Conference Sneak Peek: MAVO 2022 - Mid-Atlantic Voice Over

MAVO, the Mid-Atlantic Voice Over conference is coming up Friday, November 11th through Sunday, November 13th, at the Westin Dulles in the Washington, D.C. area. MAVO was my first conference, and it's very special to me. And so today we're going to do a little preview of MAVO 2022, the faces you can expect to see what you can expect to hear, why MAVO is different than certainly the 800-pound gorilla conferences in our business and what makes it special.

And to tell us about all that is the chief executive president, owner and executive producer of MAVO, Val Kelly. Val how are ya? It's so great to see you.

VAL: I'm doing great. How are you?

PAUL: You know what? I am so jazzed up for this conference this year. I don't know if you know this, but MAVO was the first conference I ever did. So it's very special to me. And I'm very happy to have you on to talk about what's going on this year. And I think for a lot of folks, MAVO is a bit of a boutique or regional conference as opposed to the the 800-pound gorillas the, you know, the VOAtlantas, the VO Norths, and the, you know, OneVoices. Talk about that difference, to start, what is the the big difference that people are going to find in MAVO generally and then maybe specifically this year?

VAL: Yeah. I mean, so MAVO is really special because I designed it to be a boutique sized event. And so I went into it with the intent of never having, you know, three or 500 people. That's not my goal.

So generally speaking, the difference is that it's going to be much smaller and you're going to feel a much more kind of family like atmosphere in the sense that you really get to have a chance to talk with everyone, not just in the sessions, working closely with the guest speakers, but also when you're at lunch in the hallway at the bar, like wherever, everyone is just so friendly and it's really just an immersive type of weekend where you're spending time essentially with like, your best voiceover friends. And if they weren't your friends before, they will be by the end of the weekend.

PAUL: Yeah, that's the great thing about conferences in general, but especially MAVO, because, you know, sometimes at the big conferences, you get you get overwhelmed, right? It's just a zoo. And I think especially for newer folks, if you're going to if you're going to pick a good for his conference, that's why I really, really was lucky that my first one was MAVO.

VAL: And then I think more specifically for this year in particular for 2022, I designed this year with the intent of having each session be very specialized and performance based and interactive, because I think as a voice actor myself, it's so important when I go to a conference, I think it's great to go and sit and listen to someone speak, right.

And you get to ask your questions at the end. Maybe if they choose you, right? But I wanted to give people a chance to get in there and dive deeper into those skills that they're really trying to get better at. Right. So say, for example, I just take animation because that's my love, right? So so you're trying to get further into the animation world and you don't really know how to do it and maybe you're just exploring or maybe you're already in it, but you need some new skills.

Maybe you're not booking as much as you want to when you can't figure out why. This is your opportunity to train with those people and go like, okay, I get it. This is why I haven't been booking because I needed these skills that I didn't have before, that I had, you know, a mastery session with Jason Linere-White or whoever, and worked on my, you know, video game like action sound skills and whatever.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's just a chance to dive really deep into a topic with those mastery sessions, which are the the first new thing that we're doing this year. Now, there are similarities, obviously. There's always some type of crossover with other events where the Atlanta you have X sessions, it's it's the same idea essentially. But, you know, we keep the classes really small.

We keep them to 12 people. And we really chose like the people that I felt were the best qualified to teach a longer session and really dove very deep into a topic. Keep the session small, give people a chance to perform and just come out of it going like, Oh my gosh, you want to keep, you know, setting with this person?

Or I want to keep exploring this genre that maybe I didn't know that I wanted to do before, or I developed new skills. And then the breakout sessions as well are 90 minutes. So those are are really specialized type of scenario as well. We keep those to 12 people also, which is different from other conferences that don't keep the breakout sessions as small.

I think what happens sometimes is that you go to a session and there there's not a separate sign up and you end up with 50 people in there. And then you listen to the person talk for 45 minutes and then you get to ask your questions and then you wait in line for 20 minutes to talk to the guest speaker after.

And you may or may not be able to. And I mean, there's there's good and you know, there's there's a positive side to everything, of course. But I really wanted to keep it specialized. If you're in a session, if you're in a breakout session for 90 minutes with 12 people, right. You're going to get to have the chance to work with that coach individually on a one on one basis.

And, you know, I mean, breakout sessions are only $35 as an add on fee. So it's like, okay, if your budget is limited, which is totally fine, obviously conferences are expensive. They're expensive to run, they're expensive to go to. You know, it's just the nature of the world that we live in right now. But if you're like, okay, I can only do two breakout sessions, well, that's an impossible choice of how you're going to choose which ones to go to.

But, you know, make smart choices. Like if if animation is your thing, go to the animation ones. You know, we have Ellie Rae, we have Jason Linear Way, we have so many people, you know, that are great at that. If your your thing is the business side of things, go to Tom Dheere sessions. I mean, he's absolutely wonderful.

He has helped me so much on the business side of VoiceOver.

PAUL: Yes, he is.

VAL: And so I think going to those and kind of planning out your weekend in a way that is smart for your own individual career, it's a great thing to do. But also planning out your weekend is something I always advise people to do before they go to an event like this. Because, yes, Marvel is smaller.

Like you're not going to feel overwhelmed. You might feel overwhelmed at your first conference because you are at a conference and there's, you know, 100 people. But you're not going to feel overwhelmed in the sense that there's 800 people. You know, it's a big, big difference. And so you're going to see a long hallway. You're going to see people in the hallway, you're going to see people in the elevator.

You get to see people. It's not that big of a venue. So you're going to run into people all over the place and you really just get immersed with, you know, having the time to talk to each other and things like that. And so I always tell people, plan out your weekend, try to figure out what your goals are as you go into it.

Try to figure out, you know, what's my strategy? What do I want to get out of this? Am I going into it because I want to hone my skills in that genre and then going into it because I want to learn new skills in the genre? Am I going into it just to like be there and network? And all those reasons are fine.

But yeah, I mean, it's, it's just a great event. I mean, it can't, I mean, I know it's my event, so of course I'm going to say good things about it, but I've learned a lot over the years. This is our seventh conference. And so, you know, from starting out in 2014 with 28 people, it's grown a lot.

We'll probably have about 120 this year total, including guests. So it's you know, it's where I want it to be as far as the numbers go. And I think the people are really going to feel that in the very personalized, high end, you know, upper level quality that we offer the swag bags, the lunches and all the stuff that we try to do to make people just have a better experience.

PAUL: And you mentioned you started in 2014, for people that don't that have never heard of MAVO because it is a little bit smaller, a little bit more regional. Talk a little bit about the history. You said you started in '14 with 28 people and I know you were every year for a while and then you went to every other year for a while.

And of course, COVID hit, which I don't know how you survived that, but if you could just give me the Reader's Digest condensed version of, you know, a little bit of the history of MAVO. So folks know.

VAL: Yeah, definitely. So in 2014, I decided to start the company just because I was in the voice acting industry seriously from 2011, although I started in 1999 and I there were a lot of years in between the condensed version, a lot of years in between where I did a demo to fast, didn't know what to do with it.

It sat on the shelf. And then 2011, after my second daughter was born, I was like, I can't give up on this. This is what I want to do with my life, right? So 2014, after being in and booking, you know, some short audiobooks and some e-learning and some children's apps and things like that in French and English.

I just thought, you know, where either you have to go to L.A. or New York to really get the training that you really want to have from these bigger, you know, coaches. And I was like, We're missing something in this area Virginia, Maryland, DC, this kind of tri-state area is such a good place to offer something like that because there are so many voice actors in this area.

And so I was like, Well, I think I'm just going to start my own company. And my husband was like, okay. And I don't think he thought it was serious, but I'm a real go getter. So when I come up with an idea and I talk about it and I talked about it with friends that weren't in the industry at all, and they were like, Yeah, you should totally do it.

I'm like, Great, okay, let me start my own company. I had to figure out how to do it. I had to do everything from scratch. There were a lot of conversations with Gerald Griffith and a lot of conversations with him were like, Maybe you should just start a meet up group, you know? And I was like, Nah, I'm going to start my own conference.

And he's like, okay, all right. And I just remember because he was he was really quite a mentor to me in those early years, especially because he was doing voiceover Atlanta. And he was really very helpful in those early years when I was just kind of trying to claw my way to the top and figure out what I was doing.

And so yeah, we started out with 28 and in 2015 we probably doubled in size. We had about 50 something and then 2016 was even bigger. We probably had 75. It grew by like, you know, it like grew by about 25 each time, you know. And yeah, I mean, fast forward to 2018, we skipped 2017 because I was like, oh, after 2016, I was pope.

So for older ones I needed a break. And 2017 was a tough year for me personally. So I so it was good that I took a break. And then 2018 we were back and it was more amazing than ever. And then 2019 we skipped. And the plan at that point was to go to every other year because I was really like, okay, I can't, I don't know if I can do this every year.

It's a lot of work and it's just me and, you know, all this stuff. And I have a family and I teach French full time and I and you know, mom and it's it's crazy. It's a lot of stuff. And also trying to keep my own voice acting career going, you know. So, but then we were going to plan for 2020.

Well, then COVID hit, so then we had to go to an online format. So 2020 was like epic. We had 165 people at 2020, which was absolutely crazy for an online our first online event ever. And it was very successful. Huge, huge success. So 2020 was a great year in the sense that, you know, doing an online event really worked for us with COVID happening.

But then 2021, if I had to go back, I probably should have skipped it because it was it was online and it was a great event, but it was, you know, people were zoomed out at that point. And so the attendance was really like we had like 80 at 2021. So it was there's no rhyme or reason to it, you know, it's just like you you have all these people and then you have like hardly, you know, half the amount.

And so I couldn't figure out what was happening. But really what was happening was the universe was saying you should have skipped this year. And then just done an in-person one, you know, the next year. But, you know, lessons learned in business, you know, it's like you've got a it's trial and error type of scenario. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of the history of it.

Now we're, you know, back 2022 in-person, it's our first event since 2018 in-person and we have an outstanding lineup of 21 guest speakers and it's just going to be fantastic.

PAUL: So let's hit the highlights of 2022, right? And it all starts with the keynote speaker, Mark Graue.

VAL: Yeah, I mean, Mark is absolutely fantastic. He is doing a breakout session on Friday which is sold out already, and that's going to be basically on video games and the video game industry and his experience with that and it'll be really hands on and performance based. So the people, the 12 people that got into that are really lucky dogs because that's that's kind of an epic situation to get to train with Mark like that.

And then he's also doing the keynote address, which will be based on our theme, which is always get inspired. And I think that Mark is one of the most inspiring people in the industry because he really has so much experience and so much knowledge, not just of video games and animation, but of, you know, commercials and promos. And and, you know, he has his own studio in Burbank.

And then, you know, now he's in Florida as well. So he's he's bicoastal. And so it's really going to be fantastic to have him there and he's going to be also available all weekend. So even though he's only doing a breakout and the keynote, he's also going to be around other sessions and he'll be, you know, having lunch with you guys and everything.

And so it's going to be a really nice experience to have him there in person.

PAUL: Yes, it will. And I don't think there's any significant voice actor of the last, what, 30 years that hasn't worked with Mark or in his studio.

VAL: Yeah, right.

PAUL: So that's a huge, you know, knowledge base to bring to the conference and to the keynote. Other notable speakers, of course, our friend and colleague J. Michael Collins, we just saw him recently at Uncle Roy's.

VAL: Yeah, J. Michael's going to be giving a political talk for his general sessions, and he'll talk about politics in voiceover. And, you know, doing political voiceover in particular, you know, how to choose. You know what side to be on. And if you want to do both sides and he'll talk about the ins and outs of that whole genre of voiceover.

So that'll be really exciting. And you know, J Michael is a really support and has been a really supportive colleague in the industry over the years, even though he's, you know, taking over voice over Atlanta and he's running his own staff, he's still is really been very supportive of my event and I'm so appreciative and grateful of him for that.

So yeah, it will be.

PAUL: Yeah. And I think and you mentioned Gerald earlier too, and J. Michael and Gerald, I think are the two, two of the greatest examples of you know, and I say this all the time, we're not competitors, we're colleagues, we're collaborators. Right. Right. And yes, we all have our own mouths to feed. Sure. But when you when you talk about the generosity of people like Gerald Griffith and J. Michael Collins and, you know, all the folks that come together to put these events on, it really is. It's a community in the in the truest sense of the word. So I couldn't agree with you more there. Talk about some of the other notable speakers that are going to be with us at the Westin Delles, in the Westin Dulles, in the D.C. area, rather.

VAL: One guest speaker I want to talk about that. I added kind of at the end of the cycle of adding people is Jamie Chambers. Jamie is somebody who is he's a British voice actor and he's also an on camera actor in the U.K. He works a lot in London and the surrounding areas, and he does a lot of like he does a lot of onscreen kind of fight scenes and stuff like that.

And he does, you know, some video games and he does, you know, a lot of character based work. And so Jamie is going to be flying in from the U.K. this time. He he offered a couple of sessions on he offered a couple of sessions last year on the online and then on accents and dialect coaching, and they were just fantastic.

We had the best time and I was like, "We have to have you come in person for the next one." So he agreed to it. And I'm so excited that he's, you know, that he's coming over. He's going to be offering a mastery session, which is going to be kind of talking about the on camera and voiceover roles colliding together and things like motion capture and things like that.

And so there's a bit of crossover in what he's doing with Jason Linere -White, but I'm sure it will be from a different perspective and their sessions are at different times. So he'll be bringing kind of like the European side of things to it as far as like what his experiences he's been in like Star Wars as a stormtrooper and really cool stuff and then his breakout session is on accents and dialects.

He's doing that one again this year, but in person. So that's one to definitely look at. If you're interested in learning different how to do different accents and dialects, which I love to do, I love to play around with because I'm a French teacher, so I love learning all about the different accents and stuff like that. And then he'll do a general session that will really be more specifically talking about how, in a general sense, how the two worlds collide of I'm on camera and voiceover, and so I think there's a lot of people that do both or want to do both.

And so I really think it's important to kind of cover the differences and the similarities and, and really get some tips on like, what do you do if you want to go from voice over to on camera or vice versa? And so I think it will be really cool to have his perspective on that. So I'm very excited to have him coming as well as, let's see, Scott Parkin is coming for the first time and I am just so excited because I met Scott briefly,

I mean, we've had emails, you know, of course, talking about him being a guest speaker and stuff, but it's really going to be interesting and fun to meet him in person. I saw him at VO Atlanta quite a few years ago, I think it was 2016 or something like that. And so it'll be really nice to meet him in person and he's doing a mastery session on improv and he's like the king of improv.

So I mean, that's a session. It's also sold out. So I told people in my upcoming podcast that if they wanted in on that session, they'd have to beg for it because it's like.

PAUL: You're accepting bribes?

VAL: And so that was exactly very good. Scott is one of the funniest people I think I've ever met. I met him briefly at the last video Atlanta, and got to spend a little bit of time with him.

PAUL: And just the warmest, funniest guy you could ever meet. He actually reminds me of one of your other speakers and and a guy I met at MAVO years ago, Johnny Heller. And for folks that don't know, you know. Yeah, if you're an audio book person yeah there's a lot to take in at MAVO.

VAL: Yeah, absolutely. So this year we have Johnny Heller and we have Carol Monda and Johnny has really taken the lead on the audiobook side of things, and Carol is kind of diving into longform narration. And so he's doing his mastery session is all about demos, like audiobook demos, what to put on it, what not to put on it, and how to do it.

And, and diving deep into the performance side of it. So that's going to be a really fantastic one for people that are, you know, into audio books and there will be only 12 people. So you really have a chance in 3 hours, not only are you going to laugh, you know, so hard because he's one of the funniest people ever, you know?

But it's just going to be a great experience to be able to train with him in such a small setting. And I'm so excited about that. And then Carol is doing she's doing a session on long form recreation. I think I'm trying to remember. I think that's for her mastery session is the long form narration one so we kind of talked about it and she's going to cover other genres within the genre without really focusing on audiobooks.

So the people that are interested in narration, long form narration, but don't want to necessarily do audio books like what are the other options? And so she'll kind of be diving into that. And she's also doing, you know, how a lot of people listen to the podcast that are like the true crime podcasts, you know, and it's not necessarily focusing only on that, but it's kind of touching upon that category and the different, you know, aspects of that.

And so Carol is just fantastic. I mean, she's one of my favorite people probably in the world. Like, she's just so good. She's such a good coach. She's so positive, she's so encouraging.

PAUL: She's fantastic. You mentioned a couple of times, Jason Linere-White. Talk about him for a minute.

VAL: Yeah. So Jason is a fantastic actor. I mean, he's based in L.A. and he works all the time, probably every single day. You see him posting about being in a different studio, doing animation and video game work especially. I do think he does commercial in promos and other stuff as well, but I really know him more for like the video game and animation side of things.

So his session will specifically be based on character development and mocap. And so that brought that mastery session. I mean, I, I just, I can't I'm going to that one. Like that's there's so people are like, no, you have to like be there and run around and organize and do well. I was like, No, no. That's why I have volunteers.

Like, I will be in this session, I'll be in Scott Parkin's session, I will be participating. Obviously, I'm not going to take the place in any attendee, of course, but I try to I actually try to get to as many sessions as I can while I'm there, because that's why I invented this event. Like I want to be in the sessions.

I want to learn. I'm not just here to like run it. I want to learn while I'm there. So Jason is, you know, his session is going to be really intense, really performance based and learning all about that, the mocap and how to do that and everything like that and video games and all of that. So he's he's doing that.

He's also doing a general session some other time during the weekend. I can't remember the times anymore because there's too many where he's going to be talking about just how to get more voiceover work, you know, what are you doing? Right? What do you need to improve on? What are some tips and tricks that have worked for him?

And, you know, he's booking every day. He's booking constantly. So whatever he's doing is working, you know. So those are the people that you want to talk to, the people that are booking every single day of their lives. You know.

PAUL: Absolutely. One of the guys that really can help you do that as well is a guy I've got huge respect for. Another guy we saw just recently when we all got together at Uncle Roy's, Tom Dheere. Talk about Tom.

Yeah. So Tom is covering the business side and e-learning this year. And so his mastery session is talking about the business of voiceover. And so like how to run your business, how to, you know, handle your taxes, how to manage your finances, how to do all of those things. He's also giving a session on how to manage your time later on in the weekend.

And then he's doing a session on e-learning. And I mean, Tom is one of those people where you're like, Oh, I don't know if I should have him back every year because like, he he goes to a lot of events, you know, but at the same time, you're like, how can they not have Tom back every year? Because he's so good, you know?

And so, of course, like I said earlier, there's always going to be some crossover and you have to balance out like, is it worth it? It's worth it. Tom is worth it, you know, because absolutely. He's just so knowledgeable and he's he's relevant. He keeps updating his information so that he stays relevant in the industry. And I you know, if I could be in every session, I mean, I just need to, you know, clone myself at this point because I don't know how I'm going to decide which ones to go to.

PAUL: Well, we'll have to look into that for you that way. Yeah, in all the sessions you can, you can be your own volunteer, Val

VAL: Exactly.

PAUL: Let's talk about how people go to MAVO, the Mid-Atlantic voiceover conference. The the website is...

VAL: It's MidAtlanticVO.com.

PAUL: Okay. And you can get tickets there not only for the conference itself, but you can book your room at the Westin Dulles. You can get tickets to the market recessions, you can get tickets to the breakout sessions where specifically on the website can people hit those mastery sessions and breakout sessions?

VAL: Well, okay, so on the website, what you're going to do because everything goes through Eventbrite. So you're actually going to go to the website, you're going to click the circle at the top, which is the logo, and it's going to bring you right to the Eventbrite page. Or there's also a like a button on there that says Register for me 2022 now and you just click it and it brings you to Eventbrite.

So on the Eventbrite page, let's talk about that because people are always like, What do I do? You click on tickets and then when it brings up all the tickets, you'll see the general admission tickets at the top. We also have one day tickets available now for Saturday or Sunday. The Saturday and Sunday tickets don't include lunch anymore just because when we're this close to the event, it gets too risky to offer that.

So then when you scroll down, all the mastery sessions and breakout sessions are there for the add ons. And then also on the website we have a schedule page, but the website is a good reference for if you want to see the detailed descriptions of the classes, because when I do a printout of like Here's the schedule, it's going to just have the title and who's doing the speaking.

It won't have all the descriptions. So the website is your go to for all of that. And then as far as the hotel go, is the actually the deadline for booking a room at the hotel was October 11th, but people can still book reservations to the hotel. They just have to go directly through my my hotel wrap grace read far at this point so what I will do is I will put a note on the you know, I'll put that out there onto the website so that people know, like, how to still book a room if they want to.

PAUL: And we can put that link in the description below this video. So if people have questions about how to get in touch with Grace, it'll be in the description right below this video as well. All right, Val Kelly, the chief cook and bottle washer, CEO, executive producer, her own volunteer. Now, Val, you do it all. And I be honest with you, I have no idea how you pull all this off every year.

But we're grateful that you do it. We're so grateful that you joined us today and we're looking forward to seeing you very soon at MAVO 2022.

VAL: Thank you so much, Paul.

PAUL: Thanks again to Val Kelly. If you learned something about MAVO or about voiceover in this video and you got some value out of it, make sure you hit the lake and subscribe button. And that way we can get the word out about this channel to other voice actors who could use some inspiration, some knowledge and information about running their businesses in voiceover.

And we'd certainly appreciate it. Also sign up for our Move Touch Inspire newsletter. We'll put the link for that in the description below as well. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here soon. Thanks again.

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