It’s not always easy to get a proper impression of who’s behind a website or a service. Bitesize Irish Gaelic is what you might call a “microbusiness“.
We don’t have investors. We don’t have an office except for a home office in a bedroom. There are a number of people worldwide working to keep you learning to speak the Irish language. But no-one is working full-time.
After reading a book based on another book from the 1970s, “Small is Beautiful”, I felt inspired to share with you our “smallness”.
A Bitesize Look Behind the Scenes
Being a small company means that you actually get a response from a real person when you contact us. We listen to your feedback. We consider suggestions. I suppose that also means we can’t produce just any product or service to help you learn to speak Irish Gaelic.
Bitesize Customer Support
Ana is our customer service representative when you contact us (for example, Bitesize Irish Gaelic members can ask our language expert for email help).
Ana is Serbian. She’s a student, and has enough time to check reply to your questions six days a week. If there’s a question she can’t answer directly, she’ll ask me (Eoin) for my input.
I (Eoin) work a full-time job outside of Bitesize Irish Gaelic, in Limerick, Ireland. I love spending my time creatively, which gives me the motivation to also help Biteisze Irish Gaelic. My objective is to help everyone else get their job done, ultimately helping you to learn Irish Gaelic.
Bitesize Language Expert
I’ll help Ana answer your questions if there’s a complex situation. For any Irish language question from our members, our Language Expert, Feena, will help answer your question.
Feena is from County Cork, and speaks beautiful Irish Gaelic. She has a university qualification in teaching Irish to adults. She’ll get a question every few days through Bitesize Irish Gaelic, so doesn’t spend a great deal of time on it. That means that when you do have a question in contactin us, she’ll help you.
Running This Blog
Catalin lives in Romania. He’s what is called our Content Editor. On a weekly basis, Catalin will check out blog posts to insert photos of Ireland (just like this blog post!).
He’ll also queue up email newsletters so that you can get notified of new posts in your inbox. (If you don’t get our email newsletter, take our Irish for Beginners free email course, which includes our email newsletter).
Catalin might spend less than an hour per week on Bitesize Irish Gaelic. It depends if we have other projects running. For example, he’s in the middle of updating the Bitesize lessons that are part of Bitesize Irish Gaelic so that the audio buttons are bigger and easier to use.
Keeping Our Server Running
Raquel lives in the Philippines. She’s an expert systems administrator. She keeps our server up to date. She also helps out with projects, like our move from www.bitesizeirishgaelic.com to www.bitesize.irish.
Editing our Podcast
The Bitesize Irish Gaelic Podcast gets to your iTunes or other account thanks to Paula. She’s also in the Philippines.
Paula is an expert audio editor. I email new potential guests of the podcast, and coordinate their interview time. I interview the guest over a Skype audio call usually, and record it. The recording gets saved and uploaded online.
From there, Paula takes over. She’ll edit out all my mistakes during the podcast interview 😉 She’ll then add music to the episode, upload it here to our blog, and queue it up on time.
Bitesize Team
I hope that gives you a nice insight into our Bitesize Team. It might surprise you that it takes a bunch of people to keep the service running. “It’s just a website!”, you might say to yourself. But it does take work to make sure we’re still here for you to be learning to speak Irish Gaelic.
Learning Irish Gaelic in Bitesize Portions
Being Bitesize is at the core of our philosophy. Our Bitesize Method calls on you to take a single Bitesize lesson from our program each day, and take five of those lessons per week.
You’re much more likely to find motivation to keep learning if you do it regularly in Bitesize portions, rather than in long boring sessions that de-motivate you.
Being Bitesize is something we strive towards, and we keep working to be true to that philosophy. For example, our Project Chunkify in 2015 made it a reality that our online language program is now broken down into manageable Levels, with each level split into weeks of lessons.
That being said, I wish some of our lessons were indeed more Bitesize. It’s hard to find that balance of explaining a new concept to you, while also keeping it short. The later lessons are also less than Bitesize, with a few month’s worth of lessons in the last level. That’s not Bitesize enough for me, and I would love to break our program into a larger number of smaller levels.
Dig Into our Bitesize Philosophy
Have you yet to try our Bitesize Irish Gaelic online program?
If this Bitesize philosphy lies in with your beliefs, we welcome you to try our online program. You’ll learn to speak your first conversation in Irish Gealic, with lots of recordings and phonetic pronunciation guides.
Click here to take a free no-obligations trial, and start with a Bitesize lesson today.
10 thoughts on “Being Bitesize is Beautiful”
I LOVE the “smallness” of Bitesize! (But I didn’t realize you were so spread out and global!) When I was thinking about using Bitesize lessons for myself and my home schooled teenage daughter, Eoin actually telephoned me from Ireland to discuss it. Of COURSE I signed up! Between that phone call and the podcasts, I feel like I know you personally! Same goes for Ana, wit whom I’ve exchanged emails. Love the Bitesize family!
It’s lovely to have you as part of the family for so long, Renee.
Ana has been wonderful trying to help me ,but I’ve had terrible trouble over almost two years with access to the wonderful lessons being stopped and with being bombarded by applications for a “free” trial.
If you do start getting free trial emails after starting a free trial, please do click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of those emails.
Thanks for sticking through it.
Hi Eoin and the rest of Bitesize team
Dia Dhuit
It’s great to hear about who’s involved and where they’re from and what the different roles there are. I’m loving learning Irish through Bitesize Irish Gaelic but I’m also impressed at the online business itself – it’s a genuine, successful website business. I think some of the important factors that make it successful are that it promotes a community feel and has inspirational podcasts that broaden the language to the culture of music, poetry, writing, travel, Irish culture generally, and – my favorite – ancient and medieval Irish culture and language and folklore!
Well done guys and keep going!
Slán go fóill 🙂
Neasa
Hi Neasa, thanks for being part of the Bitesize family. Nice to hear you enjoy the podcasts too. On the medieval side, I hope you got to listen to these episodes:
http://www.bitesize.irish/blog/podcast037/
http://www.bitesize.irish/blog/podcast022/
Hi Neasa, I saw your post. I have been interested in the ancient Irish Culture for a few years, which includes folklore and more. It’s nice to discover someone who has the same interest. Thank you!
I must confess I have been a bit disorganized in my learning program…. 🙁
But that’s nice to know the names of the Bitesize team…. I really like to feel I am talking to people, and people from everywhere! (normally, we tend to forget that… because we are facing a screen!)
That’s nice to know!
I’d love to see peoples pictures, to match the names! 😀
Ops… people’s pictures! 😛
I tried Rosetta Stone; I was very upset. I am seriously considering your lessons. I am learning Irish from a teach yourself book. I have been learning vocabulary and grammar for the past six months. After learning this, I want to be able to reinforce it with pronunciation. This is why I am considering your lessons. Thank you so much! I am amazed at the support system you have.