30 Words

THE LAUNCHING OF THE 30 WORDS’ 30 LANGUAGES TOUR

As a muggy afternoon melted into a crisp and pleasant evening, 30 Words was busy setting up a ‘language class’ on Hollywood Boulevard.  Our artfully (think- the art only your mother would love) painted sign advertised our unique request to passersby - “Teach Me Your Language!”

Hollywood Boulevard was the launching point for the 30 Words’ 30 Language Challenge. This summer, the 30 Words Crew is traveling the West Coast in an attempt to learn 30 languages.  The 30 Words Tour will roll from Shakespearean Festivals to Native American Reservations to the famous Boulevards of Los Angeles, looking for people to sit with us for an hour or so and teach a beginner’s language course.

We hope our trip highlights certain truths about learning a new language:

1) Anyone can start speaking a language quickly.

Focusing on useful content is the key.  Starting to speak immediately is the goal, and talking with shop keepers, bus drivers, new friends, strangers, and others will teach you how a language is used.  Real conversations will help you develop a sense of what words and phrases are used most frequently.

2) You don’t need to look hard for a teacher.

Anyone who uses a language daily is, for all practical purposes, a language ‘expert’.  We all know how our language is used and what words and phrases are most useful because we use language in every aspect of our lives.  This intimate knowledge enables all of us to teach language.  Unlike math or science, subjects which require deep study for expertise, language is such an intimate part of our lives that we can not help but be experts in its use.

When traveling in a foreign country, you are surrounded by ‘experts’ in the local language.  From hard hearing elders to gregarious children, anyone can  be your teacher.

3) Learning a language is fun.

Breaking down a language and beginning to speak is a blast.  Choose content you want to learn and a place you enjoy learning.  We can write about this all we want, but what better way to make it clear  than actually having a fun time?  We believe our photographs, videos, and stories from the trip will illustrate this point clearly.

When 30 Words set out to build a new language guide, we wanted to build a guide that was small enough to carried everywhere and durable enough to survive serious abuse.  Why?  We wanted to build a platform that would allow travelers to learn and speak a new language anywhere.  Wherever travelers feel comfortable using a newly acquired language, a Language Guide should be there to help - whether one is wine tasting or resting on a surfboard off the Indonesian coast.

OUR FIRST LANGUAGE CLASS:

Back on Hollywood Boulevard, 30 Words was preparing to prove these beliefs about learning a new language. However, it appeared we had signed up for a daunting task. Glitzy lights illuminated a bevy of street artists dressed as famous figures.  A dazzling Marilyn Monroe stood glamorously over a fan, twisting and turning above an invisible air stream.  Jesus strolled stone-faced up and down the avenue.  How could 30 Words compete with such attractions?

We did not even have time to ’set up’ before a passerby sans costume approached…

“What are you selling?”  He asked.

“Nothing.  We are here to talk to people about languages.”

“Why?”

“I sell language guides and I want to talk to people about learning languages.”

“Got it… a bait-and-switch.”  he said knowingly.

“No, we want to learn languages so we are looking for teachers.”

long pause.  skepticism dances across the man’s brow…

“I don’t get it.”  He said as he turned to chase down Jesus for a photograph.

Despite a less than auspicious start, within two minutes of setting up our sign, we met our first teacher.  Our teacher, David, volunteered to teach 30 Words the basics of Hebrew.

Before our lesson finished, a group of students approached and asked what we were doing.  The students represented a diverse range of languages - from Mandarin to Spanish to Luganda, a language spoken in Uganda.  One of the students, Joshua, sat down and taught 30 Words the intricacies of Luganda.  While our sign promised that we needed five minutes of each teacher’s time, both classes lasted close to an hour. Needless to say, we were impressed with our teachers poise and patience.

With two classes in the bank, the energy and the excitement of the night left 30 Words exhausted.  However, 30 Words’ 30 Language Tour was off to a great start.  In one evening we met two fascinating and generous people who took the time to teach a couple of strangers their languages.

After recieving the first of the guides last week, it was time for some fun.  I am lucky to have a great model (my younger cousin) who was willing to work for two popsicles.  Considering that a popsicle is roughly equal to our weekly salary at 30 Words, we felt she was well compensated.  

Many thanks to our brave cousin!

After testing the guide’s strength by suspending our cousin, we challenged our guides to hold a little more weight.  I was able to hang from our guide until my arms gave out.  We knew our material was durable, but we were still impressed with the results!  Also, even after this test, the 30 Words guide still folded up nicely.  

Yes - 30 Words are strong. We are not sure if we would recommend doing pull-ups with your guide - this is PURELY for effect.

We also took our guides out around our home in San Francisco’s Mission District.  It was fun to see how some of our neighbors reacted to our unique guides.  While most of our neighborhood is fluent in Spanish, our neighbors were impressed by 30 Words’ unique design… Perhaps they simply enjoyed the chance to try chopping through a guide.

After a heated exchange, an angry neighbor fails to chop through a 30 Words

 Thanks for checking in!  If you have any 30 Words photos you would like to submit send them in and we will try to work them into our site.  

Also, If you have some ideas for strength tests you would like to see 30 Words perform, please send us a note.  We love a good challenge!

 - Andrew and Erin

Yesterday, approximately 9 months after the idea of 30 Words was born, we finally printed our first set of language guides.  Over the course of the last few weeks Erin and I have been working long hours in preparation for the print.  After numerous pots of coffee, encouragement from the world’s greatest roommates, and too many days of red eyes, we were excited to hand off our project to our expert printer.  Our printer is legendary for the tenure of its employees, and I must say I was impressed.  I asked three employees how long they had worked in the print industry and all had the same answer - “Way too long.”  Their work might not offer the same level of excitement it once did, but I found the employees’ responses very reassuring. 

As our print date approached, Erin and I became increasingly particular about every detail of our guides.  Last Thursday, after our files were submitted to the printer, we drove to the printer’s office to examine a ‘proof’ of our guides.  We arrived at ten in the morning and expected to walk out fifteen minutes later.  Instead, we spent the rest of the afternoon at an extra desk at the printer’s office editing our guides.  By the end of the day, Erin and I were convinced we had made our final adjustments.  When we returned Friday to examine another proof, however, we immediately identified a more changes.  We apologized to the printer and asked for another “fifteen minutes” to edit.  When we walked away from the editing table five hours later, the printer had a smile on his face  that seemed to say “damn amateurs!”  However, we left the printer that day with a final product, a signed ‘proof’’, and set our press time for 11 a.m. on Monday, April 6th.  

Over the weekend, the words of my prescient aunt ran through my head.  She warned me weeks ago that ‘No matter how perfect you think your guides will be, as soon as they come off the press you will find mistakes.’   Erin and I could not have missed anything… right?  

When we walked into the press room Monday morning, we were surprised to see more alignment and spacing issues we could not accept.  With a look of exasperation, our press manager plopped us back down on the computer and we went back to work.  Working against the clock, Erin and I breezed through the final editing session.  With a press sheet now in hand, I can honestly say that after an hour of looking at our guides I think we have produced a pretty darn accurate, effective, and beautiful guide

To the amateur (me) printing is an amazing process.  We printed our guides on a press over 60 feet long and almost 10 feet tall.  The machine is so long that the print managers who stand at each end of the sonorous machine speak into microphones, relaying information about color levels, paper volumes, and other details we were happy to have out of our hands.  At the tail end of the press sit deep carts, stuffed to the brim with discarded press sheets used to test coloring.  Discarded press sheets pile up until the color manager is able to match the sheets coming off the press to the ‘proof’ we signed earlier.  Over the course of an hour or so, the color manager manipulates the density of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink to arrive at a perfect sheet.  Throughout this process I was reminded again how pleased I was that everyone working had been employed in the print industry ‘way too long’.  I was content to be the only amateur in sight.    

Our press run finally wrapped up around Midnight.   Erin and I left the printers to their work and enjoyed a nice train ride home.  We cannot tell you how excited we are to finally see our idea in printed form.  Tomorrow, after the guides are cut, scored, and ready to go, we are going to begin the real journey - building a company around your feedback, our dreams, and many more late nights.

Take care!  

Andrew and Erin

Tonight, the late night crew at 30 Words is wrapping up our penultimate editing session of the European and South American Spanish guides.  This is (at minimum) our 25th penultimate editing session. 

After so many hours of minor tinkering, I am amused (and often frightened) to recall the lengthy development of our product.  I remember the near de-railings, the silly thoughts, the brazen proclamations, and the wrong turns 30 Words has taken.  I imagine that every young business experiences similar challenges, however, in one’s mind one’s own mistakes seem the most foolhardy, the most avoidable, and, after coming to peace with them, the most educational.  

The other day, as Erin and I re-re-re-re-re-..-edited 30 Words, I pulled from my closet some of the old guide mock-ups I had built. The earliest mock-ups are particularly amusing.  Some early prototypes are so packed with information that I have difficulty finding words amongst the jumbled masses.  Others  reflect eye-numbing color choices I made to ‘help’ differentiate between the tightly packed lines.  All are laced with spelling errors, silly word choices, and faulty phrases.  At one point during my review of these old guides, I had to flip open my computer to absorb the pleasing spacing and order of our guides as they appear today (sorry, shameless plug…)  

Shockingly, as these old mock-up guides approached a level I now consider amateur (at best), I began contacting Bay Area printers to inform them I was nearly ready to print.  ”How much would it cost to print 100 guides?” I asked.  I could almost hear the laughing on the other end of the phone.  (For those not familiar with printing, this is the rough equivalent of hiring an ocean freighter to transport a few hundred pairs of shoes.)  I soon heard back that I was welcome to print such a quantity, but my production costs would hover around $45 per guide!  Needless to say, I had a lot to learn.  

As the first print of 30 Words nears, I was drawn to pull out my old mock-ups to see just how dramatically the guides had changed.  These old guides are the markers of our journey, they reveal many of the challenges we faced in creating our current design.  Sometimes, looking over the written or visual evidence of how much work you put into a project is calming.  I still remember my high school running coach telling our team at the beginning of a season, “Find a notebook and each night write down how far and fast you ran, how long you lifted, and how many hills you climbed.  The night before a big race, pull it out and slowly read through your training notes.  Even if you are still nervous about the race, you will know that you are prepared for whatever challenge it brings.”  

And you know what?  He was right.

Pulling out these old mockups before our print was my way of looking back at the work Erin and I have poured into our project.  One may feel ready to run a good race after a short warm up, however, one’s strength to finish a race is derived from the hours of work poured into the dream when nobody was looking, when the 9-5er’s have gone home to roost, and when the sun has dropped below the horizon.    

Truly though, our project is only about to begin.  The next phase of our journey will include many more twists and turns, distribution methods will go awry (blown gasket while trucking up I-5?), marketing techniques will flop (who knew dancing Mongolians are SO not in right now.), and sleep schedules will be tossed out the window.  However, at least in this slight ‘calm’ before the storm, we can feel confident that we have put in the work to prepare for a few of these challenges.    

I hope you enjoyed this short mental wandering.  These blog posts will expose you to the inner workings of 30 Words; our tough decisions, the challenges of working on a small team, and the beautiful journey of starting a small business.  At best, maybe these posts will inspire you to follow your own passions.  My theory is that  if I illustrate how many mistakes I have made you may be inspired to explore that idea, large or small, that keeps dancing in your head.  

Cheers!

This morning a great friend boarded a plane for a far away land.  She is the type of traveler my sister and I envisioned when we designed 30 WORDS language guides seven months ago.  She is blessed with an infectious lust for adventure and an eagerness to learn that epitomizes a great travel companion.   

Last night my traveling friend and I stayed up late debating language guides, discussing the best ways to meet locals, and laughing over a host of our favorite travel stories (some of which may appear in the blog at a later date…).  Watching my friend prepare for departure reminded me of some of the nuances of traveling and the preparations that go into an adventurous, inspiring, and fulfilling journey.  

  1.  Pack Smart:  Emphasis is often placed on ‘packing light’.  However, it is equally important to pack consciously.  A well packed bag allows a traveler to pull anything from their bag at a moments notice.  Packing ‘conciously’ means you can tell a fellow traveler where to find your airplane ticket even as you rush off to deal with a last minute errand.  Knowing where items are equates to knowing what you have.  Knowing what you carry (your tools for adventure) is the first step in becoming a resourceful traveler.  

 2.  Bring Language Guides that you know and love:  My friend is taking two Mandarin guides on her adventure.  I have traveled with one of the books before and I loved it.  However, my experience with is also inspired me to develop a better guide.  Undoubtedly, there are many good language guides on the market, but there is no perfect guide book out there, not even our own.  Therefore, find one that you enjoy and take the time familiarize yourself with the organization of the guide.  Travelers who become intimate with their language guide (or better yet, the language) possess a tool more valuable than anything they can carry. 

 3. Travel with an open schedule:  If you decide not to buy a ticket home, you are both a fortunate and courageous traveler.  If you do not know where you will be sleeping on the second night of your adventure, you may be a master traveler.   Open traveling requires patience, a smile, and optimism – and the willingness to recognize that your frightening misadventures will become valuable learning experiences… or slightly entertaining blog posts.    

 4. Seek local knowledge.  Any adventure is more fun when you open yourself to learning.  Be it a new language, knife throwing, or harvesting rice, showing a willingness to learn leads to new friends, invitations to dinner, and ultimately, a more fulfilling travel experience.  Who knows?  It may even launch your career.  In traveling, as in many other arenas, if one arrives prepared to be a student, he or she may leave prepared to be a teacher.  

My best to all who are reading this but especially to my friends on the road.  Feel free to peruse the links on this page, they encompass the beliefs of 30 WORDS but more importantly are posts that are good for the soul!

Finally:  Here is my promise: not ALL blog posts will be oriented toward language guides.  I know there is a danger in writing about traveling and coming across as a blogging salesman.  That is simply not what this blog is about.  (Feel free to visit www.30words.com if you want a REAL sales pitch.)  

Cheers!