2024W19 - Polyglot Gathering Day 1 & 2
It's not what I thought it would be
Update halfway through
While I have been in Prague since Sunday, the main event has only been on for two days now.
Which means intense socializing from morning to evening 🦋
Tomorrow is the big day: I have to give my talk in front of an audience I don’t know, without having rehearsed anything, because I don’t believe in scripting.
It’s my first conference talk, ever 🤞
It’s not about language
Surprisingly enough, nobody here speaks about the intricacies of any language.
Everybody is here to have a good time, so you hear a lot of Spanish, English, and German for communication.
Most people know each other already because the Polyglot world is small (this year, the event had a record number of participants: 800).
What I’ve found is that this is a great environment to make lasting friendships.
I met David (second from the left) last year in Budapest, and now six months later it still feels like no time has passed in between.
Leo (right) and I clicked instantly and even though we’ve only known each other for two days now, we both know that this is the start of a great friendship.
John (left) entered the picture today and fits right into the group.
We’re exercising and eating together every day, in the meantime discussing business: how to achieve more freedom, working less, earning more, and spending time doing things you enjoy.
It’s a great group to be a part of!
Hungarian and Estonian are still ultra-niche languages
I still haven’t gotten over the fact that even at an event like this, where all the people with niche interests come together, you have only tens of Hungarian and Finnish speakers, and even fewer Estonian speakers.
When people who speak 6+ languages on a high level tell you that knowing Estonian and Hungarian is impressive to them, it actually means something 😅.
Definitely more motivation to keep at it!
So what’s next?
Well, being surrounded by successful overachievers in all areas of life actually made me sit down, get my act together, and finish something I had been procrastinating on for 6 months:
Creating new teaching materials to boil down the 8-hour Estonian workshop into a 3-hour Estonian workshop.
This is critical because I believe the new approach can achieve better results for participants, as well as open up more opportunities for running workshops.
But it needs to be tested first, and testing, for the longest time, had been blocked by design.
Not anymore though!