While an idea that has come to my mind is not original in the blogosphere, it is original to my blog as I have never invited guest bloggers to participate here with their thoughts. While comments and discussion are more than welcome always, I just never organized guest blog posts before.

Now that’s changing.

Those of you involved with voice over may have opinions on our industry that you’d like to flesh out a bit further. But you may not want to blog regularly or even have your own blog…so use my soapbox for a moment. I may act like I never get off it but I am truly interested in your opinions.

Here is what I am proposing and inviting any of you to participate in on voxmarketising.com’s latest experiment

• I will present a topic for anyone to submit their blog post on within a set time frame (likely a week).
• Depending on the response (hopefully not crickets) I’ll post them with your by-line etc. NOTE: If I think your post has no merit or is poorly written…I won’t post it. Know that now and don’t be mad/sad with me later. My house, my rules (just practicing that line for when my kids get bigger)
• Please keep your length to about 500 words or less if possible.
• Please include a one to two line infomercial about you, your company name, web site and something interesting about yourself so that I can include that as an “author’s information” tag at the end of the post.
• Be polite etc., if you’re rude or slanderous (or even rude and slanderous etc.) I won’t publish you. (again, my house, my rules)
• Make sure you properly credit any sources, especially if you include any audio or video clips (obviously include their embedded code etc)
• As it’s my blog I reserve the right to append your post for grammar, length or any other reason as I see fit. No I don’t intend to screw with your intent and if you don’t like my changes you may ask me to take down your post and I will. (MYMR)

Now here’s a cool twist (or what I think is a cool twist). Again based on responses, what I hope to do is take a few of the authors on the topic, Skype them and do a round table recording where they can chat (debate?) the topic with points from their posts. The give and take would make a cool VMT interview for my podcast….with added exposure for the participants.

>>> My first topic?

If you were advising someone at any point in their VO career how to produce a terrific commercial voice over demo – what would you tell them are the top 5 elements that they need to include in that demo and why?

This idea may be a resounding success or a dismal failure but I believe you miss 100% of the shots you never take.

Email your posts to me at peter at audioconnell dot com and let’s enjoy the ride together! Thanks.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, internet, podcast, podcasting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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[audio:http://www.audioconnell.com/clientuploads/mp3/pcto09_promo_audiconnell.mp3]
Right click here to download this promo!

For those podcasters or bloggers who would be so inclined, please feel free to download and use my contribution to the “call to arms” (or promos, actually) for Podcamp Toronto 2009.

If you would be willing (you don’t have to) please tag the spot with the mention of the blog address (www.voxmarketising.com) the website address (www.audioconnell.com) or the audio tag “audio promo courtesy of audio’connell voice over talent – the perfect choice for an awesome voice!”

Thanks and we’ll see you there!

Tags: advertising, blogs, commentary, commercials, internet, marketing, pcto09, podcamptoronto, podcamptoronto2009, podcasting, public service announcement, social media, technology, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Everybody’s favorite voice coach Pat Fraley is in town this weekend courtesy of Toni Silveri’s All Coast Talent (of which I am proud and founding represented voice talent). Pat was in a couple of years ago to do a character voice seminar which I attended; he did an updated version today which I didn’t attend, though I will be in attendance on Sunday for his audio book class.

But three who did attend the character voice workshop today are some of my favorite folks from north of the border. I stopped by the seminar on their lunch break today to visit with them.

Elaine Singer and I first met at the first Podcamp Toronto a few years ago and I was very pleased to hear she caught wind of my announcement of the seminar from this blog and reserved her space. While not exclusive to her voice over talents, Elaine explained to me how she was looking to increase her Herbrew-based voice work. She enjoys it quite a bit and it occurs to me know I’ll have to have her send me her demo for the International Voice Talents page.

David and Stephanie Ciccarelli drove in from south of Toronto, London, Ontario to be exact, taking in Pat’s class and sharing some of their insight on the voice over world gained from their business, Voices.com. David and I spent a good bit of time reviewing some of the proposed changes they’ve alluded to on line at Voices.com, which I assume will result in the usual impassioned debate. From what he told me, I think they make sense but I’ll let David and Stephanie unveil it to the masses. Wonderful folks, the Ciccarellis.

I’ll post later how things went at the Fraley audio book class.

UPDATE: Here’s my Fraley review

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: announcers, blogs, commentary, international voice talents, peter o'connell, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog, voiceover meet-ups, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The first David refers to a search engine “David” named Cuil, who is looking to slay (or maybe even just stub the toe of) a “Goliath” named Google.

Now I understand from subsequent readings about the Cuil search engine, the name (pronounced “cool”…I think) is the Gaelic version of the word “cool”.

That’s a good start, said the Irishman.

Design wise, I like the look. Absolute contrast to the look of its competitor. Good differentiation. Black is the new black.

Usefulness wise, after going offline its first day because I guess it couldn’t handle the traffic and seeing that some of its searches on me and mine (oh stop it, you do the same thing, I’m just ballsy enough to admit it) were less than accurate, Cuil’s got some kinks to work out.

Let’s not squash this David yet and instead assume that its projectile has not yet hit its target but rather has been lobbed in its general direction.

The second David is of the voiceover kind and more and more of the internet, gadget, “boys and their electronic toys” kind. I speak of one David (Dave) Courvoisier.

He too is cuil in the kind of rich and confident voice, tall and good looking, respects the women and makes the women drool over him way which short, fat, middle aged guys like me find annoying because we were hoping that after high school and certainly after college women would stop ignoring us so we could at least speak to them to show them we respect them too and yet we still get ignored by women but we’re coming to terms with it after years of therapy so we’re cool too, don’t you think?

Besides Dave’s a good guy to boot so guys like him too. Just not, you know, in the, um, drooly way the women do.

But back to the techie part of his personality. If you’ve subscribed to his blog at all (and you should cause he writes almost every day) you’ll note his developing fondness for gadgets and the internet. And ever the newsman, did our boy ever scoop the big guns.

So step back Robert Scoble and back off Michael Arrington because you jokers did not introduce me to Cuil as is your Prime Directive (a little Borg-Star Trek reference there, geek alert, ah, never mind). You are the Goliaths that David of Las Vegas hath slayed.

Dave Courvoisier was the first to introduce me to Cuil on his blog. Direct hit, right to the center of the noggin, dropping those two techies right on their interneted petards.

Sadly, this prize comes only with bragging rights for Las Vegas Dave, not even a free breakfast at Denny’s. Come to think of, that’s really not much of a prize anyway.

Tags: blogs, commentary, internet, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Just finished going through the blog links on this blog (cast your eyes to the column on the right for a moment to see the list).

You’ll probably not notice that the list is shorter by two names of folks who’ve stopped publishing a blog or just haven’t written in a long, long, long (you get the idea) while. Not looking to punish anyone but if they’re not writing what’s the point of the link?

Writing a blog is tough and at least one voice talent who dropped off the blogosphere acknowledged that writing a blog just wasn’t for him. I say kudos…one should only keep a blog if they want to keep a blog…sure it’s a great optimization tool in many ways but if you’re not churning out content (and readable stuff at that) or worse don’t want to churn out content then spend you’re valuable time elsewhere.

So while we’re on the subject, please make sure you:

a. Have a link to this blog (and the audio’connell web site if you like)
b. Advise me if I am missing your voice over blog on my list (my apologizes)
c. Have freshened up your blog list too
d. Mow my lawn and wash my windows (just kidding, unless you really, you know, want to)

Tags: blogs, commentary, internet, search engine marketing, social media, social networking, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Vox Daily has a very insightful story regarding union voice over work, voice over agents, how the field of play has changed and where it might be going.

Always a good read, Stephanie’s post today was especially informative.

Thanks for reading.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

Tags: blogs, commentary, voice talent, voiceover advice, voiceover blog, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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