The past week featured two amazing summits back-to-back, and I’m still processing all that I’ve learned. First was the Actors Summit, presented by Acting & Voice Studios. Next up was the Women in Voice 2022 Summit. Whew, what a whirlwind of information — let’s cover some highlights.
The Actors Summit took place last weekend, May 20-22, and each day was packed with sessions! Each day featured speakers on three stages happening simultaneously, and sometimes it could be hard to choose which session to attend. I enjoyed hearing from casting directors, agents, voice actors speak about topics like what they look for in auditions, advice on working in commercials & animation, and why improv is good for actors. Two speakers, Joanne Baron and Donna Morong, talked about the Meisner technique, which was really interesting because I recently started reading Sanford Meisner on Acting. On Sunday, I loved hearing Sean Astin answer questions about his early career and how he became an actor. His session was a half hour, but I could have listened to him all day!
On Monday, the 2nd annual Women in Voice, or WiV, Summit began and ran until Thursday afternoon. WiV celebrates voice technology and the Summit included sessions on topics like conversational AI, linguistics, voice acting, voice AI in medicine, and voice tech in cars, to name a few. Tuesday’s keynote featured Bev Standing and Susan Bennett interviewed by Kayla Pitts about their perhaps not-ideal experiences with voice technology as voice actors. They discussed what it was like hearing their voices used by TikTok’s TTS in Bev’s case and by Apple in Susan’s case as the voice of Siri. They also talked about their backgrounds and how they got into voice acting, the business side of VO, and AI voices.
I attended the WiV Summit last year, not sure what to expect, and discovered the field of conversation design. I became really interested in that, and although it’s been a little less than a year, I feel like I’ve come a long way in learning more about it. I’m even in an internship program working on a project based on mental health, which is something I care deeply about. Thanks to WiV, and to all the connections I’ve made through it, for the encouragement to jump in and learn new things!