App Recommendations from the EverCrew

At EverTrue we believe in the power of mobile and we love apps.

This Holiday Season, as you might come across a new gadget, or find some extra time on a smart phone or iPad, our team recommends 10 apps that we have found helpful to make us be more productive and have more fun!

1. Courtney Camps, Director of Client Services: THIS AMERICAN LIFE

The quick run-down: This American Life is a hit public radio show and most weeks, the most popular podcast in the country.

Why Courtney loves it: “The show is an hour long so I never get the chance to listen to it straight through but I love being able to have the whole show catalog on my phone to listen to when walking to work or traveling. The app is easy to use, organized and provides hours of entertainment on interesting topics from the awesome show!”

2. Jesse Bardo, VP of Sales: 360 PANORAMA

The quick run-down: Beautiful Panoramas Made Easy

Why Jesse loves it: “Taking 360 pictures of the locations you are in and then sharing those to Facebook and Twitter and letting your friends interact with the location you are in is absolutely fantastic. Probably the coolest app I have on my phone.”

3. Harvey Simmons, Marketing Associate: SPOTIFY

The quick run-down: “The Celestial Jukebox is no pipe dream; it’s here now”- Time

Why Harvey loves it: “Spotify makes music easy and social. With Spotify I have access to tons of music, constantly discover new artists and share with my friends on Facebook the music that I enjoy the most.”

4. Brent Grinna, CEO and co-founder: FLIPBOARD

The quick run-down: Flipboard creates a personalized  magazine of everything being shared with you.

Why Brent loves it: “Flipboard offers a great experience through its centralized content platform. I love the Flipboard “Technology” channel, but also really enjoy reading my LinkedIn Today news feed and Twitter stream via Flipboard.”

5. Eric Carlstrom, CTO and co-founder: FIND MY FRIENDS

The quick run-down: Find My Friends allows you to easily locate friends and family from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

Why Eric loves it: “Find Friends” finally gives me the features I wanted on my phone for years… I’ve used other third-party apps, but they’ve never worked as well. It’s such a great tool in many situations, but especially when my family is travelling. I know exactly when to pick them up at the bus station and plan a warm welcome. It’s awesome because it has a real impact on my day-to-day life – save me time, and shows the real power of information. I only wish more people used it!”

6. Andrew, Programmer: INSTAGRAM

The quick run-down: Free, fun and simple way to make gorgeous photos on your iPhone.

Why Andrew loves it: “Makes it unbelievably easy to do something that should be so simple; share photos. Seems silly but it is a huge challenge to design a UI and UX that has the right balance of functionality and simplicity.”

7. Drew, Programmer: TWITTER

The quick run-down: Follow your interests: instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world.

Why Drew loves it: “I love consuming content on my phone and Twitter is amazing for finding relative content”

8. Fanghao Chen, Software Developer Intern: EVERNOTE

The quick run-down: Evernote turns your smart device into an extension of your brain, helping you remember everything and anything that happens in your life.

Why Fanghao loves it: “Easy to use and share. Clean and simple UI design. Native view is my favorite part.”

9. PJ Gray, Senior iOS Developer: WORLDLENS

The quick run-down: Instantly translate printed words from one language to another in real time using your iPhone’s video camera.

Why PJ loves it: “This is the only app that I have seen that I really have been like “How the heck did they do that?”.  The translator is awesome and even keeps the fonts and colors the same as it easily translates print materials.”

10. Tony DiPasquale, Programer: YELP

The quick run-down: Search and review local businesses, restaurants, and more.  Use fellow customer reviews to make your purchasing decisions.

Why Tony loves it: “I love how you can easily jump in and out of the map view.  Once in the map you can hit the “see what’s around me” to locate what other businesses are in the area you are searching in.”

Have any App Recommendations? Tell us at info@evertrue.com.

Ever True,

Harvey

Battling Young Alumni Unemployment

“It’s tough out there”.

As the class of 2007 gets underway with 5^th reunion gift campaigns across the country, we’ve been reflecting on the impact the macroeconomic roulette wheel can have on different graduating classes.

Reunion gift campaigns are never easy, but things are particularly challenging amidst 200,000 job losses in the financial sector this year alone.

Contrast this economic backdrop with graduation day five years ago and Fortune Magazine’s proclamations that “right now is about as good as it gets”.

How quickly things change.

And while the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that employment rates are slowly improving, many recent graduates, particularly those younger than 25, continue to struggle as they kick off their young careers.

This is demonstrated most starkly by the Federal Reserve’s recent announcement that 8.8% percent of students scheduled to begin repaying their loans in 2009 defaulted in 2010, versus the 4.6% percent student loan default rate in 2005.

With all of these challenges, what can your school to do to support young alumni?

70% of all jobs are found through networking. For generations, many alumni have turned to our strongest networking community: our Alma Mater.

The strength of this connection helped one of our most recent employees, Harvey Simmons, land his first startup gig at Accel-backed professional networking startup BranchOut. While he corresponded with the company’s Marketing Manager, a Boston College alumnus, their ability to share the common bond of their undergraduate experience opened the door. That alumni bond made a difference in his job search process and endured throughout his time with the organization, contributing to a great internship experience.

According to Harvey, this type of alumni interaction makes him WANT to donate to Boston College.

Here at EverTrue, nearly 80% of our team joined our company as a direct result of networking.

But alumni networking isn’t always easy. Being able to effectively approach and speak with the right people at the right time requires a certain level of skill, finesse and technology. Alumni offices can help through collaboration with your peers in Career Services.

Since his graduation, Harvey has shared that many of his peers in Boston are able to connect with fellow Eagles through their strong alumni relations office at BC.

But what about alumni who don’t move to major markets after graduation? It’s easy to quickly feel disconnected from your institution, resources and network.

Even three years ago this disadvantage would have been very hard to overcome.  There was no user-friendly way to discover alumni in my area who work at companies and industries that are of interest to me.

We’ve heard from many alumni relations professionals that it’s common to receive a call from a young alum asking for a list of “investment bankers in New York” or “lawyers in Chicago”?  We’ve also heard that it can be time consuming to query your databases to deliver the required reports back to your job-seeking graduates.

EverTrue has been working hard to pioneer location-based alumni networking.  Mobile technology offers the ability to convert a shelf of outdated print alumni directories into an incredibly powerful, intuitive alumni networking mobile app available for iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch) and Android devices, with our HTML5 mobile web app coming soon.

By working closely with the education and engineering teams at LinkedIn to deeply integrate our platform with their professional graph, EverTrue has built an unmatched alumni networking tool with accurate industry and company data that massively exceeds the quality of information stored in your legacy Harris Connect system.

We founded EverTrue because our alumni networks have made a profound impact on our lives.  We come to work every day with a commitment to support the professional growth of your graduates by blending the strong tradition of alumni networking with cutting edge mobile and social technology.

If you’d like to learn how you can help combat young alumni unemployment through our location-based alumni networking and our integration with LinkedIn, please reach out to us at info@evertrue.com.

Ever True!

Brent

3 Steps for a Great Holiday Alumni Reunion

As decorations go up and you switch over to Pandora’s Rockin’ Holidays station, we know that the holiday party season is upon us. For alumni groups and development officers, it is time to start preparing the egg nog and planning fun opportunities for alumni to connect with one another. Many institutions, such as Roxbury Latin and Philips Academy in Andover, already have an alumni event marked on their calendar, and there is still time for your organization to get started too!

Here are three steps for a successful Holiday Alumni Reunion:

1. Invite everyone! The holiday season is a joyful affair that all graduating classes, from 41′ to 11′, can resonate with. This unifying season can soften conversation barriers during the event and will hopefully create long lasting relationships for your alumni.

2. Capitalize on the New Year: As 2012 approaches, alumni offices can take full advantage of the New Year to suggest to their alumni a resolution of renewed commitment to the institution through volunteering or by establishing a monthly monetary gift.

3. Make it Simple & Make it Fun: No need to go over the top on decorations–a few wreathes, music and classic white lights should do the trick. Follow the Brown Club of Boston’s lead and enlist talented alumni as musical guests, while serving appropriate snacks and drinks – perhaps featuring one of these top Holiday Cocktails.

Looking to make all your reunions more fun? Want to give your alumni a mobile tool that they can use to share photos of the event, network with other alumni and see what is happening today at their Alma Mater?

Let the team at EverTrue know what is on your alumni engagement wish list at info@everture.com.

EverTrue!

Harvey