The Tutor.com Blog

What a week it has been! From warm and sunny days in San Diego to snow-covered NYC! Everyone is finally home after a great ALA MW 2011 conference. Overall, we had a crew of six Tutor team members on hand in California. There were some long time veterans (Susan Del Rosario, Tom Squillace, Sandi White and Gary Yip) and two new Tutor.com faces (Lauren Lobdell and Stephen Schrage).

Everyone had a really wonderful experience at ALA MW – meeting with clients and new friends, and working live-and-in-person with remote co-workers. Highlights included the charm of friendly San Diego Californians, the amazing Mexican food, sunset on at Mission Beach, the excitement of the convention center hall itself, and the wonderful energy of the attendees who stopped by our booth. Overall, this conference felt like there was real renewed enthusiasm among all attending.

Lauren’s first conference experience was a great one! She got to meet a bunch of clients in-person and was busy at the booth demoing our newest mobile app, Tutor.com To Go. “It was great to hear about how many clients think that this will be a valuable tool in helping their patrons bridge the digital divide.”

Holly Jin, Children’s Librarian of Skokie Public Library shared the blog post she wrote to get the word out about this new research tool for students.

Steve Schrage, our new conference go-to guy, was excited to be able to share the Tutor.com experience with our friends at Mango Languages. Carly from Mango Languages came over to the booth to try out Tutor.com for herself.  It was her first time using the service and she spent about 15 minutes with one of our expert tutors, re-learning how to do a challenging math problem.  Steve reports that “she was blown away by how easy it was and she is going back to find out if her library offers Tutor.com.”

It was wonderful hearing about all the exciting things librarians are doing for their communities. We met up with our friends from Joliet Public Library including director, Dianne Harmon, and program manager, Andrea Sowers. This year, Andrea sat on the Fabulous Films for Young Adults committee. Their theme was “Other Times, Other Places,” focused on historical, fantasy, and science fiction movies. Take a look at the list of Fab Films for YA 2011.

Tutor.com Account Executive Susan DelRosario really enjoyed attending the Sunrise Speaker Series (Kathy Reichs) with Terry from Solano County Library.

We were really proud to see that the feedback we incorporated from our Advisory boards and feedback surveys were well received. Clients really loved our mobile app, and were also impressed by the new feature improvements! Students can now select and connect to their favorite tutors again and again and even see tutors’ schedules to plan their homework and study time.

Thanks for a great time, and don’t forget to check out more of our pictures and include your own in the ALA Midwinter Flickr pool. See you in New Orleans!

Sitting in my sunny San Diego hotel room awaiting the beginning of my very first ALA MW conference, I have a lot of thoughts and questions running through my mind. I really do not know what to expect for this weekend!

I have been to other conventions, conferences, festivals and tradeshows for various industries, but never to a library event such as this and never before as an exhibitor (well unless you count my experience as a film festival volunteer). Besides being very excited to be out in beautiful and warm So-Cal city for a few days (and consequently out of cold, cold New York City), here are 5 things are I am very excited about for my first ALA:

1. Meeting up with my clients – forget email and phones, there is nothing like an in-person meeting. It will be really great to put a face with a name and library!
2. Seeing my remote co-workers – Since I started back in August, I have had the pleasure of talking with my awesome offsite co-workers almost every day, but I have yet to meet/see/interact with them in person. Can’t wait for Tom, Susan, and Sandi to arrive!
3. Attending sessions – As always, our friends at YALSA have put together a great agenda of events.  I would love suggestions as well!  As a lit and film scholar and enthusiast, I totally relish the chance to hear what library professionals have to say about my favorite subjects.
4. Sharing our brand new features – We have so many new and exciting enhancements that I can’t wait to share with our current clients and newcomers: Mobile app, student lockers, favorite tutors, and much more.
5. Meeting new people – Whether it’s hanging out with some Mango Languages staff “talking shop” or introducing new people to Tutor.com in the convention center, I love to hear other people’s stories. So far the people of San Diego have been friendly, charming, and helpful and I can’t wait to meet many more as ALA gets underway.

Please help me!  I could really use an ALA tour guide. Pass along some tips about what I should expect or do as a newbie at the conference. Also, be sure to come say hi and chat with us at booth 904!

This post is from Lauren Lobdell, Tutor.com’s newest Client Services Manager. Help Lauren out by leaving your tips in the comments section, or tweet us @tutordotcom

To celebrate the New Year many of us are getting on planes to fly to sunny San Diego for the ALA Midwinter Meeting to hang out at booth #904.  Walking along snow-free streets, smelling the ocean and eating fish tacos are a few of our favorite things to do in San Digeo.  And here are a few of our new favorite things that we’ll be demonstrating at the show.

Tutor.com’s Favorites List for 2011

• Tutor.com To Go -  Tutor.com’s first mobile app for the iPhone and iPod Touch was already recognized by Apple as “New and Noteworthy.”  Today, library patrons can browse the our library of vetted online resources from their phones and by spring students will be able to connect to a tutor.

• Favorite Tutors – We love all of our 2,200+ tutors, but we know students have their top 3 or 4 or 5+ favorites.  Now students can select and connect to their favorite tutors again and again and even see tutors’ schedules to plan their homework and study time. This is the most requested feature on feedback surveys and we’re excited to show it off at the ALA Midwinter Meeting.

• Enhanced Graphical Reports – we’ve redesigned our reports to include more visual charts that are easy to print or use in presentations.  We’ve also added trend data to show the value of your program to funding authorities.  Check them out at the show!

Thanks to our Library Advisory Council,  students (1 million completed surveys and counting) and tutor network for helping us create these services which we know will soon be on your favorites list too!

And speaking of favorites, if you’re not following us on Twitter then start today, because we’ll be tweeting throughout the show asking you for your favorite conference moments and giving away very cool mobile accessories at booth #904.

What are you most looking forward to at the Midwinter ALA Meeting?