Bits & Pretzels – SpeaQ With Me at the Founders Festival in Munich

We are back in the office!

After some days spend networking, pitching our project, getting up really early, listening to inspiring personalities and drinking beer, we are sitting at our desks again, trying to process all these impressions.

But let’s start at the beginning: We started planning to go to Munich for the startup fair Bits & Pretzels at the end of July. Bought the tickets, designed and ordered Flyer and a Roll-up for our booth, applied for the pitch and planned our schedule of speeches and classes.

Last Saturday we went to Munich early in the morning so we would have some time to see Munich before we had to get up real early on Sunday morning. The doors to the ICM (International Congress Center Munich) opened at 8 a.m. for the exhibitors. Before the visitors started pouring in at 9 a.m., we had to prepare our stand which also meant setting up the computers with a local version of  the SpeaQ With Me platform.

What would a language learning platform be without user profiles?

You already read a little bit about how the SpeaQ With Me platform is developing. In this blog post we are going to show you the next part of our language learning platform.

But let’s start slowly. On www.speaqwith.me we are currently building a social network that is designed to help people practice languages. That’s why our slogan is “social language learning for everyone”. The idea is that everyone can register on the platform to find international chat partners to practice foreign languages with.

To do so, every user needs a profile first, and that’s what we are going to show you today.

Like in every social network, the registration process contains some questions about the new user. Name, nationality and a profile picture are standard. On SpeaQ With Me the user also enters which languages he/she speaks and at what level. There will also be a section where you can describe yourself and choose from a selection of interests.

Julian the Intern

Hi SpeaQ community,

I am Julian, the first intern at SpeaQ With Me. As a part of my studies I had to do an internship (I’m studying English and French and aiming to become a teacher in the future). I wanted to complete the internship in my hometown of Saarbrücken, where SpeaQ With Me is located.

Here I am with Patrick, at the BBQ of the "Starterzentrum"
Fun Fact: "Der Schwenker schwenkt den Schwenker auf dem Schwenker"
is an actual sentence in the local Saarbrücker dialect. It means the
the grill master grills a special kind of meat on this swinging grill. 

When looking for the internship, I came across a job posting website run by the local university. SpeaQ With Me’s ad on the site was the most interesting to me because I believe that you can’t learn a language without speaking it, either.

So I decided to contact the team. They presented the concept of SpeaQ With Me to me. I was very intrigued by the aims of the company. In the end I was told that I should expect a decision about two weeks later on whether or not I would get a spot as an intern. So a bit later I received a mail which said they wanted me to work with them, and I could start on September 1st.

Work, work, work

What have we been doing for the last few weeks?

We promised to keep you updated on our work progress, so here is the first post about the development of the platform!

As you have already seen on www.speaqwith.me and our Facebook page, we are building up a new design for our landing page, social media channels, and later, for the app itself. The first thing that emerged in this design process was - of course - the logo. The SpeaQ-“Q” and its color gradient represent for us the fun, friendly and diverse range of conversations that you will have when you speaq to people on the app. You can see it now being integrated into all of the channels where we are present online. Of course this colorful logo on its nice dark blue background isn’t just for social media, and these elements will also play an important role in the app design.

Off to Munich!

Maybe you’ve already heard on Twitter that we went to Munich two weeks ago.  We were invited to go there for a team building seminar as part of the eXist startup program. This program is pretty cool, it is directed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the European Social Fund and is designed to help young startups get their ideas off the ground. As part of the project, we receive financial support and also lots of help and coaching on how to navigate the world of business as a new startup. So this team building seminar was our first official event with eXist and designed to help us get to know each other better and identify our team’s competencies.

Skipping English

I know that a lot of people who want to learn a language with SpeaQ With Me are probably interested in English, because well it’s the most popular foreign language to learn. Well, I guess for me as a native speaker I can’t really tell you about my struggles learning it, so instead I wanted to share a contrasting story of how “just saying no to English” really helped me learn a foreign language and better appreciate the culture.

So the story starts in Oregon, when I was still in High School. The older brother of a friend of mine had just come back from an exchange year in Denmark with the Rotary organization and was telling me what a cool experience it had been. He managed to convince me that I should also give it a try, and so I applied to travel abroad the next school year. I managed to get a spot in the program and when it came time for me to let them know where I preferred to be sent, I said I wanted to go somewhere with snow so I could still cross-country ski in the winter. They ended up assigning me to Sweden, so I was pretty stoked about that.

Fear of French and Other Stories

This story is about my experiences with foreign languages. It starts with me being kind of unenthusiastic or scared of learning them in school, and goes all the way to the present where I use foreign languages every day for my job and just for fun.

My first contact with another language was in school. Starting at the age of 10, I had to take English classes like many other students here in Germany. I have never been too interested in learning it, but I guess it wasn’t too bad. Eventually, after a few years of English classes the time came to choose another elective subject, and I ended up picking French. Don’t ask me why, I guess because all my friends chose French too. I actually quite liked my first French class because it wasn’t like English “which everyone has to learn.”

Around the age of 16 I had to change schools and that’s when the whole foreign language situation flipped. The English I had learned at my old school was good enough to get through the new classes and I liked my teacher a lot. But what about French? Well, I have to say I had a really hard time. When I walked into the French class I noticed that I knew maybe a third of what the other students knew. My listening and speaking abilities were especially bad, and because the teacher taught the class only in French I missed a lot of what was going on at first. Still, I had to get through it because I couldn’t change my elective for that year. In the end I survived the class, but this experience kind of traumatized me and ruined my appreciation for the French language. For a really long time after that, I didn’t want to learn anything more about French and I also didn’t want to speak it.