Much to the chagrin of announcers everywhere, “conversational” is not going away.
Mind you, I’ve heard not one adequate definition of the word yet, but it remains the trendy voice delivery of all time. …And we all just know what it is, right?
Right.
In fact, at VoiceOver Atlanta, the word “conversational” – or it’s first cousins, “genuine”, “authentic”, and “real” –
Moreover, I think the wholehearted embodiment of the entire conference could be characterized
No, really!
What do I mean by that? Well, as the VOA social media threads and various hashtag links to VOA begin to fade, you’ll notice a lot of poignant articles helping you to make some sense of the immense wealth of information you absorbed (here’s one of those articles). These are useful, no doubt.
But when you read between lines of “lessons learned at VOA”, you’ll see an even more profound commonality.
Attendees weren’t so much touched by the insights to information, as they were touched by each other. Inter-personal communication. Person-to-person, handshake, eyeball-to-eyeball, breaking bread, in-your-face, share-your-space togetherness.
In other words: RELATIONSHIP.
Which circles back to the elusive meaning of that word “conversational”. What is it if not relational?
All those mostly-isolated voice actors were there reveling in the opportunity to be in the aura of like-minded souls, and THAT is what they will take home and take to the bank more than anything else.
Wanna know how to achieve “conversational” in your reads?
Capture again in your soul that lovely encounter between you and your colleague sharing honest-to-goodness human moments together, then turn on your mic….
CourVO