Author: Manuel F. Simoes

Meet the Media Exchanging ideas to serve the community.

Last week I had an idea to try to get a bunch of my media buddies together for an impromptu coffee meet up at Pleasant Street Tea and Coffee Company. Those of you who have been following the blog closely may have noticed many posts coming from the space at Pleasant Street. This is not a slight to Gloucester’s other coffee shops like Lone Gull and Cape Ann Coffee which I love and feel play a huge role in the fabric of a community. Pleasant Street happens to have that nice back room which is conducive to meetings and taping interviews so that’s where I’ve been because the dock is just too crazy this time of year to try to tape any segments.

Anyway what I thought would end up as a meeting between four or five of us turned into something much bigger as 90% of my media rolodex showed up.
The idea behind the meet-up was to introduce many people that may have only contacted each other through emails or telephone for a meeting where everyone could share ideas and explore opportunities to help each other and themselves. With the planning and help of Johhny McElhenny and Heather Fraelick we held what I believe to be the first of it’s kind cross media meeting between such a diverse group of Cape Media moguls.

We had the newspaper Editors from The Gloucester Times and Cape Ann Beacon Ray Lamont and Jane Enos. We had Cape Ann TV’s new executive director Donna Gacek. We had international TV producing media giants Gianni and Terry Gallo along with Joe Langhan. Peter Van Ness- Producer and local web genius. Andrea Holbrook- Night editor at The Times. Terry Weber- freelance writer who will soon be releasing her adventure blog to the world. Local PR gurus Heather Fraelick, John McElhenny and Kate Moran. Hybrid Advertising executive Jon Cahill from Bait and Tackle. Local bloggers and writers Heather Atwood, Billy O’Connor and Laura Ciampa, Manny Simoes and your boy Joey of course.

I know I made several connections and came away with some exciting cross promotional opportunities that we will be pursuing to make GMG even better and I’m sure there were other connections that were made in that room.
We are planning to meet monthly but the next one will be at Cape Ann Brewing and in the evening so we can spend more time and have more space.

Here’s a video that Manny put together-