Library Public/Private Partnership

Great to see this blog post today written by Saul Amdursky, Director of the Des Moines Public Library, about their new Live Homework Help program.

DMPL's homework help program launched last week at http://www.desmoineslibrary.com/, and a screen shot of their home page is shown here on the left.

I'm thrilled to have a progressive library leader working with us on a new model for a public/private partnership -- one that helps the Des Moines community of parents and students with a valuable educational service, helps the public library with a new source of funding, and helps Tutor.com grow awareness of online tutoring throughout the community.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Going Global

You don't start a web site or a web business without some level of international ambition. That's the web, it's global and you can't control it.

For many web businesses, it's a no-brainer on day 1 -- a visitor/reader/customer from Belgium or Japan is just as good or better as one from Kansas or California. The more happy visitors spreading the word about your products across the globe, the better. If you sell lots of advertising for every page served, or if your customers pay for shipping for your products, you're happy to have a global audience the minute you launch.

For Tutor.com, it's a bit more complicated. National and regional curriculum standards, language and cultural issues, educational systems and buying habits, legal and education regulations, all require a deep understanding of local education markets and very likely matching students with local tutors. Serving a student in London or Jakarta one minute and Kansas the next is not technologically harder than just sticking to the US, but will the student in Jakarta get the help she needs consistently?

The answer to that question, of course, depends on how focused the company is on going global and how much hard work, resources, and smarts you put into making sure the customer will be happy. Because delivering a high-quality educational experience is more complicated than delivering a web page or a package in the mail, Tutor.com's answer is Go Global, but Go Cautiously, and go when we have the management bandwidth to do it well.

Even if you follow the company closely, you may not be aware that YourTutor.com (aka Tutoring Australasia), found at http://yourtutor.com.au/, is a company founded and operated in partnership with Tutor.com. This was our first international experiment, now about 3 years old, thriving, and serving thousands of students in Australia with live one-to-one on demand tutoring using the technologies and operational know-how created and developed at Tutor.com.

International demand for on-demand one-to-one high quality education is, not surprisingly, very high. One sign of that demand is the dozen requests for calls/meetings I've taken in the past month from smart business people and educators who want to bring Tutor.com to their country, and in a few cases to many other countries.

Going global is another exciting opportunity and challenge for us, and one that we will rise to in a way that ensures that students coming to us for help are connected to tutors who provide an excellent educational experience.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

MetLife Homework Study Results Released

Yesterday, Metlife released a significant study conducted by Harris Interactive, more info and the entire report can be found at MetLife's press release site.

Great to see increased awareness of how important homework is in the lives and performance of students, and to see further acknowledgment of the effect of homework struggles on the family.

This issue rises it's head often in the press, with examples like the NYC council trying to legislate limits on homework quantity, with parents suing to reduce amount of homework, and with experts releasing books about the inadequacy of the way homework fits into our educational system.

Bottom line for me has not changed, and it's reinforced by the accurate MetLife study:

-- Homework is necessary to reinforce what was learned in school and to prepare for the next step in learning.

-- Homework is good if:

-- it is truly tied to the instruction that was recently delivered,
-- it really helps the child understand the concepts better, and most importantly,
-- the child has someone to turn to when he or she is stuck (which is what Tutor.com is dedicated to doing for all students).

For more thoughts on the issue, see my previous post at http://ceotutor.blogspot.com/2006/12/too-much-hom%20ework.html, and a guest column I wrote for EdWeek's EdBizBuzz blog on Feb 20th, found here. Learning does not stop when the school day is over, and our education system and allocation of dollars need to start taking that fact into account.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com
http://www.tutor.com/

Good use of technology is good

Recently read Patrick Walsh's op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post. I normally cringe when I read stories of educators and school administrators dismissing new technologies as ineffective, but I couldn't agree more with Patrick Welsh's overall perspective on technology and learning. And the last line of the article really says it all -- technology is just a means to an end, and like any tool with great potential, if you use it for the wrong job, it won't get you the right result. The shiniest best screwdriver shouldn't be used as a hammer. Doesn't mean it's a bad screwdriver, just means that the people who's job it is to figure out how to build a great house may not have thought through fully what tools are needed and when they should be used as much as the carpenters have.

Teachers need to be part of the planning process for all technology innovations in schools. Buy-in is a must, because even if the technology is potentially productive, the classroom is where the rubber meets the road, and if the driver of the classroom is not bought into and is not a master of the new technology, the technology will do more harm than good.

We think about these issues constantly as we prepare our 2,500+ tutors (many of them are classroom teachers) and roll out new features and capabilities in our software. Every teacher deserves quality professional development for every new initiative -- for us this means a process of preparation, student feedback, session review, and structured mentoring provided by our 200 tutor mentors.

We, at Tutor.com, of course want technology to spread like wildfire. Every teacher and every household should be comfortable with hardware and software that can be used to enhance the learning process. But that spread has to be controlled, thoughtful, and directed to the learning process, so that stories of backlash against bad implementations of technologies are few and far between. When teachers get to be part of the planning process and get the training and support they need, the new technologies will be adopted and loved. And the students will be the ones who benefit most.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Waking up to The New York Times

I must admit that I'm thrilled this morning about today's NY Times Cyberfamilias column -- "On Demand, on Time and for a Fee, an Army of Tutors Appears": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/fashion/31CYBER.html?ref=personaltech -- Tutor.com is covered in depth in this long, thoughtful article .

The columnist, Michelle Slatalla, does an excellent job of capturing the effect online tutoring can have on a family learning for the first time that what we do (providing expert subject help the minute a child needs it) is possible and we do it thousands of times each day to the extreme satisfaction of parents and students.

This will definitely go a long way to helping us build awareness about online tutoring, and encourage parents and student to try it. Today, the NY Times. Tomorrow, Oprah?!?

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com
www.tutor.com

Sandbox in Vegas

I haven't met too many entrepreneurs who aren't gamblers on some level, and I'm not an exception. We take a dozen risks and bets on our judgement each day, with every decision we make. Yet I can't say I'm a big fan of Vegas.

Unless, of course, thousands of people are coming into town to share their consumer innovations at CES. This year, a small group of media pros active in youth media and education services (Robin Raskin, Claire Greene, and Wendy Smolen), had the brilliant idea of organizing a conference within the huge CES conference and dubbed it "The Sandbox Summit" -- a sandbox for industry folks to gather to "to look at the way technology is affecting our kids’ lives". All kinds of info about it at http://www.sandboxsummit.org/index.html, including a Tutor.com-centric blog entry at http://www.sandboxsummit.org/blog/?p=22.

I expected a modest audience for the first year of this concept of a conference, but it turned into a standing room only experience with at least a couple hundred in the audience for the list of panelists (http://www.sandboxsummit.org/summit_ces.html) and networking times. Lots of great partnership leads for us out of the summit, and excellent press coverage -- http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gH8Rv3BUqji6dFLbGS7Rt0wuu1UAD8U20PC80, http://www.pr-inside.com/tutor-com-featured-at-sandbox-summit-at-r371323.htm, and http://www.centredaily.com/business/technology/story/322428.html).

Here's my official vote for a 2nd annual Sandbox Summit next year at CES, and hopefully at other conferences -- we need our best innovators to gather in sandboxes everywhere and focus their energy on how to best serve kids.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com
http://www.tutor.com/

(Picture above left is Bart Epstein, our SVP Corporate Development, being congratulated and awarded a prize by Miss America for winning the Norton Cyber Smackdown kids online safety game show at CES.)

Libraries and BookCrossing.com

Libraries are a really big part of my life. I wish I could say books are too, but I read for fun and personal satisfaction much less than I used to before starting Tutor.com (New Year's resolutions maybe in a separate post later).

But libraries are always on my mind -- I've been to every American Library Association conference in the past 7 years and am a member and active sponsor of ALA; I am on the Board of Directors of Libraries for the Future (www.lff.org); more than 1,800 library locations in 45 states are customers of Tutor.com; and I often think back to the many days at the local public library in Queens as a very young immigrant (see brief story at http://www.tutor.com/libraries/we_love_libraries.aspx).

So when I read today's Cyberfamilia's column in the NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/fashion/20Cyber.html), I got excited by the topic (new way to share books) and the creative perspective on libraries. As a result, I just created my account at http://www.bookcrossing.com. Just brilliant how one person with an idea can tap into the true power of the Internet to build a network of millions of people around the idea of spreading knowledge. I want to see BookCrossing break the million user mark, so go join, register your first book, set it free, and tell a few friends.

As you've seen from my previous postings, I rarely write about topics that aren't somehow related to Tutor.com, and this isn't an exception. Lots of fodder here for thoughts about building a community of users -- fodder that you'll see turning into reality in 2008...

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Tow Truck Scheduled to Arrive, Next Tuesday at 6pm

The toughest part of building a company like Tutor.com is that the vast majority of people (students, parents, teachers, school administrators) who would benefit most from the new idea of on demand tutoring, have no idea that what we do 5,000 times each night is even possible.

You may be thinking, yeah sure, another web company with another idea they think will change the world. Exactly! iTunes and iPods changed us. eBay, Google, NetFlix and ETrade changed the way we buy, sell, find info, see ads, watch movies, manage our finances. Isn't it time someone came around with a better way to learn every day.

Yes, colleges and universities, and even virtual high schools have allowed students of all ages to learn more conveniently by taking courses online. But I'm talking about every day learning -- immediate, empowering, there when you need it learning. What the Internet is great for -- no appointments, no waiting for help kind of learning.

Imagine for a minute that you're stuck in your car in a ditch on the side of the road and you call AAA. You expect the rep on the phone to tell you that a truck will be out there to help you in 15 minutes. What if the rep gave you a different answer: "We'll schedule an appointment for your tow truck to arrive next Tuesday at 6pm". Until then, you have to stay stuck and figure something else out.

That is the answer millions of students have to figure out how to be satisfied with every night -- they're stuck and not in small numbers -- with algebra homework, a chemistry take home quiz, a history report they have to submit and don't know how to start, a tough geometry problem they need to understand before a test in 2 days. "Don't worry" we tell them, "Help is on its way next Tuesday at 6pm". Help, in the form of an appointment with a tutor, a scheduled office hours session with a classroom teacher, a group tutoring session at a learning center. They're used to getting that answer, so they don't demand something better.

But millions of students (and their parents) are screaming out for help -- "I need help now, not next Tuesday at 6pm". I want the tow truck to get here in 15 minutes, not in 4 days, as you would tell the rep on the phone. Even more unfortunately, families don't have a rep on the phone to yell at, so they yell at each other, every night, because of the angst and frustration when parents can't help their struggling kids with homework or a test, and the kids fall behind little by little and lose confidence in themselves.

Most kids and parents just don't know that getting help the minute they need it is possible.

Yesterday, we issued two press releases -- you can read them at http://www.tutor.com/press/press_releases.aspx. First, announcing that we provided on demand help to kids 112,438 times in the last month. Those are big numbers, bigger than any other online tutoring company, but nothing compared to the number of kids and families that needed help out of the millions of students that got stuck on something last month. Secondly, announcing that we're seeing real hard proof that not only do the students and parents feel great about the on demand one-to-one help they're getting, but that help is resulting in real performance improvements. The kind of improvement that will lead to better grades, and being able to go to get into a great college.

Now we've got to figure out how to get the word out to 50+ million other students in the US who will get stuck on something at some point this school year, and wished that help was available in minutes instead of 4 days, which is often as good as never. That's a challenge I, and the team at Tutor.com is very much up for...

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Where I'm From

Maybe I'm getting sentimental and overly introspective as I slip gradually into middle age (the US Census lists middle age as including both the age categories 35 to 44 and 45 to 54), so I'm there already. I don't spend a lot of time on this blog, or anywhere for that matter, talking about my childhood, what has driven me through life, and what has caused me to be who I am, but I find myself thinking more and more about those questions.

In building Tutor.com, I do spend a lot of time thinking about what makes people learn, in the classroom, when they're stuck, under pressure before a test, as well as the kind of meta-learning about one's ability to learn that makes one be a better learner and happier person through life.

OK, I'm about to tie the two thoughts together -- my current introspection and my professional thinking about learning process. Came together last week for me when I got to my desk one morning, had a minute to shuffle through papers I needed to read, and found a poem that my oldest child (11 year old girl) had written a few weeks before but had not made it to my eyes. Here it is, in full, below:

Where I’m from
By: -- Cigale, Age 11
I am from the scratching of a pen on paper
From antique mirrors and stain glass windows
I am from the soft fluffed feathers of pillows
From the fragrant purple lavender bush
And the pale birch tree
Whose limbs I remember as if they were my own
I’m from potato latkes and spicy pork chops
From squabbling brothers and loving parents
I’m from lullabies and twirling bike wheels
And from gliding on the ice skating rink
Like a spinning top
I’m from be yourself and reach out
And from live your life to the fullest
I’m from telling my family everything
I’m from the cold winters of Boston
And Russia where my family started
I’m from corn on the cob and sweat peaches
From the day my brother fell
And we were so happy to see him get up again
I’m from precious photo albums lined in a neat row
On the windowsill
That help me remember - times good and bad
Forever

Well, as you can imagine, even though I'm not a big fan of poetry and usually take it like cough medicine when I am forced to, that one choked me up. And beyond the emotion and pride I felt reading this and realizing that so much of the parenting we've done has sunk in, I realized I had a lot to learn. Hearing my daughter articulate so well her thoughts about where she is from made me realize how little thought I've given it over the past 20 busy years.

So I gave it some thought, and after a week or so, I realized how much those early year of my life drive the way I run Tutor.com, the types of people I bring into the company, and the types of risks I encourage our leaders to take. I shared those thoughts this week at a company meeting, at the risk of appearing self-indulgent.

Most of the 60 Tutor.com employees had never heard my 30 minute condensed life story and 30 minute explanation of how that life story has influenced my vision for the company and how we work together to build something great. I thought there was a decent chance such sharing with the staff could be a waste of time, but it was anything but. The life story, the link to our business, and the Q&A that followed was priceless for employee understanding and morale.

Being a good CEO is a learning process, and a good learner needs to be open to surprising sources -- sometimes from a competitor, sometimes from a prospective partner or investor, and sometimes from an 11 year old's poem.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Tutor.com Live on National Cable

I'm not on live national cable every day, so when I am (and it comes out looking pretty good), I need to share -- Fox Business Kid Money Segment ran this morning live at around 10:50am from their midtown Manhattan studios. Hard to get everything into 3 minutes, but I was able to get the key points across to this business and finance focused audience.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

The Good of Creative Good and W2.0

I got off the red-eye flight at JFK at 8:30am yesterday, more energized than I've ever felt getting off a plane and walking through an airport after 3 hours of sleep (in 10-15 minute increments) in a scrunched sold-out JetBlue flight. No sarcasm here (this time) -- really energized from two days in San Francisco, at one of the more productive conferences I've attended in years.

The group I'm very happy to be a part of after this first meeting is the Creative Good Councils, more info at http://creativegood.com/councils/. A snip from their site: "Creative Good's...Councils are a peer-learning network for executives and managers dealing with marketing, product development and management, and customer experience across a range of industries. The Councils are built on two simple but powerful concepts: the importance of customer-centric business design, and the value of asking for help from one's peers."

Always good to get the time to step above the trees and see the whole forest for a day or two, but much better when you can take a look at the forest from high above with with 200-300 other people working to understand the landscape and to make the best forward-looking decisions about their products and for their customers. Most of the time was spent with a subset of that larger group, my council of 20 executives, talking about challenges, listening to similar experiences of others, taking and giving advice, and thinking deeply about how to apply that advice to the unique dynamics of our business and the characteristics of our customers.

Maybe the most productive and energizing discussions for me were around the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and what it really means or could mean for Tutor.com. The councils are built on a foundation of strict confidence, so I won’t attribute a good analogy to a specific council member – imagine if you went to Woodstock, but you could not see or interact with the hundreds of thousands of people on the grass with you; you could experience the great music, the food, the other fun stuff, but although you kind of knew they were there, you had no sense for what the other people having the same experience as you were doing; that’s Web 1.0, when you go to a site, buy stuff, read stuff, get good stuff from a site, but have no sense what the other thousands of people that are at the site are thinking or doing, and no way to interact with them. Web 2.0 becomes the real Woodstock, where by using blogs, wikis, videos and other user generated content and community tools, the experience becomes richer, more meaningful, and more compelling for the customer. And if done right, more productive for the business behind the experience.

The key is doing it right, and that takes a lot of thought and is different depending on the nature of the offering and the expectations and needs of the customer coming to the site. The core of Tutor.com is all about connecting people to people for help, but there's so much more that we could do to build a vibrant community of students, parents, and educators. Lots to think about what this means for Tutor.com, and that's why I'm energized.

So, bleary eyed, I created my first Facebook profile yesterday and linked up with some of my new friends from the Councils. Another step in an ongoing adventure.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

"Mom is Vice President!"

Recently, I had a friendly and productive conversation with Nataly Kogan, founder and CEO of http://www.workitmom.com/. An empowering new site and business that Nataly started a few months ago, Work, it Mom! provides a place for many well-known (and soon-to-be-well-known) bloggers to write, share, and interact with other working moms in a vibrant community.

A mutual friend connected us because she thought we'd have a lot to talk about and a business partnership may evolve. She was right. The community, as the URL implies, has been built by and for working moms. Since so many of Tutor.com's customers and tutors are working moms, I figured it was time for a subtle plug.

I learned that Nataly comes from a couple of worlds that are very familiar to me -- we both immigrated to the US from Russia as kids, learning a new culture and language, and adapting well. After a stint at McKinsey, Nataly worked at early stage companies and then spent a few years in the high powered world of venture capital investing, a world I have spent a good amount of time in over the past 10 years. Being on the investor side made her realize how much she enjoyed building a company, and that led to the birth of Work it, Mom! earlier this year.

Check out the site -- there's so much valuable content on a wide range of family and professional issues that all moms and all professionals with families tackle every day. And the writers and contributors are great; many are hand-picked by Nataly and her team because they already have an impressive blogging presence and devoted readership. You can easily become a member and start sharing your thoughts and experiences by writing at http://www.workitmom.com/.

And for more insight into the people behind Tutor.com, take a look at Work it, Mom!'s interview with Joan Rooney, Tutor.com's Vice President of Provider Management. Joan (picture -- top row, 2nd from left) and her team manage over 2,000 Tutor.com tutors, and she shares her thoughts about her job, family life, and the challenges and glory of being a working mom. Interview is at http://www.workitmom.com/interview-512.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

All Access Algebra

Today, we're announcing a unique and exciting program we're launching in Dallas called All Access Algebra. We're working closely with the Richardson Independent School District, as well as providing 200 free minutes of on demand tutoring for every algebra student in the Dallas area. To learn more, read our official press release below or at http://www.tutor.com/, and take a look at my 5-minute appearance on the Good Morning Texas show.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

***************************

Tutor.com Provides Dallas-Area Students with Free On Demand Tutoring

Students can Sign Up Today for “All Access Algebra” to get
200 Minutes of Free Tutoring for the Fall Semester

Students Attending Richardson Independent School District have
Access to Expanded Program


Dallas, TX (September 26, 2007) – Tutor.com, the leading provider of on demand tutoring and homework help, is kicking off two free programs for Dallas-area students that offer online help from professional tutors the minute a student gets stuck.

All Access Algebra launches today and allows any student in the greater Dallas-area enrolled in any Algebra course to sign up for 200 minutes of Tutor.com free during the fall semester. Tutor.com is also working with the Richardson Independent School District to offer all enrolled 7th -12th graders access to free tutoring in all core subjects for the 2007-08 school year.

Dallas-area students should go to www.tutor.com/algebra to sign up for their 200 free minutes between September 26 and October 10. The free tutoring minutes can be used anytime through December 31, 2007. Students will be able to log onto Tutor.com the minute they get stuck with Algebra homework and get one-to-one help from a professional tutor for as much or as little time as they need. The service is available seven days a week from 1:00 p.m. – Midnight, Central Time. Students never need to schedule an appointment.

An expanded version of the initiative is being rolled out to the nearly 15,000 7th through 12th grade students in the Richardson Independent School District (RISD). Through the RISD partnership, Tutor.com will offer 300 minutes of homework help free, which can be used throughout the entire 2007 – 2008 school year in math, science, social studies and English. Students in the Richardson Independent School district will receive special instructions, mailed directly to their homes in early October.

Whenever a student gets stuck and needs help, he or she simply selects the grade level and subject that’s giving them difficulty. Within a few minutes, the student is connected to a professional tutor for live one-to-one help. Once connected, the student and tutor chat using instant messaging, draw problems on an interactive whiteboard, share documents to review essays and papers, and use educational resources on the Web together. Sessions are saved so that students and parents can review them at any time.

Dallas was chosen for these on demand tutoring programs because Texas recently joined a growing number of states that are raising high school academic standards, as the nation is challenged to better prepare students for higher education and fields requiring math and science proficiency. Starting with this year’s freshman class, four years of high school math and science will be required in Texas to earn a high school diploma. Educators consider Algebra a “gateway course” that can set the stage for achievement in more advanced math and other coursework requiring critical thinking skills.

“Empowering students to get help the minute they need it is the key to improving both learning and confidence,” said George Cigale, founder and CEO, Tutor.com. “Millions of students turn to us for help in math and science so we know how challenging these courses are and just how much one-to-one support children need. By offering Tutor.com to students in the Dallas area, we hope to better equip them not only for Algebra but for all the classes they must navigate as part of the more demanding high school requirements. Once families experience the power of on demand tutoring, they’ll find it an essential educational resource.”

“We are committed to helping our students achieve the highest academic performance possible and, to that end, look to provide our students and parents with a full range of educational tools both inside and outside of the classroom,” said RISD Superintendent Dr. David Simmons. “We are very excited to be working with Tutor.com to offer our students on demand homework help, and I encourage students, parents and teachers to tap into this resource.”


How to Participate: To participate in All Access Algebra, students and parents outside of the Richardson ISD can register for their free minutes at www.tutor.com/algebra between September 26 and October 10, 2007. The free minutes must be used by 12/31/07. Students in the Richardson ISD will receive information and unique access codes directly from the school district.

About Tutor.com
Tutor.com creates innovative, on demand homework help and tutoring services that connect students to a professional tutor online the moment they need help in math, science, social studies or English. Our network of over 1,800 professional tutors has delivered over 2.5 million one-to-one tutoring sessions. Tutor.com services include Tutor.com Direct, an on demand tutoring service for families and Live Homework Help, an after-school program offered at over 1,600 public libraries. Tutor.com also powers two statewide, governor-supported initiatives, HomeworkKansas and HomeworkAlabama. Tutor.com was named to Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Program for the New York Region in 2006, was honored as one of the 25 Best Small Companies for Women 2007 by Working Mother and ranked in the first-ever Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. For more information please visit http://www.tutor.com/ or call 1.800.411.1970.

# # #

Good Morning Dallas!

An energizing and sometimes scary part of my job as Founder and CEO of Tutor.com is doing interviews and acting as the company spokesperson when the press wants to report on Tutor.com. I can tell the Tutor.com story to reporters and editors of newspapers, magazines, even radio, in my sleep. Our press page (http://www.tutor.com/press/default.aspx) is full of great coverage from a variety of interviews.

But when it comes to TV, especially unedited TV with hundreds of thousands of viewers, the adrenaline starts flowing. I've heard that even actors and TV personalities have trouble watching themselves on TV. Well, I think this one came out OK -- http://www.wfaa.com/video/nspparent-index.html?nvid=176475&shu=1. Maybe even better than OK. This 5 minute appearance aired last week, on September 19th on Good Morning Texas, the Dallas-area ABC affiliate regional show that follows Good Morning, America!

Take a look and let me know what you think, and I welcome advice from TV appearance veterans who know how to control the nervousness that comes with live TV and come out looking great.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

"Math Doesn't Suck", Danica's Book and Theorem

Before I dive into "Math Doesn't Suck" and the story behind it, take a look at this clip from KTLA's morning show in LA -- http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/video/ktla-video-danicamckellar,0,1765339.htmlstory?coll=ktla-video-1.

Very cool mention about Tutor.com, and a valiant effort to make math hot (again?). Here's the background: you may remember Danica McKellar as Winnie from The Wonder Years, and more recently as Elsie from The West Wing. In between the two, among other endeavors, Danica graduated from UCLA with a degree in Mathematics and actually co-authored a Journal of Physical mathematical physics theorem (The Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem). Impressive stuff and she'd just getting started.

Now Danica is on a mission to inspire middle school girls to succeed in math, and make sure they have the support they need to keep confidence levels high when math gets tough. Her new book is "Math Doesn't Suck", subhead "How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail". She just got awarded the ABC World News "Person of the Week" for writing the book.

When we heard about the book, we got really excited, and after some partnership talks, now every person who purchases the book gets 75 free minutes of on demand tutoring from Tutor.com. If you've already bought the book, you just need to give us a call. If you haven't, you can go to most book sellers online, to http://www.mathdoesntsuck.com/, or to www.tutor.com/danica.

On a personal note, when I brought the book home to read, my 11 year old middle school daughter picked it up, perused the back cover to learn about the author and get the quick summary, flipped it over to the front cover, and said “this is cool, who’s the girl on the front cover?”. To which my wife replied matter of factly, “that’s the author”. My daughter, shocked, said, “I thought it was a book model! The author is a mathematician, actress, and looks so cool? Can I bring this in to school and show my friends?”

Math is cool!

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Vacation Week -- Microsoft, RVing, WSJ

So far, it's just been all work, work, work on this blog. But even the most dedicated of CEO's need some time away. So I thought I'd share some pictures and news from the past week that I spent with my family in upstate NY. Don't click away yet if you're just here to learn more about Tutor.com and have no patience for fluffy stuff -- lots of company news below.

Not all vacations are equal, and this one was definitely set up to be an adventure. My wife and I have three great kids, ages 11, 9, and 5. We packed all of us into a 28 foot RV and headed to campgrounds on and around Lake George for about 10 days. Neither of us had ever been in an RV before, but we got some books, checked out some online RV communities, watched the Robin Williams RV movie, and did a test a couple months ago with a short weekend trip that wasn't a complete disaster.



If you're looking for a vacation full of learning experiences and chances to get close (really close in a cramped RV) with your family, this one hits the spot. It was about as far away from an all-inclusive beach resort vacation as you could get. Everyone was put to work, but the work was often fun -- finding wood for fires, for arrows, for marshmallow roasting, making fires, making bows and arrows (my youngest in the picture on the left), lugging water, finding bait for fishing...


We dove headlong into the adventure, like this shot of me diving off rocks into the lake. I'll spare you the details -- we came out alive, unscathed, with some great experiences the kids will be talking about for years. But we're also ready for an all-inclusive resort for the next trip. :-)


Of course, time does not stop if I head off into the woods. I had my laptop and broadband Sprint card with me for when we had electricity and cell coverage in between campgrounds, downloading a few days of messages and replies at a time. I've got to say I have a great group of managers and staff -- an amazing amount of work was done while I was away, and critical decisions were made without delay, because everyone that needed to feel empowered was.


We broke some great news on my vacation week -- announcing a key partnership with Microsoft, Tutor.com becoming their preferred online tutoring provider. Among other aspects of the partnership, customers who purchase Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 through major retailers and online will receive 75 minutes of Tutor.com Direct. Press release can be seen at Microsoft or at Tutor.com. Note for a future post in more depth -- it is not easy for a smaller company like ours to negotiate a deal with a larger company -- negotiation leverage is skewed, turnaround time and legal review can be excruciatingly long, contracts are often one-sided. To illustrate the pain a small company can experience in such negotiations, I often use the story of the chicken and the pig who decide to go into business together -- the chicken suggests to the pig, "we can open a diner and serve bacon and eggs" -- not too fair a deal for the pig, and exactly where many small companies find themselves when working with a bigger company. Microsoft, however, was great in every way, an ideal partner and I'm not just saying that because they'll likely be reading this. The deal was done quickly, fairly, and in a way that gets both companies what they need to succeed.


And on the last day of my vacation, on 8/10/07, I found myself in the Wall Street Journal in an article that was appropriate for a vacation week, titled "Cutting Edge Executives", about CEO's that enjoy woodworking, primarily to get away from the hustle and bustle of business. George Anders did a great job in this piece of tying woodworking to the business world.


That's all for now, good to be back at my desk, well rested, and with reliable Internet access and electricity that I take for granted a little less now.


George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

From ALA to NECC, part two

In my last post, I wrote about Tutor.com's events, panels, reception, awards, and exhibit at the ALA annual conference in DC. Exhilarating,

I left DC and ALA after 2 days, a little earlier than usual (leaving a very competent team of 10 or so Tutor.com people to take care of ALA events), in order to spend a couple days in Atlanta at NECC -- the National Educational Computing Conference. Unlike ALA, NECC was an exploratory mission for me. No big Tutor.com staff, exhibit booth, or well planned events. Just me -- exploring partnership opportunities, talking with educators, and participating in the coolest event at NECC -- Tabula Digita's multi-player educational game tournament.

Tutor.com was a sponsor of the first annual tournament, and it was a great event. Thirteen teens from across the country, finalists from smaller tournaments, gathered in Atlanta for a shoot-em-up video game tournament with a twist -- Tabula Digita's software tests game players' algebra and other math skills while they're shooting their way through a landscape and collecting points, competing with other networked players in real-time. Three 5-minute tournament rounds on a high-tech stage, in front of a crowd of 200 or so. While shooting, players (learners) are solving slope equations and the crowd anxiously watches as time runs out.

It was fun to watch, sponsor, and be a part of. The kids were excited, and the crowd was really involved, cheering their favorite players on. Tutor.com sponsored the tournament alongside Apple, ISTE, the Atlanta Braves (tough for this Mets fan), and others. Winners and finalists received Apple products, Braves tickets, and Tutor.com Direct time for one-to-one live tutoring in math or any other subject.

Tabula Digita's tournament was a real draw, and the rest of NECC was productive too. As I walked the exhibit floor slowly, learning about new educational companies and products, I was impressed and pleasantly surprised by the variety of innovations in instructional software, teacher and community tools, and an array of new and growing companies offering new education solutions. Now we've got to figure out how to partner with the best of these companies -- hundreds of opportunities to sift through -- so we can work with them to bring live one-to-one tutoring into the homes and lives of millions of students.

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com

Pictures above: 1) Tournament finalists with sponsors and Tabula Digita founder and CEO in front of the tournament stage, 2) second place winner and me, and 3) first place winner and me.

From ALA to NECC, part one

Just finished a four day whirlwind tour, at two major conferences -- ALA in Washington DC and NECC in Atlanta. That's the American Library Association annual conference and the National Educational Computing Conference.

Topic for today's post --what makes for a great conference? For Tutor.com and for me? Let's start with ALA, and in a couple days I'll do a part two posting on NECC.

We spend tens of thousands of dollars on planning for and attending ALA. This is the one time when 15,000 library leaders and librarians are in one place, and we have a chance to tell our story -- that many of their peers have benefited from working with Tutor.com to bring Live Homework Help to their communities. Over 1,600 library locations in 43 states will serve over a million Live Homework Help sessions this year.

At the annual conference, we try to accomplish a few key goals:

-- Provide a setting where we can thank our current clients, award them for their marketing and program innovations, and provide them a forum to share their experiences and stories with their peers across the country. This year, we had over 100 clients show up for our Innovators Awards reception. Sounds like all business, but the atmosphere was great, and the bartenders served many an orange drink that we invented: The Raving Fan, a secret recipe creating a delicious fruity drink. :-) Not enough of a reason to become a Tutor.com client, but not a bad topper during a busy conference.

-- Create a setting where prospective clients get to hear real live stories from current clients about their Live Homework Help and Ask A Librarian programs, to help through the decision making process. This year's breakfast had over 120 attendees, and featured three great speakers, including ALA President and Director of Princeton Public Library, Leslie Burger.

-- Have a great booth where clients and prospective clients can talk to us, see a great demo, and learn more. We had a dozen Tutor.com people at the booth, including technology managers, tutor management staff, and even two tutors for the first time. Not only do we get great feedback and sales leads, but our staff comes back super energized from interacting with our clients.

-- Support library associations and advocacy efforts. We were proud to sponsor Leslie Burger's Emerging Leader's program, Urban Library Council events, YALSA's Teen Tech Week, RUSA events. Great way to thank library leaders for their support, give back to the library community, and increase awareness of Tutor.com's commitment to library programs.

When hundreds of people tell you how much they appreciate your service and your support of the programs that matter to them -- now that makes for a successful conference.

NECC report in a couple days....

George Cigale, gcigale@tutor.com