Hey wait a minute.

Didn’t you just post this blog a couple of days ago?

“One of these things is not like the other…”

Voice Talents Peter K O'Connell and Natalie Stanfield Thomas

There are many great reasons to go to Faffcon.

The reason I will expound on today is that if you go to Faffcon, you may meet neighbors you never knew you had.

I had known of Natalie Stanfield Thomas via the internet and social media but had not met her and learned about her career until we met at Faffcon and became fast friends.

She lives near Bath, NY which is only about two hours away from my studio and part of a route I’ve been driving for years to see my in-laws near the NY/PA border.

In addition to her long career as a radio talent and voice over talent, she and her husband Ed (who also joined us for our lunch – a very nice fellow as you might expect) work with the Family Life Network. FLN has an impressive network of stations.

I was really appreciative that Natalie and Ed could take time out of their day to visit with me and talk shop.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been asked to serve as the announcer for the Buffalo Niagara Sales and Marketing Executives’ Elite Sales and Marketing Awards.

I’m a past President of the association.

Last year I had to travel on the show day so I pre-recorded the intros but this year I was live (or as live as I get) and here’s what it looked like announcing to a room of about 200+ of my closest friends

Congrats to all the winners.

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

There are probably many reason someone could hate me but beauty ain’t a sticking point for folks with decent vision. Nonetheless, YOU aren’t on the cover (a COLOR cover no less) of an association’s roster this year, are you?!

Well maybe you are but don’t ruin my diva moment – I AM on the cover – twice – and I think at this point the Roster editor has realized his or her mistake and his hiding in her room (mixed pronouns be darned) until the next edition comes out.

And if you’re eyes are bleeding after having seen me on the cover, well I am sorry about that.

I learned one thing about the internet early on – unless you are a savant at making viral videos, you had better be good at promoting yourself cause as much as they might like you, others will never promote you as well as you can promote yourself.

Well, I must change my opinion of that, having now been distilled through the Voices.com PR machine. Others, it turns out, can promote you as well as you can promote yourself…in this case, better.

Hubris or ego or savvy marketer (I’ve been accused of all three), I was never really comfortable with having to directly promote myself as much as the internet dictated I would have to, if I was to help my business. I did it (and do it) strictly because it does help my presence on the web – period. But it is awkward to do it – that’s truly how it feels to me. I offer that as background.

So fast forward to recent times, having been hounded (maybe just “asked” a number of times) for a few years by Stephanie Ciccarelli at Voices.com to do a podcast for them, I sent her “The First 15 Seconds” (about voice talents should approach their voice over auditions) before Christmas, 2010. Stephanie published my podcast the first week of January, 2011.

Then their public relations flood gates opened. It was torrential and impressive.

First Voices.com was kind enough to say in their release “Peter K. O’Connell is one of North America’s top voice over coaches and voice talents.”

As God as my witness, I never, ever recall claiming that in any of the stuff I’ve written about my work ever (send me a document I wrote if you can prove otherwise and I’ll admit my mistake…cause I don’t think I did so). I think Voices.com wrote that on their own (thank you for your kind words, folks). I’m also thinking all the really good voice over teachers are pretty pissed at me right now for soiling their talent pool…but I didn’t say that, Voices.com did.

Then I was sorting through some of my normal Google Alerts to see what if anyone is saying about me, my business or my industry. There I realized that Voices.com flushed their press release about my podcast through every public relations pipe the web has!

Truly, I thought I had this web promo thing worked out but now I see I am a pathetic rookie compared to these crazy (in a good way) Canadians (I can say that because I am part Canadian, which explains my affinity for Tim Horton’s donuts).

So thanks to Stephanie and her team for the plugs and good on them for their web marketing machine. If you’re going to go – go all out or go home!

September is National Voice Over Month

Unfortunately for my pal Dave Courvoisier, he answered the phone last week.

I happened to be on the other end because I had an idea which involved his baby – National Voiceover Month. It struck me that with all the things that went on in the voice over world in September, maybe a video should be created to at least attempt to capture the sense of the month.

That was the entire sum of the idea and Dave was all for it. He helped me gather the pictures and I slapped this puppy together.

My thanks to everyone who provided pictures and my apologies if we somehow omitted your event. No slight was intended.

Voice Over Talents who shared their skills in the videos opening montage include Doug Turkel, Peter K. O’Connell, Mike Coon, Bobbin Beam, Dave Courvoisier, Diane Maggipinto, Stefania Lintonbon, Cira Larkin, Scott Nilsen, Liz de Nesnera and Adam Behr.

Some of the activities included “That’s Voiceover!” in New York City; Faffcon – The Voiceover Unconference held in Portland, OR; Voices of Vision in Toronto, Ontario Canada; Bob Bergen’s Voiceover Workshop held in Chicago, IL; the Marice Tobias Voiceover Workshop held in Las Vegas, NV; Bettye Zoller’s Voiceover Workshop held in Dallas, TX; and the Western New York Voice Over Meet-up held in Buffalo, NY.

Many thanks to all of you who so kindly vote, opined and other wise sounded off on the correct choice for my new eye glasses in a blog post a while back.

I thought it a silly, fun idea for a blog post and was very thrilled to see such interest.

Clearly in the voting the gray frames were a HUGE fan favorite.

And yet I was a fan of the black frames. I just thought I could see better out of them.

So the winner of the eyeglass vote was….

Neither of them.

Turns out that the eyeglass place that I was going to buy these frames from would NOT accept my insurance so they expected me to shell out over $500 free and clear for these specs. Since I have eyeglass coverage with my insurance – that seemed kinda stupid. Plus I’d have to wait a week to get them because I wanted anti-glare on the lenses (and of course pay more for that too).

On the OTHER hand, it turns out Lenscrafters IS included in my insurance plan (saving me about 40%) and they could get me my glasses in 24 hours.

So I went simple, basic and practical – everything the other glasses weren’t. Silver metal frames (oh, excuse me, titanium). The selection wasn’t as nice as the other place but I decided that I am at a time in my life where its more enjoyable to spend money like that on my family than on me or better yet save that money for later. Must have been a passing case of vanity…shame on me.

So when you see me out with my specs, for better or for worse, this is what you’ll see.

Here’s the thing – if you get Google Alerts or have an “ego search” in your blog reader, sometimes you can come across some very unique, odd, upsetting and just weird posts associated with your search.

I get lots of news from Ireland (as you might expect with my last name) including a bizarre murder story there (very sad) and tons of rugby information.

Another more recent example, the movie and TV actor Jerry O’Connell (no relation) is naked in a new movie called Piranha 3D (the title of which leads me to ask “were there so many unanswered questions in the first two movie installments, there needed to be a third? j/k)

I know this because for the past several days I have been getting pings that highlight “o’connell” (which is one of my search terms) followed closely in these announcements by the word “naked” (which again to be clear is NOT one of my search terms).

Evidently in this movie, Jerry O’Connell’s character’s man bits are shown getting eaten by a piranha. Which one of those images would you like erased from your brain first?

Except the man bits are not Jerry O’Connell’s but some CGI handy work. I know that won’t fully help with the erasure but oh well.

I have seen Jerry O’Connell in interviews and he seems like a very affable guy and I saw his lovely wife in an interview/parody on swimsuit models years ago in which she showed terrific comedic timing. So my thought is I’m fortunate to share some search with him as he doesn’t seem as wacked out as some of his peers may appear to be.

But my other thought is I wonder if he checks his searches and wonders who or what the heck audio’connell is? Probably not.

What about you…do get seaches back about famous people with your name?

Two frame styles for Peter's new glasses - which one do you prefer?

I lost my glasses.

They’re gone and it’s sad but life goes on.

But I need a new pair.

These are two popular choices (no I don’t have the pictures of me wearing them even though they took pictures…dunno where they out them, probably deleted it.

Any way, you vote:

A) The BLACK pair

B) The SILVER pair

C) What ARE you thinking, you’d look awful in both

Voting is now open, comment below please.

UPDATE: Due to popular demand: here are the pictures of me wearing the glasses (the pictures are a bit odd and someday I’ll tell the story of why but for now – here we go.

OK, so sometimes I forget to hit the edit switch when I come up with an idea that’s going to take a lot of time and effort to put together (effort I got, time not so much). Such was the case when Amy Snively of voice over fame and Faffcon lead sled dog said she needed help and ideas to promote Faffcon.

Well though it took longer than it should have the promo video for the event is done and it is great fun as well as informative only because of the following very talented reasons:

Philip Banks
Mandy Nelson
Todd Ellis
Bruce Miles
Pam Tierney
Dave Courvoisier
Roger Tremaine
Bob Souer

They are my peers and my friends and this video (and this conference) would be a whole lot of nothing with out them.

I am grateful for each of you.