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Kohacon 2010: Wellington, New Zealand
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Koha, we would like to invite the world to Wellington. Here is your chance to meet the folks from the original Koha library and have a drink with them.
Dates
October 25 - November 2 2010 3 day conference followed by 4 day hackfest
Venues
Conference Venue
Wellington Convention Centre Civic Suites\\ 107 Wakefield Street\\ Wellington
Hackfest/Workgroups Venue
Catalyst IT 150 Willis Street
Translations/Translators
Sponsorship
Bywater Solutions - Offered Sponsorship without even needing to be asked !
BibLibre - Merci, Paul !
LibrioTech - takk, Magnus !
Programme
The dates and venue have now been confirmed ... any volunteers to help with planning sessions?
Note: Videos are now hosted at the Internet Archive
Day 1
Welcome and keynote
Rosalie Blake
About Rosalie Blake
She has worked at Horowhenua Libraries from 1981 to 2009 in a variety of positions which she kept reinventing.
Ask a librarian: Why I love Koha (Video 2)
Lee Phillips
About Lee Phillips
She is the director of the Butte Silver Bow Public Library. BSB Public is the fourth largest library in Montana serving 35,000 people. In 2008, BSB Public became the first open source public library in Montana with their migration to Koha ILS.
Kete and Koha: Integration built on Open Standards (Video 3)
Walter McGinnis
This presentation will look at the history of the Koha and Kete projects and their interactions. Particular attention is drawn to Kete’s development. The presentation puts forward the idea that a focus on supporting Open Standards and general interoperability not only makes it simple to integrate instances of the two software projects, but also creates larger possibilities for data sharing with a number of web sites and services.
About Walter McGinnis Walter McGinnis is the original software architect of Kete, an Open Source web application enabling collaboration on text and multimedia, and leads Katipo Communication’s Ruby on Rails web development team
Koha uptake in Nigeria: Prospects and challenges (Video 4)
Olugbenga Adara (presentation via Skype)
There has been an upsurge in the uptake of Koha as the Library Management System of choice in Nigeria in the past two years. At present, at least over 12 institutions have adopted Koha in Nigeria in the past 18 months. This presentation seeks to highlight the issues faced by the adopters and present a viewpoint from a developing country.
About Olugbenga Adara He is a consultant on implementing open source software projects in Projektlink Konsult Ltd.
Koha governance: Observations and options (Video 5)
Bob Birchall
The term governance concerns how a corporation or project is structured, directed and controlled for long term survival. It is different to management, which is more concerned with operating issues. This paper will very briefly define what is meant by governance, give examples from other prominent open source projects and describe how Koha is governed and managed at present. The role of the HLT Koha Committee will be briefly described in the context of other components of the Koha governance model. The second part of the paper will focus on some perceived strengths and weaknesses of Koha's governance model. Finally, some options for strengthening the governance of the Koha project in future will be considered.
About Bob Birchall He is a director of CALYX information essentials, a Koha support provider in Australia.
What's new in Koha 3.4? (Video 6)
Chris Cormack
About Chris Cormack He has a BSc in Computer Science and a BA in Mathematics and Māori Studies. While working for Katipo Communications he was the lead developer of the original version of Koha.
Library data for fun and profit (Video 7)
David Friggens
Library systems contain a wealth of information waiting to be unlocked. From ways to enhance the OPAC experience to statistics gathered for greater insight, this talk will look at a number of ideas (both implemented and barely conceived) for helping your library data reach its potential. N.B. We do not currently use Koha, but this will be an ILS/LMS-agnostic talk.
About David Friggens David is the Systems Librarian at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. The Library currently uses a proprietary ILS but uses a variety of Free Software, including Greenstone, Firefox and GNU/Linux.
Day 2
eBooks: Why they break ISBNs (Video 8)
Stuart Yeates
A view of eBooks from an administrative and cataloging point of view, focusing on how some of the current practices around unique identifiers and organisation of content by media is going to be challenged.
About Stuart A. Yeates He is currently Lead Architect at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre.
Koha: A cooperative view (Video 9)
MJ Ray
An introduction to cooperative values and principles followed by a look at the structure, history and future of Koha and its community in this context. I will probably also cover some of the big library cooperatives and the experiences of a small library services cooperative with them.
About MJ Ray He is a worker-owner of software.coop, a tech worker co-op providing computer-related services worldwide, including Koha and Debian support and development, since 2002.
Mark Osborne
Albany Senior High School is New Zealand's first open source high school, and Koha is one our our key online environments. Learn more about how Albany is using Koha to promote literacy, community and high achievement.
About Mark Osborne He is Deputy Principal of Albany Senior High School on Auckland's North Shore.
Freedom in the library: Convincing your boss that sharing is good (Video 11)
François Marier
This presentation will show how the concepts of sharing, freedom and public domain are embodied by the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community. After describing what is meant by FOSS, we will look at how fairness is promoted through the choice of copyright licenses. Then we will examine the benefits of this freedom and of the related communities (for example, Creative Commons) it has inspired. Nobody should ever get fired for putting FOSS in their library!
About François Marier He has been involved in Open Source communities for more than 10 years. Currently, François Marier is a senior software developer at Catalyst IT.
Koha: A brief history (Video 12)
Paul Poulain
This talk will cover a history of the Koha project, how it started, who has been involved, and how it got to where we are now.
About Paul Poulain He has been working on Koha since January 2002. He is the original author of the MARC parts and many others.
It is not the code that is locked (Video 13)
Sue Lavery, a very experienced librarian, accepted a job in a high security prison in 2008. Her talk highlights how Koha was deployed and how it has changed the lives of many of her clients and her own.
About Sue Lavery Sue Lavery is the Librarian at a new jail, The Alexander Machonochie Centre, in Canberra, Australia. She has spent the past year establishing the library and promoting a reading culture within the prison.
About Irma Birchall Irma Birchall, was appointed by Cybersource Pty Limited who implemented Koha @ AMC to provide Koha training and support to Sue. Irma founded CALYX information essentials and provides clear and focused Koha training.
Koha: How you can help (Video 14)
Nicole Engard
Often people forget that the reason open source software exists is because of the hard work of volunteers, paid developers, and users alike. This workshop will walk you through how you can participate in the Koha community to further the betterment of the product.
About Nicole Engard She is the Director of Open Source Education at ByWater Solutions.
The efforts of promoting Koha ILS: The Malaysian experience (Video 15)
Amzari Abu Bakar
Koha has been promoted in Malaysia starting from the year 2005. However, it was not until 2008 that Koha began getting a warm welcome from libraries in Malaysia. The longest experience of using Koha in Malaysia is only one year, while experience in promoting Koha has reached five years. Efforts that have been made by users in other countries could be studied by Koha enthusiasts in Malaysia. Based on these promotion experiences, several encouraging and discouraging factors of using Koha in Malaysia have been identified. At the end of this discussion, several suggestions are made to overcome discouraging factors, empower Koha users and to encourage new Koha users in Malaysia.
About Amzari Abu Bakar Amzari Abu Bakar is a degree holder in BSc Information Studies (Information Systems and Management) and MSc Information Management. He has been a Lecturer at Faculty of Information Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA teaching Web Programming, Library Automation and IT in Libraries subjects since August 2008.
Day 3
From LAMP to Koha: Case study of the Pakistan legislative assembly libraries (Video 16)
Farasat Shafi-Ullah
This presentation is about the shifting of the Pakistan legislative assembly libraries from LAMP (Library Automation Management Program, the collaborative efforts under the Netherlands library project) to the open source base flavor of Koha named as PakLAG Koha. This presentation will place emphasis on the data conversion issues from LAMP to MARC21, the tools used to convert this data to MARC21, HR issues, professional training issues and acceptance of users. IT infrastructure and ICT capability of library professional staff will also be highlighted. Another unique thing about this project is the acceptance of professional volunteer groups, and an open source solution on a pay for support basis.
About Farasat Shafi-ullah He received his Master in Library and Information Management from Thames Valley University, London (UK), in 2009. Currently, he works as Librarian at SCME National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad.
Celebrating, promoting and supporting free software in libraries (Video 17)
Don Christie
Open Library & Koha sitting in a tree (Video 18)
George Oates
About George Oates She has worked in the web since 1996, most recently as Director of the Internet Archive's Open Library project
Chris Cormack and Andrew Caudwell
Using Gource, we will visualise 10 years of Koha coding in 10 minutes.
George Sue
George Sue is a Trustee of the Horowhenua Library Trust, and a true friend of Koha as demonstrated by his participation and loyalty to the project despite overwhelming initial odds.
About Wellington
Places to eat near Conference
Travel Tips
- Tipping - Tipping is not expected at all in NZ, sometimes there is a tip jar at the counter but do not feel obliged to leave anything, it is not expected.
- Sales tax - NZ has a 12.5% Goods and Service Tax, but it is built into the sticker price, consequently what you see as the price on a menu, or price tag is what you pay, no tip, no sales tax added.
- Taxis - Taxis are deregulated, so there is no need to take the first taxi on the rank, take whichever one looks good to you. (They will all have prices printed on the side, take a look). I prefer http://www.greencabs.co.nz/
Social Events
Pictures
Nicole Engard's flickr album
Daniel Grobani's flickr album
Kristina Hoeppner's flickr album
Reed Wade's flickr album
Magnus Enger's Kapiti Island shots