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 // 4 Comments »

My friend Stephanie from the voiceover service Voices.com sent me an email a few days ago about a new contest they are running through July 20, 2007. You can grab the full details on it here but as a brief summary for those who prefer such things, The 60 Second Pitch is based on the ever famous “elevator speech” in which you have from 30-60 seconds to tell/engage someone (with whom you would hypothetically be riding in an elevator) about your business…in this case, the voice over business.

It’s a great tool for voice talent who haven’t gone through this exercise and terrific for those who want to refine their speech. And the contest has over $4,000 in prizes.

I will NOT be participating.

Why?

I am not above contests or competitions, I think they are fun and can bring together some great creativity.

But I’ve got a business to run and I have sales goals to achieve and to be in the contest and win, one would have to share some of the secrets of one’s success, in this case the elevator speech.

I’ve got a pretty great one, one that has served me well and its worth a lot more than $4,000. Even if the prize money were higher (and there’s nothing wrong with $4K worth of stuff) I wouldn’t do it.

The voiceover community is a helpful and sharing community…we’re voice actors and the acting community has usually been a group that wants everyone to succeed. I do too and have helped many folks with my time, talent and treasure to improve their voice over talents.

But while I may teach some everything they know about voice over and running a business, I won’t teach them everything I know. It’s not practical and it doesn’t make good business sense. The contest is not bad for all….its just not right for me.

Tags: advertising, commentary, marketing, media, voice actors, voice casting, voiceover, voiceover advice, voices.com // Comments Off on voiceover show and tell

I received a completely unexpected and stunning honor/thank you gift in Tuesday’s mail. With no disrespect intended to those who’ve been so kind throughout my career to bestow honors on me (deserving of none and grateful for all), Tuesday’s recognition may have topped them all.

From the Armed Forces Network, based in Baghdad, Iraq (you may have read about some of the goings on there in your local paper) TSgt. Chris Eder (Kasbah to his listeners on Freedom Radio) sent a thank you note, a certificate of appreciation signed by all the Freedom Radio personalities and an AFN medallion (pictured above) for my efforts to support their station with voice imaging and production.

To me, I was so stunned (not nearly a powerful enough description) because these folks are in the middle of fighting a war (the radio station’s base incurred a direct hit not so long ago). They are living under very difficult conditions yet in the midst of all that crap (much of which most of us cannot fathom I am sure) they took time to say thank you to ME!

My initial thought was: are you kidding?!

Regardless of your position on the war and its consequences, the men and women in America’s Armed Forces all answered the call of their country and are executing the orders they are given on a daily basis. They sacrifice their families, their futures and yes their lives. So if they call me and say hey, could you help out our stations so that the troops can listen to more professional sounding radio…not yes but HELL YES I’m going to gladly help out (as did the score of professional voice talent who joined me in these voice imaging productions free of charge). I do not have their courage; I am not as selfless as they are. But I have a voice.

Darkness has come to my neighborhood as I write this blog during the 2007 edition of July 4th and with that darkness has come the familiar popping and cracking of fireworks from citizens celebrating the independence of the United States of America 231 years ago. Not only in Iraq tonight (or tomorrow) but in locales around the world, United States military personnel may hear those same popping and cracking sounds…but it is live ammunition, not a Roman candle firework. I’ve not the talent of Francis Scott Key but he is on my mind this evening:

“And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

No branch of the United States Armed Forces anywhere in the world needs to thank me for my meager efforts…but we all need to thank them for defending us everyday, everywhere. Thank you!

Tags: commentary, peter o'connell, radio, voiceover // Comments Off on stunning voiceover recognition

While on business for the past week in Boston, I had the opportunity to visit with my voice over colleagues Deirdre Cooper and Mary McKitrick who live in the area. “Area” is a vague term because both were at least 90 minutes away from my location near Boston Harbor.

But bless them both, they took the time to travel and have dinner with me in the city and boy did we have a grand time. I’ve known them both “virtually” for some time on the VO-BB and through some voice projects that we’ve collaborated on.

It is said you can’t really know someone until you’ve spent some time with them and these two voice actors are great ladies in addition to being amazing voice talents. While one might imagine conversation coming easily to people who talk for a living, our conversations were the very definition of effortless, full of both professional insight and shared challenges. Social networking at its finest.

There is no 12-step program for voice over talents because we can call our shared addiction a profession, but it’s nice to be able to discuss similar trials and tribulations with people with whom you can both commiserate with and learn from. And I’m not sure who was the first to pull out the pictures of the family first (usually I’m guilty on that count) it was very funny to learn again how parenting challenges are universal.

My sincere thanks to them for taking the time to become my friends in addition to my colleagues and making Boston an even more hospitable place.

Tags: character voices, commentary, peter o'connell, silliness, voice actors, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups // 10 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 // 3 Comments »

TV was at one time considered the penultimate time-waster. The “boob-tube” was where one went to zone out (translation/clarification: for people who were too much of a boob to read a book or be active….a modern colloquialism has changed the term “boob” to mean something not intended here).

It stands to reason, then, that as TV loses its strangle hold on viewers, the main culprit leading people away from television would itself create its own special time waster (no, no…the internet itself is not a time waster). The internet’s relatively new and certainly more popular eye candy is called Stumble Upon .

Based on votes, unique and popular web content (sites, particular pages etc) in fields of interest chosen by you (the viewer) will pop up on your screen with the press of a button you have installed on your browser’s tool bar.

It is a fascinating look at some amazing content that, unless you spend a lot of time surfing specifically for such things, you simply won’t come across anywhere else.

Purely as research (ahem) I have compiled a few sites I found on Stumble Upon that interested me. I hope you will too.

By the way, as you’ll notice in the icons posted beneath this story, you can vote for this blog story as worthy of “Stumble Upon” by clicking on the SU logo.

Enjoy!

25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips

Five Lesson About How To Treat People

Buddy Networking

Computer Enhancers

The History of Branding

Telling Time in A Different Way

The Art of Schmoozing

South Park Create A Character

Another Cool Way To Tell Time

The Pattern Game

Learning Sign Language

Storms

Type Tester (picking the right font for your web site)

The Blue Ball Maze (Note: avoid this if you are on some mind altering drug)

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, media, silliness, tv // 2 Comments »