15th April 2021 • 11:00 - 19:00 CET
Chatterconf 2021
by chatterbug
An all day virtual conference all about language learning and technology!
100% of the ticket sales will go to wikitongues.org





The Speakers
Geoff Stead
Babbel
Geoff is the Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Babbel, leading the digital learning experience for millions of language learners. He is a global expert in the use of mobile and emerging technologies for teaching, learning and workforce support.
Kirsten Campbell-Howes
Busuu
Kirsten is the Chief Learning Officer at Busuu, where she runs the team of learning designers who create Busuu's courses, and the teacher operations team who look after our faculty of over 10,000 language teachers worldwide. Kirsten has spent over 20 years working in the field of digital language learning, creating websites, apps, video games and VR experiences for companies like Pearson, EF and Macmillan
Ed Cooke
Memrise
Ed Cooke is the co-founder and CEO of Memrise and an author, speaker and expert on memory and experiential learning. He competed for five years in World Memory Championships, where aged 23 he earned the title of Grandmaster of Memory.
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.
Belen Caeiro
Babbel
Belen Caeiro is Director of Babbel Live at Babbel. She leads the team developing and rolling out Babbel Live, ensuring feature adoption and product-market fit.
Gabriel Wyner
Fluent Forever
Gabriel is the founder and CEO of Fluent Forever, is a best-selling author, opera singer and polyglot based in Chicago, IL. After learning four languages in under two years, Gabe’s book “Fluent Forever: How to learn a language fast and never forget it” became a national bestseller.
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.
Aline Sara
NaTakallam
Aline Sara is the co-founder and CEO of NaTakallam, an award-winning social enterprise that connects refugees, displaced persons and their host communities with work opportunities in the language sector through the digital economy.
Felix Wunderlich
Lingoda
Felix is the Co-founder, VP of Sales & Partnerships, and Managing Director at Lingoda. Felix founded Lingoda together with his brother Fabian.
Neil Ballantyne
Busuu
Neil is Lead Product Manager for 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.
Etiene Dalcol
Polygloss
Etiene is a Research Engineer at the Institute for Applied Linguistics of EURAC and founder of Polygloss, a mobile game that helps you express yourself in another language.
Daniel Bögre Udell
Wikitongues
Daniel is a TED Resident and the co-founder of Wikitongues, which grew out of a personal project he began in 2013. He has been working with online initiatives since 2011, when he helped launch the Catalan-language edition of Global Voices.
Inda Härtlein
Chatterbug
Inda is the Chief Learning Officer at Chatterbug and a Berlin-based Argentinian polyglot, educator, lover of languages, and curriculum developer.
Phillipa Wentzel
Lingoda
Philippa is an Instructional Designer at Lingoda, where she is responsible for the design and production of all learning materials in German. Prior to joining Lingoda, she studied Modern Languages at the University of Cambridge, German literature at the University of Leipzig and and Applied Linguistics at The Open University.
Hadiya Ahmed
NaTakallam
Hadiya is in her thirties and is originally from Qamishli, Syria. Due to the conflict in her home country, she fled to Erbil, Iraq, where she lives with her husband and two children. She has been working at NaTakallam as a conversation partner for over 3 years.
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!
Register nowWorkshops & Presentations
Gabriel Wyner

Language Learning and the Science of Memory
In this lecture, Gabriel Wyner delivers a humorous take on why children are better than us at learning - and how we can be better than that! What’s at the root of this is a myth that children learn faster than adults - in fact, it’s far from true. But, they have very little else to do when they are learning to walk-and-talk. With this myth debunked, Gabe invites the audience to imagine - what would you learn, if you could learn as efficiently and as fast as we think children do? And how can you learn a language without spending 15,000 hours of time on it? At the heart of these answers is one crucial fundamental of neuroscience. In this talk, Gabe will open your eyes to the tiny changes that cause something to get retained forever, versus something that gets forgotten instantly.
Tobias Dickmeis

Language Learning Trends Around the World
The Tandem language learning community is made up of millions of members from all over the world. Based on how they use Tandem and the results from a study of 15,000 community members, we will look at some facts, figures and trends in language learning around the globe. What are the most popular languages learned in different countries? Are certain languages on the rise? How are proficiency levels distributed? In which countries do people correct learners the most? What are the main learning motivations and goals? What learning resources are most popular? Is there seasonality in language learning? We will also take a special look at constructed languages, sign languages, and emojis.
Aline Sara and Hadiya Ahmed

How Online Language Tutoring Became a Lifeline for Refugees
Aline Sara, CEO and Co-Founder of NaTakallam, will have a discussion with Hadiya, online language tutor at NaTakallam, about how technology - and NaTakallam in particular - has given her the platform to tutor her native language online. This has provided her (along with 200+ displaced people) with sustainable livelihoods and work opportunities.
Inda Härtlein

The End of Forgetting
The brain, with its over 80 billion neurons, empowers us to do astonishing things like build skyrockets, clone Dolly the sheep, and learn multiple languages. Yet we can’t remember where we put our cell phone, or our neighbors’ names. Learning a language is a persistent battle against our brain’s stubborn tendency to forget. What are the levels of processing in our brain and how can we learn to never forget?
Kirsten Campbell-Howes

The Transition to Blended Digital Language Learning
Traditional classrooms have moved closer to blended learning over the past decade, seeking to complement their face-to-face learning with digital tools and course materials. Now language learning apps are going through a similar trajectory, bringing live online teaching into the self-study experience. This talk will look at some of the drivers leading to blended digital offerings and showcase some of the ways Busuu has been dealing with the challenges of bringing real teachers into our self-study ecosystem.
Etiene Dalcol
Language x Tech: Getting Started with Computational Linguistics
Computational Linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that brings key changes to our lives. Manipulating language is one of the earliest applications of computation, with cryptanalysis for translating dating back to 9th century arabic scholars, and also one of the most exciting applications of modern technology, like language generation models such as GPT-3. Research in this field powers machine translation systems like Google Translate, interactive dialogue systems like Siri, helps us learn more about the nature of language by investigating large amounts of data, and much more. In this talk I'll cover details about what exactly is Computational Linguistics, what you can do with it, why study it, how to break into this field, how it's applied in language learning, and where to find resources to learn more about it.
Daniel Bögre Udell

How These Five People are Keeping their Languages Alive
Two-hundred years of genocide and forced assimilation drove half the world’s 7,000 languages to the brink of collapse, but people are fighting back. Around the world, communities are reawakening mother tongues and rebuilding cultures, proving that language extinction isn’t inevitable. At Wikitongues, we help people get started with language documentation and revitalization. Join us on a journey across five countries as we explore how people in vastly different social contexts are kickstarting mother-tongue projects in their communities, finding ways to keep their languages alive.
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