So I visited friendorfollow.com to catch up on those nice folks who are following me on Twitter but who I don’t currently follow. Boy it really feels like a “job” when I do this (who are they, where are they, what do they do, do they say anything interesting etc.) and yet I force myself to because there are people who I do want to follow on that list and just never got around to it.

I’m not an immediate follower of people who follow me. Mostly because of time and also because some people’s tweets don’t interest me. Hey, there are lots of people who I follow who don’t follow me so it works both ways and it ain’t personal, either way.

But going through this exercise yet again, I thought about these three things in no particular order:

• Who has the time to try and follow thousands of people and then make any sense of it while having a professional and personal life?
• Why don’t some people put up a picture in their profile? If you have that stupid twitter bird for your picture, I can’t be bothered with you…sorry, it’s a “thing” with me
• What’s the deal with people who block their tweets? If you need to hide anything from Twitter (and its cool if you do) you shouldn’t be on Twitter

What about you? Agree? Disagree? Do you have other pet Twitter peeves?

Tags: commentary, community, social media, social networking, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Voice Actor & Teacher Bob Bergen

I believe it was my friend and voiceover compatriot Liz de Nesnera who posted a notice in social media circles about an upcoming Bob Bergen Voice Over Workshop that will teach you how to buy foreclosed homes for pennies on the dollar and become rich, rich, rich!

Um wait, that might be wrong.

Actually, Bob’s hosting a “2-Day ADVANCED Animation Voice-over Workshop” December 5-6, 2009 in New York City, (“Advanced” meaning you must have previous animation voice-over technique training or experience).

Eschewing the hype found in many one-sheets for workshops (har-har), this workshop’s flyer promises the following:

This work shop takes you through the entire process of what it’s like to audition and record a cartoon! Each student will have the opportunity to “audition” for up to 15 characters . Based on their” auditions” Bob will then cast and record an episode of the cartoon.! Each student will receive an audio copy of the finished product! This is a great opportunity to know what it’s like to actually work as a voice-over artist in an animated film.

I have not trained with Bob but that only means he’s selective about who he teaches and he has good taste – I’m kidding! All the people I know who have trained with Bob speak very, very well of the experience and if they didn’t you wouldn’t be reading about this workshop here. If you’d like more information, you can find it here.

Tags: animation, character voices, commentary, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
1 Comment »

OK, look, for all the nice comments people make about my business’ marketing and what I know about marketing (and thank you) I did miss the boat on a Facebook fan page for the Voice Over Entrance Exam as previously noted.

Worse than that, I kind of forgot about the page entirely which is strictly a marketing no-no. Even worse than that, I almost admitted all of that in a blog post which is completely verboten.

So yesterday I check the page and see that there are 55 fans of the Voice Over Entrance Exam’s Facebook book page. The last time I looked I remember like, 5. And sadly I was quite thrilled with that number, even given the fact that 1 of those fans was the author.

For those of you playing the home game, that would be an increase of over 1,000,000,000,000 percent or 15 terabytes; not that I like to brag because I’m supposedly an introvert, according to Myers and Briggs (who also make very nice engines).

So thank you to all of you that pitied me by becoming a fan of an e-book that came out in May 2009 and which inaugurated a Facebook fan page about, ooooo, a month ago. I may have missed the Facebook fan page boat but I appreciate you throwing me a life ring.

Tags: commentary, facebook, marketing, voice over entrance exam, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
1 Comment »

The reason I ask this question is that I just enjoyed a nice three day weekend, pretty much away from the computer. This AM, opening up my Google reader, I see over 900 blog posts and over fifty of them are in the voiceover category.

What is it we think we all have to say? And I include me in there too.

It’s a vicious circle, mind you. You should have a blog to be an active participant in social media (and SEO/SEM) and everybody has the right to share whatever they like. Equally true, we can all subscribe and unsubscribe to any blog at any time (except this blog, you can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave).

With all this content, what are we all contributing to? And how many people are not just reading (Feedburner +) but understanding? Are we communicating or are we just spewing? Because more important to social media than the tool (a blog) is the content…saying something of relevance.

A blog writer has to assume that their posts resonate with someone if they have even one subscriber (and by the way, not for nothing, I mean it when I say thank you for subscribing). But when I think about 900 posts over three days multiplied times content on radio, television, newspaper, Facebook et al multiplied times international content….my head literally spins a bit.

Today I will hit “mark all as read” on my Google Reader very often and likely erase some quality content that I cannot make room for. I must move on.

Am I simply oversubscribed or overwhelmed? Have these thoughts ever occurred to you? How do you deal with all this communication, all this noise? Do you tune in more or totally tune out? Any tricks you care to share?

Tags: blogs, commentary, facebook, google, internet, newspapers, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
7 Comments »

Editor’s Note: This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day, joining thousands of other bloggers to write about one topic for a single day. This year’s topic is climate change.

This is a tough topic for me because I have this feeling in my gut that many people will espouse the opinion that we are suffering from global warming, that it’s catastrophic and that buying the right car or light blub will fix all this.

I don’t think it’s catastrophic but I do think it’s an issue. Buying environmentally friendly cars or light bulbs sounds good I guess but I think our world needs to look at its emissions or better yet and more directly pollution which is a past blog action day topic.

To me, when you look at a city like Beijing or Rio de Janeiro or Los Angeles….actually look at them especially from higher ground looking down on those cities and actually see the pollution in the air…you know that such pollution has to have a negative effect on their climate and the world’s climate in addition to the obvious hazards to the health of its citizens.

Pollution, in my opinion, or more specifically efforts to control pollution will result in greater benefits in the short and long term for our cities, countries and planet.

Tags: blog action day, commentary by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Some software products developed for computers mandatory – an operating system like Windows lets your computer do stuff.

Other stuff isn’t mandatory but helpful and there’s stuff that’s sorta helpful but cool.

You’ll have to decide where the free download “Fences” falls for you. The premise is that Fences organizes and hides all the icons on your desktop until you want them. They’re invisible until you double click the desktop at which top they magically appear, organized in the format that you customize to your own needs.

Helpful? Maybe. Cool, oh I think so but then I’m still amazed when somebody pulls a quarter out of my ear…my standards aren’t always as high as others. I’m using it and I think its fun (and no, I get no spiff for the endorsement.)

What so you think? Mandatory, helpful or cool?

Tags: commentary, internet, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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