Sweeps Episode: Events and Plans for 2020

So the first protocol is a the new sponsor. I'm really happy to say that OptiLingo has come on board. It's a language learning app that uses a method called Guided Immersion to teach you a variety of languages. They have quite a big selection there. And the cool part about it is that it uses audio immersion, a technology like a spaced repetition but for audio. And the really cool part about OptiLingo is that they use spaced repetition but in audio format, so you don't really have to, you know, work too much with boring flashcards, and there's no forced memorization or anything. You just hear some phrases and then you repeat them back trying to emulate what it sounds like. And I'm really glad that they're coming on board to sponsor not only the podcast but also the Polyglot Cruise, which is going to be a super exciting event. I'm going to talk about it in just a moment.

But one of the things I always like to do here in the beginning of the year is to go over kind of the calendar of 2020. If you are a language learning fan or a language learning enthusiast, what kind of events are you looking forward to? And for me, let's go over and see what's happening.

So this year, the first event that's coming up is actually the Language Influencer Workshop which is this year. Last year it was called the Language Influencer Summit, which was more of a conference where people who aspired to start a business or become a freelancer or in general just make money with language learning and online business, kind of combining the two, were invited to come to Berlin to listen to some really amazing speakers, network for a few days. I was there last year. It was great.

This year it's a little bit more intensive, so they're going to be doing a workshop, which is going to allow the participants to get specialized help. There's going to be a little bit of fewer participants, and I also think the level of participants are going to be higher. You're going to see people who are further along in their journey, whereas last year you had a a good mix of everyone, you know, there were people who hadn't even started yet and there were people who were making seven, eight figures online. So that's the first one coming up. It's the end of March.

And the next event coming up is the Polyglot Cruise. So let's get to talking about the cruise. So it's been a highly anticipated event, and I've started organizing it. I mean, it's almost, uh, it's been a a long time ago. We started talking about it back in June or July, I believe. And the idea came to me. A lot of people ask me like, how did you get this amazing idea of combining a language learning conference with a luxury cruise ship going around the Mediterranean? And the answer I give is I I didn't come up with it, you know, it wasn't my idea. I had heard about something called the Nomad Cruise where people were going on long distance cruise ships and then having sort of a con conference part on board.

And I always thought that idea sounded great because the cruise is kind of like a a hotel on the sea that offers basically control of everything, like from the food to the drinks, to the accommodation, and it allows the participants to really focus on what's important to them, like the actual networking, the kind of knowledge sharing, the getting to know people and spending time together and, of course, last but not least, having an amazing luxury holiday in, in our case, in the Mediterranean Sea. So I can't really claim that I came up with the concept, but as they say, uh, you know, coming up with new ideas is often just combining old ideas in an in a new way. So that's what the Polyglot Cruise is all about.

We're going to be about 50 people for the first one. I've got some amazing speakers lined up. Uh my friend Olly Richards, uh my friend Kirsten Cable, my friend Lindsay Williams, and my friend Judith Meyer. They're all coming, and I think they're all amazing in their own right. They're all pretty good language learners, some of them even amazing, you know, speaking eight to eight to 15 languages, absolutely amazing. Um, but also very entrepreneurial, very kind of independent in their setup. So they pretty much all started online businesses and side hustles based off of their language skills. So and and Judith in case you don't know was the original uh was part of the original team behind the Polyglot Gathering, which is coming back this year in Poland, which I'll get to in a minute.

Um so I'm really happy that my friends were uh happy enough with the concept to you know, basically supported by attending themselves. And so we're going to have some presentations on board. It's not going to be too much, it's only going to be a two, three-hour program every day, and then the rest of the day people are free to explore the ship, watch the, you know, the theaters, the there's arcades, there's spas, you can do anything you want on board the ship, it's absolutely massive. And of course, you can get off the ship as well. We're going to be visiting various places like Malta, Mallorca. We're going to go to Sicily, uh Genoa, we're going to go to Civitavecchia, Civitavecchia, I never know how to say that city in Italy, it's pretty close to Rome.

Um so we're going to get off and explore. And there's a lot of opportunities not just on the ship because obviously there's going to be lots of people speaking those European languages, but also when you get off the ship there's a good opportunity to practice your languages, get to use some of those language skills that you have picked up. Um so if you want to get on board the cruise, it might be too late, but definitely check out polyglotcruise.com for to see if there's any last-minute spots available. Like I said, we are going to be about 50 people for this first edition, and I do plan on running it again in the future. Let's see how how this first one goes. I'm very optimistic and people seem really happy to come, so I I think it'll be great. But I'll let kind of the reviews and the testimonials from participants be the final verdict of whether we're going to do it again.

It's definitely a lot of work to organize even though the cruise ship is responsible for most of the key elements of the cruise like the food and the accommodation, the cleaning, of course. It's still a lot of work to coordinate, and like I said, we'll see what the verdict is before we decide on another one. But if you go to polyglotcruise.com, you can sign up to the email list there and I will be sure to email out when a new cruise is being organized. And I expect this to be probably early 2020 again, unless we find some ridiculous deal later in the year that oh sorry, not early 2020. I'm already a year behind as you can tell. Uh early 2021, or in an exceptional case, late 2020, if we can find a deal, but the problem is that clashes with some other events that I'm going to get into.

So the most likely dates are going to be early 2021 and probably in Europe again unless we can find some good cruises in in other parts of the world. I know that there are some amazing cruises in Alaska, I know there's amazing ones in Norwegian fjords, you've got of course, you've got Japan, you've got pretty much all over the world, even in the US. So if you have any kind of suggestions for where you would like to see the cruise go next, let me know. I mean, I'm I'm really happy to look at all the options. It's going to be depending on the cruise line, negotiating with them, getting a good deal, some good terms as well so we can take our time to organize the whole thing without coming up with, uh, you know, a ton of money up front. So let me know, definitely send me an email or a tweet or a message or something, and I will see if that's possible for future cruises.

But I'm really excited to get going with this first one, and we're not just going to be talking about language learning because I think there's a lot of that information out there already. But of course, with four amazing polyglots on the panel, there's going to be opportunities to find new methods, improve your existing techniques, and ask any of those burning questions that you have. But we also are going to be discussing how to kind of monetize your hobby in a way, and how you can turn your language skills into an online business, or you can yeah, kind of leverage online teaching platforms to become an online teacher, or whatever you want to do. Really a lot of people, especially the speakers, have done so much with languages and online business that they're happy to share their knowledge with you.

So the first polyglot event of the year is going to be the Edinburgh Language Club, and Richard Simcott is part of the organizational team. And they tried to do it last year without Richard, and there was some problems with the organization. The organizers decided to kind of cancel the room reservation last minute, leaving a lot of people stranded in in Edinburgh with you know, train and hotel and even flight tickets because the cancellation was done two weeks before. But this year, it's going to be much more professional. They've gotten Richard from you know, Polyglot Conference fame to come in and help them organize it, so it's going to be an absolutely amazing event, I'm sure.

The focus on this one, and this is very exciting for UK-based language lovers, is the indigenous languages of the UK, especially. So there's going to be a lot of presentations about the languages of the UK, not English probably, uh but you're going to hear about, I know you're going to hear about Scottish Gaelic, uh Welsh, um Scots as well, I know. And of course, other languages of the UK. So if you're interested in that especially, go check out the Edinburgh Language Event, which is at the end of February. So you don't have much time by the time this recording makes it to the air, but definitely worth a try, and I was in Edinburgh last year for uh Burns Night, and that was absolutely spectacular. Very nice city, I would say, it's very kind of, it's a good mix of new and old and it has a lot of food and drink options that are really nice to uh to do. So if you get the time, I highly recommend going to the Edinburgh Language Event.

The next event on our polyglot calendar overview is the Polyglot Gathering. And the Polyglot Gathering is one of the longest-running polyglot events after the conference. And I was actually part of the first one back in 2014 in Berlin, which seems like a long time ago now, I mean six years later. Uh but one of my absolutely favorite events still to this day. After a couple of years in Berlin, they moved to Bratislava. And now after a couple of years in Bratislava, they've moved it to Poland because the organizational team is uh based on there and they have experience hosting it. And also I think they wanted some uh variety. They wanted to mix it up a bit and try going to a new place and not just staying in the same every year.

And I kind of have mixed feelings about that, you know. I think it's great to visit parts of the world that you weren't perhaps going to visit yourself right away, or you didn't have any plans to go there, but then because of an event you decide to take the trip and and discover some amazing new places and some of the cities are a little bit off the beaten track. So that's also cool that you get to go some kind of interesting places. Like the Polyglot Conference for instance is a new place every year, and I'm I've been trying to attend as many of them as possible, and it's taking me to places that I don't think I would have gone to in the in the near future if it hadn't been for the Polyglot Conference. But I'll get back to that in a moment when we get to the Polyglot Conference, which is a little bit later in the year.

So what can you expect from the Polyglot Gathering? Well, the Polyglot Gathering is a very social event, so it's a very it's one of the longest events as well. I think it's four or five days with talks, presentations, and social events. And there's also other events being added like a a networking event, there's also a food and drink event where people bring food and drink from their country to kind of sample to all the participants. There's like dancing, karaoke. So there's a lot of socializing, and it's also the biggest right now. I think there's about 750 people last year in Bratislava. And that trumps all the other conferences pretty much at this point.

Um next year, so in or next next year, this year, it's going to be in Poland outside Warsaw in a in a smallish town or city, I'm not entirely sure how big it is actually. But of course, this is also something that caused a bit of a stir in the community because um for one, you know, Bratislava is pretty nice. Like why would we move out? We got everything we need. The university were very helpful. They had very big buildings and rooms we could use. It seemed like the perfect location. Bratislava also kind of affordable city in Europe, so going there was really nice. We had a lot of very, very cheap beer when we were there.

Um so in a sense, it's a shame not to go back there. But on the other hand, you know, we've been there a couple of years now. Uh we've kind of been around, we've tried the beers, maybe it's time to go to a new place. And uh it seems like they're bringing it back to kind of the original gathering standards, which means they're going to be lodging people into hotels near the venue, so we're going to have basically take over this little town outside of Warsaw. Um and again, mixed feelings about that. I think being in a in a capital city is very good for exploring, for networking, for you know, opportunities for food and drink as well.

But I also see the the benefit of everyone kind of living in the same place, and that's also why I started organizing the cruise, because socializing when you're staying in the same place, I think it's infinitely easier than if you're in a let's say when we were in um New York for the Polyglot Conference, I mean people were just scattered all over Manhattan and it was sometimes hard to connect with people at the same level as you do when you're staying at the same place, which we did for the original gathering back in 2014. We had pretty much the entire hostel where the conference was taking place, and that was a a lot of people stayed there. I think more than half of the participants stayed there, and that was just constant socializing 24/7. And some of the people I met at that first gathering are some of my best friends in the community today. So really recommend going to the Polyglot Gathering if you can make it. Um like I said, it is in a new place this year, so it's going to be interesting to see how that works out.

The next kind of polyglot programming is uh perhaps the most interesting this year is the combined efforts of LangFest and the Polyglot Conference. So normally at this point in the calendar, I would say the LangFest in Montreal is coming in August, which it was last year and I was there. It was absolutely a fantastic event, and I really love Montreal. It's really a city that I I think I could live in if uh if only they handed out free visas to everybody. But um this year they decided to do something different. They've also done it for I think three or four years now, was it 2016, 17, 18, 19? Yeah, so it must have been the fourth one uh they did in Montreal. So I can totally understand, you know, trying something new.

And what they're trying this year is they're going to be part of the Polyglot Conference. So the Polyglot Conference this year, I might as well share that with you, is going to Cholula, Mexico, which is a little bit outside of Mexico City. And um the way it works with LangFest is that LangFest is basically going to be organizing the social events around the conference, and then the Polyglot Conference is going to organize the presentations and keynotes like they always do. And I think this is really a fantastic idea because the social events at LangFest were always fantastic. Like we were meeting at a restaurant, I think two or three nights before the conference started. You know, that's not something you get in in many conferences, and it really helps people to get to know each other, you know, put a name a face to a name and and just getting a little bit acquainted before you go into two very intense days of presentations, where it can be a little bit tough to socialize a lot because everyone is watching presentations and they might not have a lot of time or you know, it's just a bit hectic where everyone's in the same building.

So I think it's cool that they're going to put bring the social events to the Polyglot Conference, which I've said in the past can be a little bit academic, a little bit dry. Um you know, it's very intense, you've got two days of presentations, that's about it. People generally meet up the night before and some of the day after it finishes as well. But there was no there was often no official events. And so in this way it's pretty cool. And Mexico also fantastic. I haven't been there before, heard really good things, and I can't wait to go over and explore a new country, a new part of the world and meet some of my friends from the polyglot community as well. I think that's going to be a lot of fun.

So, of course, if you're going to be at the Polyglot Conference and LangFest in Cholula, Mexico, it's going to be in October. So it's uh I believe it's the second to last weekend of October, around the 20th that weekend there. That's when the main conference is going to be, but I expect to get there about a week before and I expect to stay maybe a few days after the event is over. Maybe a little bit longer depending on my travel plans for that year. And I have a feeling this event is going to be really the highlight of the polyglot year as it were. I mean, obviously, I'm hoping that the Polyglot Cruise turns out amazingly and all the participants have a a great time. But uh I can't compete with the Polyglot Conference and LangFest being in the same place, you know, in in Mexico in the South and nice weather. Um and I assume nice food as well, so I'm really looking forward to that and also visiting a country I haven't visited yet. So that's going to be great.

And I think that's pretty much it. That's the kind of polyglot calendar this year, and as per usual, I'll try to be at every one of them. I can't make it to the Edinburgh one, unfortunately. I'll be in Denmark that weekend. But apart from that, I'll try to participate in all the events as I just think it's a great excuse to go traveling and catch up with friends from the community and have a jolly good time, as they would say here in the UK. So that's kind of the calendar. What events are you going to participate in? You know, let me know and hopefully we can meet up. I sometimes do Actual Fluency meetups, like for drinks or food, if we are if I am abroad. So stay tuned for that as well.

And the last piece of content here on the podcast today in this episode, and I know it's a little bit of a special episode due to the fact that I have been off the air for a while. I was very busy over the holidays. I ran a big live event over at I will teach you a language. I'm a part of the team there. And and so I haven't really had the time to record episodes also being in Denmark for most of December, obviously, makes it a little bit harder to record good episodes. But now I'm back and I thought like the um if you've ever seen American TV, they do this like intermission uh episodes or where a show is just finished and the new one hasn't quite started yet. So they they fill some of the broadcasting time with random like one-time shows or talk shows or something. And this is kind of like it, you know, I wanted to have a chance to just speak to you, just me today without any guests.

But I promise you this year is going to be amazing for the podcast. There's going to be lots of amazing guests coming on, and um this year I'm committing to four episodes a month rather than kind of the let's say two to five that I've been doing last year. And I think looking back it was a bit silly not to commit uh going forward because before I would always have an episode a week. You know, I did that for so many so long. But I think what happened was I just burned out a little bit, and I didn't really have a good organizational system where I could keep a track on the guests that I'd invited, make sure to stay ahead on the editing schedule as well. You know, you don't want to be falling behind and having to record an episode and release it on the same day. That usually leads to worse quality, so that's going to be exciting.

And I'm I'm trying this year also to get some guests on that haven't been on the Actual Fluency podcast certainly, but also haven't been interviewed by other podcasters because I must admit there's a lot of competition these days about language learning podcasts, and I have been thinking whether the kind of the run of the Actual Fluency podcast is reaching its its end, but I have decided to continue with four episodes a month for this year, and um that's the commitment that I'm making. Last year it was a little bit relaxed with that commitment, which caused a slightly fewer episodes than I had hoped I would make. But this year I'm fully committed, and then after that, who knows?

Um I think that as long as you guys want to hear from me and the guests and you're getting value, inspiration, motivation to do better with foreign language learning, getting ideas on how you can learn more languages faster or teaching more languages better or making language business, whatever it is you're interested in, then I'll probably keep making the episodes because it's pretty fun for me. I really like the networking aspect, getting to know people, and um if you're on board, then I'm on board too, you know.

I just don't want to be and this is a fear I've probably had since the beginning of the podcast, and I'll I'll tell you guys because you're like the the dedicated audience. Um you know, you listen to this kind of random episode that just came out of the blue. Um I don't want it to be kind of like a a chore. And I don't want to I don't want to invite people on the podcast just because every other podcaster has had them on, you know. I want to interview interesting people in the language learning world, but I also want to be make the interview itself interesting. I don't want to question give the same questions, like textbook questions or have a script or something. I want to dig into what it really means to be that kind of language learner. What are these high-performing polyglots really doing differently from the rest of us? And how can we apply it to our language learning? That's really the goal, and it's always been the goal with the podcast.

But I just see so many other amazing podcasts like the Fluent Show with Kerstin is great. Uh Olly Richards has a great Ask Me podcast, which is great if you have any questions for a high-performing polyglot like himself. I'm not quite a at that level, so I wouldn't really feel comp I wouldn't really feel comfortable having an Ask Me podcast. But I just see a lot of podcasts, my my good friend Jonathon Ham, who was on the previous episode, has a great podcast called Language Mastery, which he's been producing more content for lately. And so there are just new podcasts coming up all the time, and I'm not saying that they're necessarily better than the Actual Fluency podcast. I think that would be a very weird position to have, but they're they're certainly providing a lot of of similar content. But maybe that just means that more people are interested in it, who knows.

My goal as the host of this show is to find interesting guests and bring the stories out of them in an interesting way so you are entertained, inspired, motivated, and also educated to make better progress with your language learning. And if I can do that, then I'll keep doing it. And um that's pretty much it. Look forward to an amazing year for Actual Fluency and the Polyglot Cruise. I hope you can make it, by the way. I I think if you listen to this, like the the publication date of this is going to be the first week of February, so if you are listening about when it comes out, then there might be seats or spots available on the Polyglot Cruise. Go to polyglotcruise.com and check it out. It's going to be April 18th until the 25th, taking off from Barcelona, Spain. It's going to be really exciting.

And then of course, Actual Fluency, lots of new stuff coming. I've been kind of neglecting the blog a little bit, so for 2020, I want to get into doing writing more content, writing more reviews as well, because I'm I'm kind of fed up with really bad language learning software, and I think there's a lot of um services that deserve a little bit of love, if you if you know what I mean. So I definitely want to get back into that. Um if you have any suggestions for Actual Fluency in 2020, whether it is the guests that I'm interviewing or any improvements or mistakes or anything you have for me, please let me know. I'm always happy to hear any kind of concerns about the content, and any suggestions about who you'd like to see on the show as well. I get a few guest uh requests here and there, and I've so far had some amazing speakers on, but I can always interview more people. We've got, you know, 52 episodes we're going to bring out this year, so um we're going to need a lot of people. And uh hopefully you can help them help me find them for me. So Kris@actualfluency.com that's Kris with a K, K R I S, for all your recommendations, feedback, and comments. I'm really I live for those emails, so I I really appreciate you sending them.

And um that's about it. That's all I had in mind for this little intermission episode. And once again, I want to thank OptiLingo for sponsoring this season of the Actual Fluency podcast. I know it's not technically in seasons, I tried that a few years ago. Some of you old school listeners might remember the seasons of Actual Fluency podcast, how confusing it got. But uh the way I see it is like after after a while I'll have an extended break, and then when I come back it's a sort of a new season. So a fresh take on the whole thing. So we're starting a new year and I'm really happy to have OptiLingo on the way.

My good friend Jonty, who's running it, um used kind of wanted to build a resource for him to learn his heritage language of Circassian, which is um, you know, spoken around the Caucasus. And he didn't really find any ways to do it, so he built his own language learning app. And as a way to sort of uh mitigate some of those expenses, he made it available in a lot of languages, so you can go check it out. And the cool part is really that it uses audio. It's not it's not text-based and it's not just flashcards, but it is spaced repetition and it uses a method called Guided Immersion. So it means that you're constantly being asked to repeat what the app is telling you, so you you speak out loud if you can, of course. If you're in in traffic or uh sorry, if you're in public transportation, you might have to mouth it, but if you have the opportunity, you know, speak it out loud. And that way you practice not only your pronunciation, but you're also it's like a natural way of remembering.

So check out OptiLingo. I'm really grateful for them sponsoring the show. It keeps the show going, and um if you like it, like the app, definitely let Jonty know that you came from the Actual Fluency podcast. I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that you guys are are are supporters of the supporters as it were. But um yeah, thank you so much, and and thank you as always for your listenership. I'm really appreciate it. And let's make some waves in 2020, and I hope to see you at one of the many events. A little sneak preview of the next episode. We're going to have Mark Pentelton from Coffee Break Languages. Another podcast again where you can learn languages. So stay tuned for that episode coming next week.