Festival also broadened our Chapter’s visibility, not just nationally, but internationally. We received mentions from as far away as China, and requests from all over the world for the films we screened.
Please mark your calendars now for our second edition, a great weekend of film and discussion, April 22 – 23, 2006 – and support your Chapter in becoming bigger and better than ever.
The Annual Holiday Party was a great success.
In the spirit of reaching out to other organizations, we co-hosted our annual holiday party on December 12, 2005 with the New York City Final Cut Users Group. And, for the first time in a while, we had a talent show, inviting our many talented members and friends to participate in what we called our Christmas Slam. If you missed it, don’t worry; we’ll do it again next year with poems, songs, readings, and more!
JVC will host our next industry event.
And finally, mark your calendar for Wednesday, January 18, when we’ll present our HDV/JVC seminar. You won’t want to miss this. Check the events pages on www.mcainy.org for details.
All the Best for a Happy and Successful New Year!
Corinna Sager
President
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