Wow! What a busy week here at Intand!  The past two weeks have seen us attend two different trade shows.  The first show we attended was the National Rural Education Association conference in Branson, MO.  This was a great way for us to spread the word about how rural schools can benefit from using an online school calendar.  Special thanks to John Hill and everyone at NREA for making this great show come together!

The second show we attended was the Tech & Learning conference in Phoenix, AZ. This was the second year in a row that we attended this conference and are sad to find out that it will be the last.  In the future, the NSBA conference and T & L will be combined into one major conference.

Thank you to the current customers that stopped by our booth!  It was great to meet you and we hope you enjoy your Starbucks gift cards!

For everyone here at Intand, the last few months have been a whirlwind. As our company continues to grow and expand our offerings, we have gradually outgrown our space. To maintain our service, we needed a larger space to call home.

For two months, we slowly packed up our belongings, sifting through memories as we entered a new chapter in the Intand journey. Finally, the last week of May, we had everything ready. Thankfully, our new office is only a few miles away from the old office. Being close made it very easy for us transport everything to the new location. We hired some day workers to help with the move and they helped our moving team get everything into the new location.

Beforehand the floor plan was made, and the offices were allocated for each team member. The Support team is sharing an office with a view of the beautiful Mount Rainier. Next to them is the development team. They are sharing an office close to the conference room and on the other side of the conference room there is the sales bullpen. This is the loudest room in the building. Four sales representatives talking to our current customers and potential customers creates a very lively atmosphere.

The offices are rounded out by our COO Sherri Bealkowski keeping everyone organized and Bryan and Diane in the back corner creating and completing our visions of grandeur.

One of the greatest parts of our new office space is the lunch area. We are now blessed with a completely open lunch seating area where we can enjoy our pizza Thursday’s, bounce ideas off of our development team and we have ample wall space for white boards – the universal key to company innovation.

Take a look at some of the photos of our team putting together some cubicles and moving Intand to our new home!

Intand will be sending out a monthly newsletter, Tandem Tidings, to Tandem administrators with tips, news, and helpful information about using Tandem’s school calendar software. Here are a few snippets from the newsletter:

Message From Intand’s President

It seems like just yesterday that we were starting up Intand in Bellevue, Washington with the hopes of getting 10-15 school districts on board. Over the past 5 years, we have grown much larger than 10-15 districts! Currently, Tandem is being used by districts in 44 states! Along the way, we have been able to collect a fantastic team at Intand who are truly dedicated to your school and district. We hope you have enjoyed using Tandem to connect with your parents and organize your school as much as we have enjoyed serving you. If you aren’t already, please consider using Tandem district-wide, for all of your schools and all of your events. In this past year, we have seen a significant difference in the districts who are using Tandem district-wide as opposed to using it only at 1-2 schools. Talk to your support representative about how to get started on this; it’s easier than you think! In all of this, we hope to be making your jobs easier, so you can spend time on what is important this season. Enjoy your Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the joyous holidays of the season!

Warmly,
Bryan Otis

Upcoming Webinars

Ongoing training is very important.  We know that changes occur in your staff and faculty, people come and go and we are here to get those new and infrequent users up to speed.  In addition to our customized paid training sessions, we offer a free weekly webinar called the Tandem Genius Series.  The weekly topics are posted on our website, www.intand.com in the Support section and you can pre-register for the sessions that you’d like to learn more about.

Nov. 18th Requesting Transportation & Adding a Trip (Tandem Plus Users)
Nov. 25 Schedules, make them your friend!

Tandem Referral Program
Our success is attributed in large part to users like yourself. Many of you have spread the word and shared your Tandem experience with other schools and districts.

As a Thank You we are offering you an extended subscription. From now until the end of the year, if you refer a school or district and they sign up for a Tandem Standard or Tandem Plus subscription, we will add 1 month to the end of your subscription free of charge! There is no limit—so if you refer 5 schools that sign up, you will receive an additional 5 months to your subscription for FREE. Simply send an email to support@intand.com and tell us who you have referred so your school will get the credit.

Share Your Story
Would you like to share your success story and gain global recognition for your school or district? We are working on new case studies, or success stories as we are calling them, to show the world how Tandem for Schools has made a difference for you, your school, and your community. Have you:

• Established consistency and a fair process for managing facilities?
• Reduced scheduling conflicts?
• Eliminated paper-based systems?
• Increased event awareness?
• Improved communication between faculty and staff?
• Become more efficient?
• Improved your image and made a stronger community?

This would be a great opportunity for your journalism class or club to conduct interviews off and on camera! If you don’t have a journalism group, no problem! A member from the Tandem support team will conduct the brief interview and get the story ready for publishing on our website. Just let us know if you are interested and we will guide you through the short and simple process from start to finish.

Intand CIO, Scott Otis was interviewed by Channel 9 to demo Tandem for School’s integration with Microsoft code name Geneva Server and Windows CardSpace by using the Zend Framework for information card support. This allows Tandem to consume claims from the school’s “Geneva” server, to authenticate users with the school’s database (Active Directory).

See the video that explains how it was done here.

To Intand was on TechCrunch recently for their partnership with Cozi to launch the site SchoolCal.org which provides parents with information on online school calendars and lets them vote to encourage their school to consider implementing an online school calendar.

From TechCrunch:

It can be a struggle for parents to juggle their kids’ school events, games and conferences and it’s becoming increasingly common for parents to use web services to manage family calendars. But schools still remain stubbornly disconnected from parents online. While more and more schools are turning to the web as a platform, less than 5% of schools, both public and private, are offering parents internet school calendars.

While we don’t think schools are being stubborn, we do want to let schools and parents know about the tremendous benefits that an online school calendar provides. SchoolCal.org describes some of these benefits such as:

• Access to school calendar information anytime you need it.
• Parents can be immediately notified of schedule changes, like snow days or baseball rain outs.
• Parent can sync school events to their current web calendar like Outlook, Cozi, iCal, Google Calendar, etc.
• Plan vacations, after-school activities, and appointments more easily.
• Eliminate accidental double bookings on your calendar.

To learn more visit SchoolCal.org.

You may be considering Tandem for Schools as a calendar tool to use at your school or district.  We’d like you to have the most information possible so you can make the best decision.  Though we’re kinda biased and think Tandem works great, there are some ways for you to learn more:

Our Product Information Page – Tons of info here, along with videos that clearly explain product features.

Support Forums – Even though you may not be set up with Tandem yet, this is a great place to learn more about Tandem features.

Email Us or call us at 866-685-3449 – Free free to contact us with your questions.  We’ll get back to you ASAP to see how we can help out.

Let us know how we can help you!