Tag: Koha

I thought it went really well, and I hope all those who attended felt the same. It was a long week with tons of things packed in to do.  Three days of conference followed by a trip north for Mayoral reception and Powhiri and finally 3 days of Hackfest.

Knowledge was shared, friendships strengthened, new friends made and spirits uplifted.

I didn’t even get a chance to pull out my camera, or to blog any sessions, Nicole of course blogged everything, check it out at www.web2learning.net and there are tons of photos on flickr.

I was going to list highlights, but really everything was a highlight, there was not one bad presentation … well except for that one Chris guy he was kinda under prepared.

Thanks to everyone who made it happen and thanks everyone who attended .. see you all next year in the UK right MJ?

Inspired by NEKLS (and let’s face it, who isn’t inspired by NEKLS) and what they did with coveritlive for kohacon09. We have set it up for kohacon10

You can see it here, and for those without flash/js, you can use the rss feed.  I’ll be trying to keep it up to date and ticking along and will recruit people at the conference to help live blog the presentations. With the speakers permission of course.

Any other suggestions people have?

Well we’ve just ticked over into October here in NZ, which means in 25 days Kohacon10 will be in full swing. Visas have been obtained, tickets and hotels have been booked, and people from all over the world will descend on Wellington to share, learn, celebrate and all manner of other things about Koha.

I’m really looking forward to it, and want to say a big thanks to all the sponsors. In particular my employer Catalyst IT, who have not only sponsored the conference but have let a few of us at Catalyst do the organising on Catalyst time.  Speaking of sponsors, I’m tickled pink we have 3 Libraries sponsoring .. there aren’t too many conferences where ‘vendors’ and Libraries combine to sponsor so that attendance can be free. I think it is a great illustration of just one of the many intangible benefits of working with Koha .. the people who work with, and use Koha, love it and help each other out.

If you haven’t already registered there are still a few places left, but it’s filling up so register now. Do think about coming along on the Levin trip, you get to see where Koha was born and a mayoral reception … that doesn’t happen everyday.

The speakers page on the Kohacon website has been upated (Thanks Kristina) and since Jo did a great blog post about the presentations, which included her personal highlights, I thought I would do one too.

I agree with all of her choices, but wanted to add a couple more myself.

Anthony Ching-Chen Mao – Koha Taiwan

Anthony has been around Koha for a long time, using it, promoting it, translating it. In his talk he will be talking about a student organized volunteer group Library Service Team at the Department of Library and Information Science, Fu Jen Catholic University. Who since 2000, have helped more than 50 schools and local govt organisations set up their libraries. Since 2006 they have been deploying Koha in these libraries. They even set up Koha remotely across the Pacific at the library of the University of Belize.

If you send a team of dozen students to a remote Chinese county library, they do not only set up Koha but also show the patrons how to start a people’s library. I want to share our story about Koha, a Taiwanese primary school library and my lovely students.

Olugbenga Adara – Koha uptake in Nigeria: Prospects and challenges

Olugbenga Adara is a consultant on implementing open source software projects in Projektlink Konsult Ltd. He specialises in intranets, website design and library automation. He has served as a consultant to library automation projects at Bowen University Iwo, National Mathematical Centre Abuja, Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria Ibadan and the Kwara State Government House Ilorin, all in Nigeria, among others.
In his talk he will be talking about the recent upsurge in uptake of Koha as the Library Management System of choice in Nigeria. At present, at least over 12 institutions have adopted Koha in Nigeria in the past 18 months. His presentation seeks to highlight the issues faced by the adopters and present a viewpoint from a developing country.

Presentations like this are ones that remind me of how much good people working together can achieve, who would seriously have thought a library system that started out in small town New Zealand, would be helping people in Taiwan, China, Belize, Nigeria ….