The Northern California Reception to introduce the META Board to our new affiliates was held at the beautiful, lagoon side home of Norman McVea and META Advisory Board member,Sharon Hart .

45 enthusiastic former ATMA members and colleague guests attended. The outgoing Board of ATMA, including co-founders, Peter Tjeerdsma, Sharon Hart as well as co-founder, Daphne Laurel, thanked attendees, many of whom had been charter members of ATMA since 1996, including filmmaker, TV and radio producer, Jan St. John, screenwriter and Emmy awarded PBS producer, Brian Narelle,visionary artist, Daniel Holeman, and film and video producer, Ken Jenkins for their loyal support of ATMA over the 14 years that it stood for transformative media throughout the world. Sharon Hart shared her great satisfaction in reaching the long term goal of helping to bring together the Northern and Southern California transformative media communities, which will insure more support and resources for independents as well as mainstream  producers.

Cynthia Stringer, former ATMA Board Member, and the current META Executive Director, introduced META Board Chair, Elizabeth Estrada, who shared her delight at co-creating a Northern California branch of the Los Angeles based association in the San Francisco Bay Area--her former home, where she once created elegant, black-tie, social events.

L.R.: Andrew Orgel, Elizabeth Estrada and Cynthia Stringer
with affiliate members and guests sharing their work

 
She went on to express her heart-felt commitment to the mission of creating positive media that transforms lives to an even greater degree of impact and visability than ever before due to the strategic positioning of META within the mainstream Los Angeles media community.

Cynthia shared that META's outreach includes a mailing list of 1500 with more added each month, and approximately 200 members and affiliates since the March organizational launch in Los Angeles.

She then introduced Vice Chairman, Andrew Orgel, who added his total commitment to creating the grounded action necessary to create the resources, opportunities, and connections it takes to produce the media content and kind of organization that makes a global impact and a real difference in the media world. Andy, a founding executive of the MTV networks and the Arts and Entertainment Network--is well qualified to help craft META into a recognized trade organization. 
                                                                READ MORE ON THE NEXT PAGE

Elizabeth then shared some of META's already exciting, high profile events--which includes our first Film Festival in conjunction with Board member, Ron Schultz's Social Action Film Festival, presented as part of Arts Olympus 2010 aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach.  She invited the new affiliates to participate in the Call for Submissions for the Festival. We discussed META's next Northern California event--a public launch /benefit to be held at the Broadway Studios in San Francisco in early Fall, 2010. A request was made for support to help create the event.

We then spent time hearing  from the affiliate members about their exciting projects which included 7-time Emmy awarded composer and musician, Gary Malkin's, new global, health-related media company and Errol and Rochelle Strider's new Laughing Heart Production Company.

Members and guests stayed to network and visit and enjoy the lavish food well into the evening. It was a truly memerable and enjoyable event! Information about our affiliates' projects will be available on the website under Member Bulletin Board.