7th April 2022 • 11:00 - 19:00 CET
Chatterconf 2022
by chatterbug
An all day virtual conference all about language learning and technology!
Recordings coming soon!
The Speakers
Scott Chacon
Chatterbug
Scott Chacon, Chatterbug CEO and co-founder, is a software developer, entrepreneur, and aspiring polyglot. Scott co-founded GitHub in 2008 and helped grow it into one of the world’s most important software companies.
Jen Jordan
Babbel
Jen is the VP & Global Head of Content at Babbel. Her team produces engaging content in eight languages across Babbel Magazine, YouTube, and social media. Prior to Babbel, Jen led content and community at several other high-growth, VC-backed software startups.
Tobias Dickmeis
Tandem
Tobias is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of the language exchange community Tandem, based in Berlin/Germany. He is a serial entrepreneur with a background in media science.
David Guérin
Brighteye Ventures
David has an operational and consultancy background. He previously ran the marketing efforts at Salauno, a leading healthcare start-up in Mexico and worked as a management consultant with EY Advisory practice in Mexico, serving clients in different industries and countries throughout LATAM.
Susan Wang
Learn Capital
Susan Wang is a Principal at Learn Capital, where she is responsible for sourcing, researching, evaluating, and supporting early stage companies changing the ways we learn and work. Prior to joining Learn, Susan was a Senior Manager on the Strategy & Ventures team of Sesame Workshop, the creator of Sesame Street and other children’s educational programming.
Prof. Ghil’ad Zuckermann
University of Adelaide, Australia
Professor of Linguistics and Chair of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Since 2017, he is the President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies, and a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies since 2014.
Ross Darwin
Owl Ventures
As a Principal at Owl Ventures, Ross invests in and partners with companies that are making a difference in education across K12, Post-Secondary, Career, and Future of Work. Ross sits on the board of Preply and UBITS and is actively involved in Owl’s investments in Degreed, Fiveable, Greenlight, Honorlock, Kiddom, MasterClass, Stash, SV Academy, Thrive Global, Welcome Tech, and Woebot Health. Prior to joining Owl, Ross worked at both TA Associates and The Parthenon Group.
Stella Hodkin Paris
CLEAR Global (previously Translators without Borders)
Stella Hodkin Paris is the Head of Language Services at CLEAR Global. Originally from the UK, Stella studied languages in Edinburgh and is currently based in Northern Italy. She has been working in the language services industry for almost 20 years, performing a variety of roles and honing her marketing expertise.
Neil Ballantyne
Busuu
Neil is the Head of Learning Experience at Busuu where he helps to bring Busuu’s purpose to life - that is to inspire the world to learn together with community interactions, live and self-access lessons powered by award-winning smart learning technology.
Joana Ussler
Lingoda
Joana is part of the Digital Education Team at Lingoda. As a Learning Materials Developer, Joana creates content for Lingoda's learning materials in German. She holds a Master's Degree in German as a Foreign Language with a thesis on multilingualism, intercultural and transcultural learning.
Tim Lau
HelloTalk
Tim is a Research Manager at HelloTalk, where he helps uncover the needs of millions of language learners across the globe. Prior to joining HelloTalk, he studied human-computer interaction at the University of Washington and contributed to emerging technology policy at the Tech Policy Lab.
Emily Sabo
Mango Languages
Emily Sabo is a quirky language lover with a PhD in Linguistics (University of Michigan), a multilingual content creator (Mango Languages) and TV producer (We Are What We Speak). Emily sees language as a window into our cognition, a bridge to cross-cultural understanding, and humankind’s most fascinating form of creative expression.
Anastacia Kay
Anastacia Kay
Anastacia is an educational content creator with an audience of over 600,000 on YouTube. Her work focuses on showing how research in psychology, behavioural economics and neuroscience can be used to improve our work and personal lives. Anastacia is a former management consultant at PwC and holds a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University.
Stephanie Wright
Babbel
Stephanie is the Head of Learning Content at Babbel. Her department is the heart of Babbel's language-learning expertise, where linguists, educators, instructional designers, and media professionals craft all of Babbel's educational content. With a background in learning experience and entrepreneurship, Stephanie's professional experience spans non-profits, B Corps, and scale-ups.
Anne Leuschner
Chatterbug
Anne is the Chief Operating Officer at Chatterbug and co-founder and CEO of SCNE Ventures, a Berlin-focused early stage startup accelerator. Anne is a serial entrepreneur and has a passion for startups, previously growing online fine food company Delinero as CEO until its successful acquisition.
Maria Hasbolat
Dein Sprachcoach
Dein Sprachcoach Maria is a German teacher and pronunciation expert. She came to Germany at the age of 22 and started learning the language. Now she is teaching German on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok and offering German pronunciation courses.
Ana Isabel Mena
Chatterbug
Ana Isabel Mena is a performer with extensive teaching experience. She applies her experience and creativity as an actress to her lessons to offer a dynamic and fun way to learn effectively. Ana is a language enthusiast fascinated by accents and dialects. She is a Spanish streamer at Chatterbug where she is able to apply all of her creativity, language knowledge, and performance skills!
Gabriel Gelman
Spring Languages
Gabriel Gelman is a German polyglot and language lover who speaks 6 languages fluently. He is the co-founder of Spring Languages, an online language learning course and video publisher. Gabriel is the founder of Germany's biggest language blog Sprachheld.de, where he also publishes weekly language learning videos on his YouTube channel.
Anjel Estensoro
AEK (Basque Language Academy)
Anjel is a native Basque speaker, polyglot and language teacher from the region of Gipuzkoa, southern Basque Country (Spain). Originally an economist by training, he decided to follow his passion for languages and has been teaching Basque for the last 5 years throughout the Basque Country and at the Sorbonne University, Paris. He is currently teaching at AEK (Basque Language Academy) in Bayonne, northern Basque Country (France).
Emanuel
Your Daily German
Emanuel discovered his talent and love for languages while he was on student exchange where he would explain German grammar to people and actually enjoy it. That's when the idea of becoming a German teacher started to form. Emanuel didn't like the "normal" system, though, and he especially didn't like textbooks. He always felt like there is a better way.
Steffi
LerneDeutsch
Steffi, a German content creator from Berlin, founded LerneDeutsch to help people from all over the world get more confident in communicating in German by teaching her native language in a fun and easy way that anyone can relate to and enjoy the learning process.
Over the course of the day we will virtually bring together language enthusiasts from all around the world to learn about the world of online language learning
We will be joined “on stage” by executives from both large and small online language learning companies, internet polyglots, linguists, and more! They will offer you insights on learning languages online, share their stories, and give you tips and tricks for your own language learning journey. We hope you can join us for the second annual virtual online language learning conference, Chatterconf! All donation based ticket sales will be donated to Wikitongues!
Recordings coming soon!
Presentations
Jen Jordan
I really like you, too: Social trends in language learning getting the most love right now
Jen will highlight the most engaging social content trends based on Babbel’s data and the rise in language learning content creators during the pandemic while offering suggestions on how to create and engage with this content for the best language learning experience. You’ll get 5+ years of social media learnings, backed by the expertise of Babbel’s team of language teachers and content creators, in a fun and interactive watch party presentation format.
Tobias Dickmeis
Language Immersion through Live Online Group Experiences
Tandem is an online language learning community with millions of members from all around the world. Earlier this year, we introduced Language Parties, a new way to learn on Tandem. Members can join together in live audio rooms to practice their speaking skills or just listen in. What's happening at Language Parties? How are they used for learning? And what does the future of social language learning look like?
Anastacia Kay
The Controversial Case for Bilingual Advantage
From improved self-control and attention to Alzheimer’s and dementia prevention, the promise of bilingualism neuroadvantage has been exploding in popular science throughout the last decade. How much of these claims can we trust? Is bilingualism different in its effects from video gaming and learning music? Does learning a language later in life lead to similar advantages? How well does one need to know a second language to experience the promises of bilingualism? Let’s dig into the fascinating research behind bilingualism and find out what we already know and what is yet to be established!
Neil Ballantyne
Building Meaningful Connections through Online Language Learning Communities
The past two years have shown us more than ever the power of technology to connect people and the importance of language learning. But as zoom fatigue has grown and the world continues to shake; ensuring we have strong principles to ensure we create successful online learning communities is more important than ever. How can we ensure that the connections made through online language learning are meaningful, safe and mutually beneficial?
Emily Sabo
Dialects in the Wild
How different are the different dialects in your target language? Should you stick to learning just one? Will exposure to multiple ways of speaking confuse you? If you've been wondering about this -- you've come to the right place! In this talk, you'll learn about mutual intelligibility, communicative goals, and "hybrid" dialects. You'll get some real talk about the struggles of navigating complicated dialectal differences and also discover how dialectal diversity can facilitate your learning!
Prof. Ghil’ad Zuckermann
Talknology in the Service of Revivalistics: Reclaiming ‘Dreaming, Sleeping Beauty’ Languages Using Apps and Online Resources
This talk will first explain why language revival is (1) right, (2) beautiful, and (3) beneficial. In our current world, more and more groups are losing their heritage. Language reclamation (e.g. Hebrew and the Barngarla Aboriginal language of South Australia), revitalization (e.g. Shanghainese and the Adnyamathanha Aboriginal language) and reinvigoration (e.g. Te Reo Māori and Welsh) are becoming increasingly relevant as more and more people seek to reconnect with their ancestors, recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing and mental health. The talk will then focus on the fourth linguistic revolution, the *talknological* one, and how *talknology* can assist *revivalistics*, the new global, comparative, trans-disciplinary science of language reclamation and empowerment. Examples will be given from the Barngarla Aboriginal language.
Stella Hodkin Paris
Overcoming language barriers in a time of crisis
In critical situations, language barriers are often overlooked: but effective communication is vital to ensure people's safety and protection. Translators without Borders (a.k.a. CLEAR Global) immediately acted to provide language support to people affected by the Ukraine crisis. In the first two weeks, we launched a pro-bono language support partnership program, translated about 100,000 words of reliable content, and sent a team to Poland to further study the communication and information needs of the people who fled Ukraine. We can do more - but need your support. Join us to learn more about our plans, and how you can help leverage our potential.
Stephanie Wright
Conjunction junction, it has a function: Social information architecture in digital language learning
In today's digital world, 'friction free' user experience is the goal of many a tech company. But when your product depends on friction, specifically users feeling a sense of progress in topics they like... alongside topics they don't know they need (or even topics they explicitly dislike)... everything becomes trickier. The key to success hinges on the right social information architecture setup. We'll discuss what that looks like in Babbel's context.
Joana Ussler
Lost in Translation: Mediation in Online Language Learning
“You think you spider”? Learning a new language online seems so easy with translation tools just one click away. But do literal translations give you the right meaning behind the message? This is where mediation in language learning comes in: The importance of understanding cultural differences, slight nuances and translating meaning rather than words. In the online language learning sphere there are language learners and language teachers learning together from all over the world with all kinds of different (cultural) backgrounds. And with mediation, we aim to foster our pluricultural competencies.
Tim Lau
The opportunity of community: Encouraging a culture of reciprocity in online language exchange
The concept of language exchange is simple: a trade of language skills between people. Still, bringing language exchange online to a global community of millions is no easy task. Beyond language barriers - how might we connect learners from varied cultural backgrounds, life stages, and time zones? A strong community is the key. In this talk, you will hear about how we develop a culture of collaborative learning at HelloTalk. You will also get an inside look at the growth of our community and a peek at where the future of online language exchange is headed.
Breakout Sessions & Workshops
Pitch Session
Have a language learning product you're working on, or a brand new product within your company, or just want to take this chance to show off your language learning app? This is your time to shine! Sign up to give a 5 minute pitch during the lunch pitch breakout session. Sign up here!
How to learn any language without memorizing word lists and grammar rules: An intro to Conversation Based Chunking.
In this workshop, Gabriel Gelman, co-founder of Spring Languages, outlines how they use the Conversation Based Chunking Method to teach tens of thousands of students Spanish and other languages. After using this method, you will be able to understand native speakers and, just as importantly, you will be able to express yourself using fluent sentences that simply roll off the tongue—all without memorizing endless word lists and grammar rules. Find out how Conversation Based Chunking Method can be your fast-track to fluency too!
Language tips and tricks and putting it into practice
Learning a new language is a long process, but there are some tips and tricks that can help you accelerate this process and not only make it easier, but way more fun! In this workshop, Ana will teach you some of her best tips and tricks for learning a language, followed by a quick and fun Spanish lesson to put it all into practice.
German Pronunciation Tricks
Do you find it difficult to pronounce German words? It is not that difficult in fact, if you learn some pronunciation tricks. Maria from DeinSprachcoach is a pronunciation expert with 14 years of experience in teaching German. In this workshop she will teach you some very useful tricks that will help you sound more native. Let’s practice together!
What's the secret behind prefixes?
Have you ever wondered what prefixes are for or why a couple letters can change the meaning of a whole word? With Emanuel from YourDailyGerman you’ll explore different examples of prefixes and discover their purpose in order to help you understand and master prefixes - not only in German, but also in other languages.
Basque Basics
Would you like to learn some of the oldest European language still in use today? Join this short language lesson with native Basque teacher and polyglot Anjel to find out why Basque is one of the world’s most unique and fascinating languages and pick up a few words and phrases for your trip to the Basque Country. If you’re a French or Spanish speaker, unfortunately you won’t have any advantage, because this language is completely different from its geographical neighbours. But don’t worry! Basque has no gender and not so many irregular verbs.
Un caffè, per favore!
Gianluca is the host of La bottega di Babbel, Babbel’s monolingual Italian podcast, in which he talks with native speakers and Italian learners alike about traditions, culture and everyday life in Italy. In this workshop we will discover the answers to some “secrets” around the Italian coffee tradition. How many types of coffee exist? How do you prepare a good coffee? How many coffees do Italians drink every day? And why is the expression “ti va un caffè?” not only an invitation to drink coffee? Join Gianluca to find out. Naturalmente in italiano!
Be part of Chatterconf 2022
Recordings coming soon!