Language Exchange Relationships are Complicated

Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of hosting TWiST Paris, our meetup that enables French start-up companies to pitch a local audience in English and then get the opportunity to present their business to US entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis live via Skype.

During  a short break, actually right before our live call with the States I had the chance for a quick chat with an attendee. He asked me why language exchange platforms apparently don’t seem to take off.  As I feel that my answer fell short and has probably left him with many open questions, this blog might be a good place to give him and some other readers asking yourselves the same set of questions an answer.

Honestly, I was distracted due to TWiST and how to “trick” Jason Calacanis to allow all six companies to present. So, apologies for that.

On my way back to Brittany the next day, I had some time to think about the question and if I’m not completely mistaken, the person who asked me was Will Hatfield who founded AngloBuddy.fr.

Continue reading

Languages Out There and Vivox turn Facebook into a global Language Exchange

Today Languages Out There officially launched its Facebook project in partnership with Vivox, the company which offers the first VoIP client on the social network.

Facebook users can now buy Self Study, One-to-one and Group Courses in the English Out There Book Store on the Facebook page of the company and practice their English with their native speaking friends on Facebook.

Continue reading

Personal Review of the second E-Teachers Conference

Before starting to give you my personal review I have to thank a couple of people. Let me start with Vikrama Dhiman of WiZiQ who supported me all the way from the planning to the ETCon today. I think he did an amazing job, so Kudos to you! You made the second ETCon a really smooth event for everyone involved.

Secondly I want to thank the members of the panel. Jason West of Languages Out There who did a great presentation about communities and shared emotion, Bernhard Niesner of busuu who gave us an inside view of his company and his thoughts on self regulating communities and the difference between in house developed content compared to crowdsourced content, Kevin Chen of italki who talked about problems of international / global platforms and the right member mix and last but not least again Vikrama Dhiman who explained how non educational companies use crowdsourcing and that crowdsourcing not always needs a community.

And of course I have to thank the great audience. You asked awesome questions that led to a resourceful discussion of the panel at the end. Thank you for attending the ETCon and spreading the word. I really appreciate your interest!

Continue reading