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audio’connell in toronto

Voice Over Talents Peter K. O'Connell, Jodi Krangle and Patrick Sweeney

On an extremely last minute trip to Toronto, I was so fortunate to catch lunch with two voice over greats based in my favorite city in the world.

Both Jodi Krangle and Patrick Sweeney were at Faffcon but I’ve known both long before then and I was so lucky that they had time in their schedules to meet with me. We covered everything from the Great Voices.com Experiment, to Faffcon to so much terrific voice over minutiae it would make your head spin.

As usual, mostly I wouldn’t shut up but they are both so wonderful to hang out with and learn from, I just wanted the lunch to go on and on. My sincere thanks to both of them and I hope I get to go again soon to meet up with them and so many other great voice over friends in TO (and thanks Patrick for the shirt which I love!).

just to see…

This is a copy of a recent audio’connell Voice Over Talent print ad I designed for an association newsletter I had space in – whaddya think, clean and crisp or too artsy with no real message?

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the great voices.com experiment – cancelled

Great Voices.com Experiment Cancelled

My choice and my decision, with no external pressure put upon me.

Why?

A reasonable question for the many who had been following this journey.

In my mind and in my heart, I thought this was an unbiased, even handed, thoughtful way to look at a voiceover service that I had once used, decided against using for many reasons a long time ago and then recently reconsidered following a special offer email from Voices.com.

I thought ‘maybe I should rethink this and try it again.’ Things can change and improve and I hadn’t recently used the system (Pay to Play) that I have been critical of…take a look with fresh eyes, I decided.

I wasn’t going to write diatribe against Voices.com nor would it be a commercial for them – it would be my experience as I went through it with the resultant thoughts and feelings I encountered.

I also knew it would be interesting blog reading and provoke discussion (one of the hoped for results of any blog). I monitored all of that so that comments were not antagonistic or personally insulting. None were and neither was my content.

One in-depth comment during this series, that I did not agree with, gave me pause this weekend. In brief summary, it was accused that the series and the comments directly and indirectly attacked Stephanie of Voices.com. That accusation was and is flat out wrong.

I’d tried to make it exceedingly clear that I considered Stephanie and her husband David my friends and that in my past criticism of the Voices.com and their competitors, my problem has been with the P2P business model only.

Further, (also stated) this experiment was meant to possibly prove me wrong; I committed to trying the new Voices.com with an open mind – maybe I could increase my voiceover revenue by booking business on Voices.com. (Note: I’ve also stopped auditioning on the site as well – the conceptual fun of it all is over for me.)

But to be sure this commentator was wrong, I sent an email to Stephanie last night explaining my point and making sure that we are all good.

We were not.

While noting that she fully understood that nothing was written with the intention to hurt or misrepresent anyone or anything, the sum of the series was (using my words here) a bit unpleasant for Voices.com.

I made an offer in that same email that if this series caused them any problems, let me know and it would be gone…poof!

She took me up on my offer and I am glad to comply.

Poof!

Most days I’m not sure what this blog is or what it is supposed to be about but I know absolutely what it is not supposed to be: hurtful. If anything in this series resulted in hurt, stress or agitatation for anybody, I’m sorry about that – it truly wasn’t the intent of the posts. I can be a fairly direct person so if that negativity was my true intent, I promise I could have done a much more effective job.

But I don’t want to be that kind of person. Yes, I have opinions, yes I can and will continue to offer them here (and some of those opinions may rankle David and Stephanie) but the format of a series of posts, as this was, obviously had a kind of “pile on” effect that in no way intended. Communication, I often remind people, is not so much about the transmission as it is about the reception.

I want to reiterate that at no time did anyone at Voices.com reach out to me with a complaint, a whine or even a whimper. I brought the issue to them, I made the offer and I killed the series.

Also worth noting, neither Voices.com nor anyone affiliated with it can have any impact on my business – so I’d no need to worry about repercussions from them had I completed the series. I could have easily carried on here through the end, complete with a wrap up post.

But my company has a code of conduct and I believe in it (hell, I wrote it, I better believe in it). And in this case, after I realized I’d unintentionally hurt some friends, finding the delete button wasn’t a problem at all.

Thanks to all who followed the series and who commented. Your intentions were as pure as mine and your contributions were sincerely appreciated for just that reason.

no shaving, with an excuse

Look, most men (and some women I would guess) look for an excuse not to shave.

Well fellas, in the month of November, we got a whopper!

It’s a fund raiser called Movember and the concept is to raise funds and awareness for Prostate Cancer and other male Cancers all month long.

The facial hair is to create awareness and spur friendly donations for the cause. Cancer has hit my family and I’m sure it has hit yours too.

It also gives men a valid, community based reason not to shave starting November 1st. Done! 🙂

My friend Jeff Kafer put out a request to start a team on the VO-BB and now a bunch of us are on there.

Here is my request to my blog readers: Please donate $5.00 to my effort (if you want to do more or less -that’s cool too).

Here is my page to donate on and yes I will post pictures.

Now the rules say I have to grow a mustache and that’s all I am supposed to grow.

But mustaches on me look fugly (if you ask Mrs. audio’connell, she says ANY facial hair on me is fugly). And besides, I’m not much on rules, so I will be growing the goatee again which most people have seen so it will be less annoying. Some folks said they liked it but I think they were being polite. That’s OK 🙂

Again, if you can help, I’d be appreciative. Thanks.

happy anniversary cbs eye logo

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I have been sooo darn remiss in my logo blog posts. I know most folks here like my voice over posts but I have aligned yet varied interests…logos being a weird obession of this guy who can’t draw a straight line.

So earlier this week, the CBS Television Network celebrated the 60th Anniversary of their “Eye” logo – with their wordmark, its a logo I have always liked.

Here is a nice piece by CBS News’ Charles Osgood on the history of this world famous icon.

peter is live tonight on east west audio body shop

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Dan Lenard and George Whittam have invited me as their guest tonight on East West Audio Body Shop which airs via USTREAM at 9:00 pm ET and then is available on their EWABS web site.

I hope you can join us.