Listen to the health care bill...

If you've been paying attention to the news lately (and even if you haven't), then you know that the U.S. government want to get involved with health care. President Obama and his supporters want to reform health care as we know it in this country. In an address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama explained how health insurance reform will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance, coverage for those who don’t, and will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government.

From the perspective of a voice actor, this is a really great opportunity for those who have the time and resources to use their craft to better help those who want to understand what the health care bill actually is, but either can't or don't want to read through the entire bill in order to do so (and I can't say that I blame them). Within the voice over community, there have been loads of postings in the various VO boards, and I can't even get into my FaceBook account anymore without half a dozen invites from people who are either putting the bill into spoken word on their own, or are looking for people to help lend their talents and voices for an audio production regarding the health care bill. Regardless of your politics, this is a very cool event within the voice over community.

Best part, is that it's catching on. The Nashua Telegraph recently published an article regarding this movement within the voice over community, and Politico just put up their own article regarding this as well.

These articles, if nothing else, should serve as a reminder for the rest of us within the voice over community that what we do with our talents is much more than bringing words to life. The potential is there to really provide a conduit of information and education through the work we do, and when the opportunity comes our way, it's one which we ought to be very proud of.

I'm not going to get into the politics of this issue (frankly it's a loaded gun of discussion at the dinner table and has been added to the rather eclectic list of things my family doesn't discuss at the dinner table, including the Muppets, carnivals, horses, and John Tesh... you know, the really controversial stuff).

-G

Edit: and now a third article on the subject from the New York Times. A link to the article can be found here.

Giving credit where it's due.

You know, there are times when I am happy to be proven wrong. This is one of them.

I'm talking about Voice123.

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I'm a staunch supporter. Anyone who reads my comments on other blogs and forums knows that I do my best to be objective, but I call it like I see it whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. Unfortunately, most of what we hear when it comes to customer comments or reviews are negative. It's how people are, so I wanted to make sure that I said this before it was forgotten.

The other day, I was doing some maintenance to my V123 account, and had run into some issues with the interface (it happens). More importantly though, I was trying to get a link from their site to mine (hey, I have a link to their site... it's only fair =-), but the V123 rules stated that the link had to be directly made to the page that links to their site. Based on that rule, I couldn't link my profile on their site to where I needed it to be on my site (I have a separate section for that kind of stuff). So I follow the process and then follow up with an e-mail explaining the situation and asking that the referral back be put at my site's homepage.

Frankly, I wasn't expecting much, nor was I expecting a response. It's not exactly within the "letter" of the law when it comes to the posted guideline, and it's such a minor item amongst the multitude of customer requests they get every day that I figured it'd get lost in the maelstrom of stuff that technical support staff are normally subjected to (long before embarking on my career, I'd worked in technical support, which is often an overwhelming job).

24 hours later I was surprised to see an e-mail in my inbox that was different than the others normally received by V123. It was a response from customer support identifying my request, and letting me know that the proper links had been made, even complimenting me on the site design and layout. The Voice 123 response was professional, but took the time to be personal as well.

I know that to most, these things are minor. When it's related to your site and your business, it's not. Such is the nature of things with running a business. My thanks to Julian for making my experience a pleasant one.