Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Voice123 News: Inauguration & Forums

In the spirit of the 2009 Presidential Inauguration in the US, we share with you one more time the forum thread from The Political Impersonation Contest, held on Voice123 last fall. Over the next four years, we hope that all of them find work using their creative impersonations and styles.

On the subject, this week, the founders of Voice123 and myself made a somewhat last minute, late night decision to drive from New York City down to Washington D.C., which we posted about here. We hope you can take a look. It was amazing to be there.

Voice123 is always looking for ideas to write about, so that we may assist those who wish to post jobs for voice talents, and help voice talents develop their voice over careers. If you are posting a job, a coach helping out your students, and/or a voice talent, with something you wish to contribute that will be a positive influence on the voice industry, please post a thread about it and tell us!

Thank you always!

Voice123 - The Voice Marketplace
Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

2009 Updates at Voice123

Voice123 has some updates to announce for 2009!

  • Our Voice123 System Training is starting up again this week:
    We took a break over the holidays to work on some issues. If you ever have any questions about Voice123 and SmartCast works, I encourage you to take the time to attend the training.

  • The Voice123 Premium Forums are very busy:
    The Voice123 Premium Forums include very helpful tools to get questions answered, find coaches, or simply relay news and make connections. We hope you can stop by and post a thread!

  • Position Change:
    As of January 1st 2009, my position at Voice123 officially changed to Public Relations Manager, in addition to working in QA. If you have any recommendations, comments, or ideas, please shoot me an email, or write to me on the forums! I would love to hear from you, and possibly speak with you in the future!

  • Product Development:
    We are working on several developments, that we will be announcing over the coming months. I hope you will keep an eye out, and we will keep you in the loop via email, blog, and forums!
We thank you for being a part of Voice123, and look forward to a busy 2009!

Voice123 - The Voice Marketplace
Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Voice123's Holiday Season

The most difficult part about being in the voice industry during the holiday season is that it works on an opposite time-schedule from most jobs. Given the trying times facing everyone today, Voice123 decided it would be best to work through the holiday season to make sure we were here to handle job opportunities, auditions, and inquiries. Getting them processed quickly would attract more work, and be helpful to those auditioning. Personally, it is hard to forget that feeling of having recording equipment just sitting there, then being expected not to work because of the holidays, knowing all too well that my next paycheck could be out there somewhere.

I know there is no greater feeling in the world than to be 'a working voice over talent.' I also promised myself that if given the opportunity to make a change, I would make it a point to see that no one else would experience a downtime in being able to work. However, there is an international demand for using Voice123 and I could not do something like this alone.

This is why I am very happy and lucky to be a part of the Voice123 team. Over the holidays, our staff, including Tania Isabel Zapata, who co-founded Voice123, and Carmen Texeira (a new proud mom on December 19th, 2008) came back at their own will, and we were all very excited to work the extra hours and keep Voice123 going, both for those who needed to work, and for those who needed voice talent. We enjoyed the holidays together too!

We all made the best of it as a team by keeping in contact with each other at all times via laptop, cell phone, computer, Skype, etc. even when on vacation in various parts of the world or at our own family gatherings. We were online at midnight to say Happy New Year to each other! Some can say this was a bit excessive, but it was still a great deal of fun, and users of Voice123 were equally pleased to see we were here.

From this end of the operation at Voice123, we always feel our greater responsibility to the general public is to make sure we are here for our users to make sure they can do what they love, whether a talent or a seeker.

As a result, we had over 680 SmartCast jobs posted on Voice123 for the month of December 2008, up from 569 posted in December 2007. We also watched as talents auditioned well into the night as late as 3AM EST, and we had a good time listening and passing auditions to international clients.

We sincerely hope that in doing this many more people were able to book work and post jobs through Voice123. We had a wonderful time this holiday season, we thank you for being there, and we were glad to be here for all of you. There truly is no greater feeling in the world than giving back to an industry you love to work in.

We wish you a Happy 2009, and look forward to a positive future!


Voice123 - The Voice Marketplace
Steven Lowell
Public Relations Manager
My Blog