We're building the platform educators actually want.
SoWo is co-created with the teachers who'll use it. Our mission is to make learning real: connecting classroom work to the real world for every learner.
Why SoWo exists
Fix Education.
Make Learning Real.
Reconnect learning to the real world by leveraging technology to propagate community and joy.
The origin
Social World started with a conversation between three people who'd each spent years close to language education. Darcy Rogers had built OWL into a community of thousands of teachers who saw what real communicative teaching could do. Matt Felser had spent over a decade running businesses and learning what it takes to scale something teachers actually trust. Wes Johnson had built AI systems that could finally do what teachers had been asking of technology for years.
The platforms were getting bigger. The classrooms were getting harder. The gap between what teachers needed and what edtech delivered kept widening.
We sat down in October 2024 and asked: what would we build if we built it with teachers from day one? SoWo is what came out of that question.
Five behavioral filters
These are how we make decisions about hiring, partnerships, facilitator fit, and product. They're behaviors, not aspirations. We score ourselves on them.
Meet People Where They Are
We meet learners, teammates, and partners at their level: their context, their language, their starting point. We adapt to them; we don't expect them to adapt to us.
Lift Others
We invest in the people around us: colleagues, learners, partners, community. Their wins are our wins.
Bring Joy
We contribute energy. We make work and learning feel alive. We don't drain the room. We fill it.
Own It
We take responsibility for outcomes, say what we mean, do what we say, and tell the truth about the gap between.
Make It Real
We build, ship, and teach things that work in the real world. We measure success by what people can actually do, not what they completed. Every feature, every conversation, every program earns its place by improving outcomes.
Three people. Complementary expertise.
Darcy Rogers
Leads product vision, facilitator relationships, and learning design. Founder of Organic World Languages with 15+ years coaching teachers in 50+ countries.
Matt Felser
Leads business operations, brand, go-to-market, and organizational systems. Background in operating and scaling small companies into trusted brands.
Wes Johnson
Leads platform, AI development, and engineering. Built the AI systems behind SoWo's personalization and facilitator dashboards.
We start with language.
Our first year is for OWL-trained facilitators and bootcamp attendees.
From there we expand to the broader world-language teaching community, department chairs, and language program directors. Then into adult education, community ESL, and pilot schools. We grow with the community, not ahead of it.
Connected to
Organic World Languages (OWL): the teacher community and pedagogy our work is grounded in.
Social Languages: the language education organization our founding team grew out of.
Absurd Technologies: a technical partner whose foundations our platform builds on.