There’s been a fair amount of chatter on blogs I subscribe to and also featured on pages like digg and reddit about social networks. I’ve even addressed it briefly here.

The hottest brands at the epicenter of this cataclysmic topic are Facebook and Linked In. Should you be in just one, should you be in both, which is better?

I’d not given the debate much thought because I am in both. But in reading Christopher Penn’s blog today, he very fairly sums up each network’s value.

As I jokingly chided him in his comments section…if goes around calmly, accurately and succinctly summarizing internet debates like this, the internet will fall apart, we’ll have nothing left to debate!

Great post Chris, thanks!

Tags: advertising, blogs, commentary, internet, marketing, media, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
Comments Off on a debate without presidential candidates

I’ve always felt two of the toughest jobs in all of broadcasting were that of a news reporter/anchor and a play-by-play announcer/sportscaster.

While anchors and reports have their slow news days when they can phone it in, they always have to be prepared to report credible, accurately and succinctly on a breaking story as it happens. As soon as they “say it” the audience hears it. That’s pressure!

Play-by-play announcers are like news reporters on speed. They have to follow the action right in front of everyone and be immediately insightful in their analysis before the next play begins. And fans are never shy about their opinions.

One of the finest examples I ever witnessed of a news anchor/sports reporter was during the 1989 World Series and the earthquake that took place there. Al Michaels, who spent three years in San Francisco as an announcer for the San Francisco Giants, was nominated for an Emmy Award for news broadcasting after giving an eyewitness account of the aftermath of the earthquake at Candlestick Park. I think he should have won.

But as a pure sportscaster, someone who turned play-by-play into an art form, I don’t know if I like anybody as much as Vin Scully. I think he’s been the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers since baseball was created and he’s awesome at it.

This week, the Dodger’s play their arch rivals the San Francisco Giants…note worthy because it may be the location where Barry Bonds ties and or breaks Hank Aaron’s all time home run record.

The controversy regarding Bonds aside, for the purposes of this blog, Scully’s opportunity to possibly call the swing that ties or breaks the record is uniquely important because it was Scully who broadcast the homerun call when Aaron broke the record 33 years ago.

Kudos to the New York Times’ reporter Lee Jenkins for this timely and interesting article about Vin Scully

Tags: blogs, commentary, narrations, radio, tv, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I’m not sure how this all works….whether it’s God, the cosmos, Guardian Angels or if someone is following me around with a microphone. But it seems as soon as a topic of interest comes up in my life or I think I have an understanding of something, some how I gain new insight or information from a totally unconnected source. It’s weird; here’s what happened.

This weekend my wife (or as David Feherty refers to his wife in his columns “She Who Must Be Obeyed”) and I got to talking about Etch-A-Sketches. The knobby drawing device many of us had as kids (I think we were talking about toy options for our child). She mentioned what a useless toy that was because she could never draw anything worthwhile on it. I wholeheartedly agreed as I couldn’t draw much on it either. So we agreed we’d never buy one of those useless Etch-A-Sketches.

(Stand by for a lesson in social media. Count the connections and also see how new connections are made. It’s a fun game with no height requirement )

Fast forward to today’s early morning review of the Google Reader and I pop in on Mitch Joel’s blog on Podcamp Singapore (that guy does all the cool stuff). In Mitch’s article, he referenced a blog by Andy Nulman entitled POW! Right Between the Eyes (which is as great a title for a blog as I have come across…content to match.) On Andy’s blog he writes about an Etch-A-Sketch artist who really knows how to turn those knobs.

OK, so “She Who Must Be Obeyed” and I were not so much wrong, it turns out, just both terribly Etch-A-Sketch challenged. The talented artists who create on their red canvas are really terrific! We’re still going to hold off on getting the Etch-A-Sketch because while she has proven to be a great artist in the Crayola world, the baby is clearly at a genetic disadvantage on the Etch-A-Sketch front.

Tags: blogs, commentary, media, silliness by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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From the people that brought you the simply brilliant (and I use those two words specifically) “RSS” in Plain English” (which many of my IT friends are now sharing with their customers by way of easy explanation) and Wikis too comes a terrific new video from the CommonCraft folks on Social Networking web sites.

My thanks to my fellow social networker, marketer and professional speaker Mitch Joel for featuring this video on his Twist Image blog (to which I subscribe via RSS, by the way and you should too).

If you liked to join my network in Linked In, click here.

Tags: blogs, commentary, internet, marketing, media, technology, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
4 Comments »

The Armed Forces Network in Iraq recruited audio’connell Voice Over Talent to help with their July 4th weekend production of “The Firecracker 500” countdown. You may recall we were enlisted originally via the VO-BB for their Memorial Day countdown…so I guess we all did such a good job we got invited back.

Appreciating the enormous response from the voice talents of VO-BB but realizing such a large team was becoming unmanageable, AFN kept the team small using five voice talents (audio’connell’s DB, Diane Maggipinto, Bill Elder, Frank Frederick and Bob Souer) and two producers (Todd Ellis and your gentle author). Pairing up producers and voice talents made the production work flow smoother and it was great from my prospective cause it was one less job for me. I was paired with Deirdre and Frank.

It was during this process I had an idea (always a bad thing because my ideas are always complicated to execute and usually involve bothering others). Since the efforts in the Middle East are international in nature, why not craft a more international station promo (one that could be used all the time, not just during the “500”). So I chatted with Frank Frederick via Skype about my idea, he had some great ideas, and I put the call out on VO-BB for multi-lingual voice talents.

The response was overwhelming and amazing (thank you all) and final product sounds pretty good if I do say so myself (oh, the client liked it too).

Tags: blogs, commentary, media, radio, voice actors, voice casting, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I will grant you that Dansville, New York is no Miami but sometimes you go places, not so much for the city as for the people (and I’m not sure Dansville is big enough to be a city anyway).

But such was my reason for visiting Dansville today as it was sort of a half way point between my studio and where voice talent and fellow blogger Bob Souer was visiting while he was handling some impressive audio production duties for a project in Binghamton, NY.

We had lunch at the world renowned Sunrise Restaurant (its where all the beautiful people in Dansville meet. Their rinforzi il tortino et broodje was to die for! Simply heavenly!)

For any of you who have had the chance to speak with or meet Bob, I have the same boring story to report about him: charming guy, smart guy, wonderful voice over career insights and selfless to a fault. In short (and I am much shorter than he) Bob is the exact opposite of me.

A great treat for me to connect with a great talent and even better man.

Tags: blogs, commentary, peter o'connell, voice actors, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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