Is MAVO Worth Attending?
MAVO, the Mid Atlantic Voiceover Conference, was held in Washington D.C. from November 10th to November 13, 2023 at the Westin Washington Dulles Airport. It was my first time attending, and I was attracted by its reputation as a smaller, boutique style conference with some 100+ attendees as touted by its organizer, Val Kelly. Yet, questions abounded. Would attendance be worth the relatively steep price and time of traveling from my hometown of San Francisco to DC? Would the networking opportunities and contacts prove fruitful? And would I look back with different takeaways than I initially expected and be tempted to return?
MAVO 2023 Participants
I drafted my calendar by choosing sessions that I knew the least amount and which most interested me, but I was also careful to leave myself flexibility whether that meant changing my plans based on word-of-mouth heard on site or not attending a session at all, but instead repairing to my room for a break or to the bar for a drink. I also approached my sessions with the mindset that I should participate as much as possible in whatever form that might take, the thinking being that participation makes anything more enjoyable - at least it does for me.
The sessions available consisted of two types. The first were general sessions, typically of one hour duration, that were already included in the cost of general admission. The second set consisted of mastery sessions or breakout sessions lasting 1.5 hours and 3 hours, respectively, which were add-ons for additional fees, and which were capped in their headcount and were designed to be more intimate in nature. Most of them followed a similar pattern of having an initial presentation, encouraging participation and allowing for Q&A on the back end.
Overall, all of the sessions were instructive and enjoyable, but there were a few that stood out for me and warrant particular mention as follows:
Everything E-learning by Laura Schreiber. Laura was particularly adept at outlining how e-learning clients typically differed from other clients (they tend to be more highly educated), highlighted her personal career milestones that could prove useful to us, and expanded on atypical ways to expand the scope of potential clients including pursuing business with the federal government. I scribbled furiously and make sure to follow-up with her shortly thereafter. Five stars.
How to Adapt your Voice Talent to Audiobooks by Ana Clements. I have yet to do an audiobook and frankly, haven’t prioritized it simply because of the daunting prospect of the long form, but Ana did a lot to help me reconsider it. Her tips ran the gamut from the easily-overlooked but practical - increasing one’s daily practice quota to build up stamina - to the importance of hiring editors and tips and tracks when working with ACX that only experience can impart. There was a quiet and encouraging confidence to Ana’s session and I came away with quite a lot to research and follow up on. Plus, she was a lot of fun to chat with at the bar after!
Zen4VO - Connection, Confidence, Communication by Dan Friedman. I believe that the brief promised that he would take us through the fundamentals of script interpretation and making creative choices - don’t quote me on this - but the format essentially followed these contours. Here, I again raised my hand, and willingly subjected myself to questions and challenges as I endured several rounds of voicing copy - mine was particularly long and verbose - but I genuinely felt that I was making incremental improvements with each round. He was demanding, but appropriately so. I certainly got my money’s worth.
Effortless Book It & Bring It! by Michael Scott: This was perhaps the outlier for me. Michael is a an established actor with a wide array of credits and is particularly versed in creature voices and performance capture. What would I likely learn from this? A lot it turned out. Again through participation - which included a full-on group interactive and vocal work-out which had us drowning out participants in adjacent conference rooms to the alarm of the conference organizers - we learned how to expand our performance and credibility with the use of gutteral and other vocal sounds which actually play important roles in video gaming and other action-oriented genres. And these can of course be put to good use in other areas as well. Talk about an intense education.
In general, it was a solid experience. Attendees were unfailingly friendly, instructors were approachable and generous with their time and thoughts, and the vibe was positive. The hotel was small, but well maintained and it will again be the venue for 2024. And for those who stayed right till the end, there was a long stream of free raffle give-aways for everything from free demos, equipment and coffee to the extent that everyone - and I mean everyone - left with something which I think, in a way, exemplified the spirit of the event.
