The eagle has landed. Or, at least I have managed to get all the way from Odense, Denmark to Berlin, Germany. The time of the Polyglot Berlin Gathering is upon us and I am coming to you live from my hotel room at the venue. Nicely sized room with decent facilities not to mention a rooftop bar!
My plan at this conference is to network as much as possible and try to work a bit on my spoken German, which I have discovered upon landing here, is worse than I thought. Although I did not switch to English at all, it was a very awkward and stuttering few exchanges. I had a funny conversation at a coffee shop though, I said “Ich hätte gern eine grosse kaffe latte” when the barista replied “wie gross?” and I answered “Die grosste!” for some reason I found this slightly humorous, and perhaps concerning for my level in German.
Later on in the event there will be a talk about maintaining languages which I will definitely attend, tomorrow I will give my list of talks I will definitely attend, so you can see what is going on here.
Apart from practicing my German I'm also here to try and persuade more people to come on the Podcast, I know it can be hard to get around to answering emails if you are receiving a lot or if you have a lot to do, but if I'm there physically it gets a bit harder to not notice me 🙂 I have already made plans to talk to Benny Lewis and his girlfriend Lauren which will make for a super interesting talk.
ActualFluency coverage of PolyglotBerlin
During the event I will attempt to record and interact as much as possible with all the amazing people who are taking part. A part from these random videos I will also be doing a daily live stream after Dinner, where I invite people during the day to come and hang out and casually discuss what they thought about the events of the day and so on. This will also be your opportunity to get any question answered by the people on the show. I'll get the stream working today and then it should hopefully be good to go, tomorrow!
The link is http://justin.tv/actualfluency or alternatively https://actualfluency.com/live I'll announce on twitter and facebook when the stream is going live!
Apart from that you are more than welcome to tweet me, Facebook me or use the contact page if you have any questions for me or any other participant, I will do my best to track them down and make sure your question is answered.'
What about the actual talks – will they be recorded?
I have been informed by Judith, one of the main organizers that they will try to record as many talks as possible, to be uploaded to their Polyglot Gathering Berlin YouTube channel. I have no idea if it will happen on a day-by-day basis or it will all be uploaded post-event.
Kris is the founder of Actual Fluency, and has spent the last 8 years becoming an expert in language learning software, methods, and techniques.
Originally from Denmark, he now lives in Portugal and speaks 5+ languages at varying levels. His other interests are Wine, Online Marketing, and Travelling.