Mango Languages

Ringing in the new year…in four new languages.

Want to learn Romanian?  Good news: Mango has a course for that.  And for Swahili, Modern Standard Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic – four new courses released today to our complete database subscribers.  Expanding our language offerings is just one of the many ways we’re working to make Mango sweeter, both for you and your patrons in 2013.

The new year also means it is time for us to travel to Seattle for the 2013 ALA Midwinter Conference.  Stop by booth #1215 to learn more about these four new courses and all the ways Mango shows our love for clients.  Tell us how to say “I love Mango” in Romanian, and we’ll give you our free “Language Love Affair” mini-course download.

English: I love Mango
Romanian:  Eu iubesc Mango (ee-YOH YOO-besk MAHN-go)

Happy new year and happy learning!

Mango Monday: Do you speak Texan?

Do you speak Texan?
Mangoes traded the snowy Michigan weather for some southern hospitality (and sunshine) while attending ALA Midwinter 2012 in Dallas, Texas!

While we got a little taste of the south, we gave a taste of mango smoothies to stoppers-by at the Mango booth. Attendees could also check out demonstrations of the Mango iPhone app, Little Pim and learn some Hindi!

While we were sporting tie-dye and mango smoothie sugar-buzzes, we saw many wonderful familiar faces, made great new friends and heard inspiring language learning success stories.

We even got a short lesson in “Southern English” from a few true Texans, y’all!

Check out some pictures from our adventure and let us know: did you drop by the Mango Languages booth at ALA Midwinter in Dallas this year? Do you still remember how to say, “where is the bus station” in Hindi?

Travel Tuesday: Mango Goes Big, Y’all!

Though us Michiganders cannot complain about the winter this year (it has been the mildest winter that I can ever remember), the prospect of escaping the snow and heading towards the sun is enough to get us packing… quickly. Needless to say, we are quite looking forward to getting to Dallas, Texas this week for the American Library Association 2012 Midwinter Conference!

The office is going to seem pretty empty, as 14 Mangoes will be heading southwest to participate in the bi-annual conference. From Mango smoothies to giveaways to demonstrations to typical Mango insanity, our booth will be bustling. Be sure to stop by Booth #2253 and say “howdy” to our staff! We are looking forward to another exciting show.

Is anyone attending the show? Is this your first time at ALA Midwinter? What conferences/exhibitors are you most looking forward to seeing?

Follow and Support the Mango Mania Teams

Mango Mania is in full throttle. Mango Mania is a road rally where teams will complete Mango-related challenges on their way to New Orleans for ALA 2011. The teams have two groups of challenges: those designed to be completed before ALA, and those that they will have to do on the way to New Orleans and while actually there. Each team should post pictures/videos on their Facebook page to show that the challenge has been completed. Each challenge is judged on creativity and completion.

Here are some of the challenges they have to do before ALA:

-Find 5 patrons who will either give a Mango testimonial or say something they learned from a Mango course.  Share video.

-Create a work of art using items found in your public library. Share pic/video.

-Record a video of you giving a Mango demo to patron(s) while making it interactive.

-Visit another Mango Library (Library with Mango subscription) and bring them a homemade gift. Share pic/video.

Also, through Mango Mania teams have Bonus activities to choose from:

-Represent Mango as much as possible by getting Mangofied in as many challenges as possible: i.e., decorating your Mango shirts, face paint, etc.

-Race to get to the Mango Booth and toast with Mango smoothies in a foreign language.

-Team with most social media activity. We will monitor/count number of teams’ retweets and other people tweeting with your team’s hashtag. Also, number of fans  on your Facebook page as well as  comments from your fans.

-Get a person/representative from another language learning company to say “mango” in some way.  Share video.

-Get a story about “Mango Mania” and your experience published in a credible news outlet, like a local newspaper. Share link.

The Mango Mania teams have been so awesome and creative while showing their true Mango colors! Follow your favorite teams on Facebook and Twitter! (Remember they get judged on how many people “like” their Facebook fan page and how many people follow them on twitter). Here are the teams:

Team MO (Mango Obsessed) #goteammo

Team Mang(eauxs) #TeamMangeaux

Team Energy = Mango C2 #EMC2

Team ALA Think Tank #alatt

Team Fluent Five #FluentFive

The winning team will be announced at Mango’s VIP Party on Sunday June 26th at the Rusty Nail. The grand prize is a $2,500 Mango subscription for the team to split and an iPad for each team member.

Feeling left out of the fun? If anyone else wants to complete any of these challenges feel free to get creative and post a photo/video on our Facebook fan page. If your pic/video stands out you might receive a Mango prize!

Good luck and have fun!

ALA Rally on Capitol Hill

The Mango Languages Team joined over 1,000 librarians to march on Capitol Hill to help bring attention to the budget shortages in Public Libraries.

Have you written your Congressional representative to tell them how important libraries are to you?

ALA Midwinter Video

Boston here we come!

We are ramping up for the ALA Midwinter Conference in Boston in January. We have packed our booth, shipped it to the conference warehouse, made our flight and hotel reservations and have decided on all the goodies we are bringing.

Please stop by our Booth # 2314, we will have:

1. T-shirts
2. Mango Flavored Herbal Hot Tea (we are in Boston after all – home of the famous tea party)
3. Demos of Mango Basic from our zany staff
4. Enter to win a Flip Video Camera and More!

We can’t wait to see all the librarians as we love spending time with our fantastic customers! Are you going? Let us know!

American Library Association Annual Conference

Well, it’s that time of year again.  ALA.  You can feel the buzz in the air.  Everyone around here at Mango is getting geared up to go to Chicago this week for the ALA Annual Conference.  This show is going to be very special.  We have a lot of great things that we are very excited to show off.  Yes, of course, we are going to have wonderful music from around the world and dancers performing engaging international dance styles such as Brazilian Capoeira.  And naturally we will be serving the world’s greatest Mango smoothies.  But all that is just icing on the cake.  We are really there for one main reason; to show you that we listen to you and have been listening to your feedback all along.

Ever since we entered the library market we have received great feedback from libraries and library patrons on ways to improve our product.  We have also received requests for many new languages.  We will be unveiling the latest incarnation of the Mango Language Learning system at the conference.  The geniuses in our marketing department decided to call it “Mango 2.0″.  You will see that it is rich with new features, a beautiful new makeover, an enhanced pedagogy, and many new languages.  You will be pleasantly surprised to find that almost all of the feedback that you have given us has been accounted for in a significant way in Mango 2.0.  Furthermore, we will be demonstrating our new library administration portal designed specifically for our library accounts.

If you are coming to the ALA Conference be sure to visit us at booth # 4827 and remember to ask for your Free Mango T-Shirt (in any language other than English).  We look forward to seeing you there.

- Jason Teshuba