I attended the 2014 North American Koha Users Group meeting in beautiful Wenatchee, WA last week. Most of the week's notes ended up my hands, so I get to send out the email summarizing the week, I guess! :) Attendees spent 2 days discussing various parts of Koha, as well as getting this North American Koha group off the ground. Friday, a dozen of us learned how to setup Koha virtual machines and set up git to do our own testing of Koha, instead of relying on the sandboxes. Several goals were developed for the group during the week: - Purpose: The purpose of this group is to communicate, educate, and collaborate amongst North American users of the Koha software and strengthen involvement with the global Koha community. - Wiki setup: Bare bones wiki already set up: www.koha-na.org. The Northeast Kansas Library System (NEKLS) volunteered to set this up and sponsor the domain name and provide the server space. This wiki will host information, including community participation tips and public development ideas and money raised for developments. Specific dollar amounts and who's contributing will be behind a password-protected wall (as some organizations can't share this info publicly), but the rest of the info will be public. We haven't figured out the development part yet, but hopefully will soon. - Communicate on the Koha-NA listserv more - Planning committee for next year's face-to-face conference in a TBD location (Include planning for live video/webcasting, for remote participation) - Online monthly meetings TBD; NEKLS finding out licensing info for Collaborate platform - Planning committee for the group: Chad Roseburg (NCRL), Joel Sasse (Plum Creek), Chris Rohde (Roseville PL), Nick Clemens (VOKAL), Heather Braum (NEKLS). Any other volunteers who weren't at the conference, please let us know if you're interested in helping lead the direction of this group and next year's face-to-face meeting. - Membership list on the wiki -- what are areas of experience? IRC nicknames. - Future goals: nonprofit status, and grant writing Full discussion notes here: http://koha-na.org/index.php/Future_of_NA_Koha_Users_Group_discussion The Wiki that was launched, www.koha-na.org, anyone can register and start adding content. All the notes from the event will be available sometime this week on the new wiki for this group. If any of you attended last week's conference, and have content to add, please feel free to do so. Thanks, Heather Braum NExpress Coordinator Resource Sharing Librarian Northeast Kansas Library System hbraum@nekls.org "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~Alvin Toffler, *Rethinking the Future*