Hi John & Deb An in person meeting for a USA Koha Users Group sounds like a fine idea - particularly if you can get a few people together at a conference to do it. If both you and Deb are thinking of 0rganising USA specific User Group things then joining forces would be a grand idea. If the idea for an IRC meeting was for a more general user group, or if it looks like not many will actually be able to make the in-person one then presumably that could still go ahead. Cheers Rachel Koha Kaitiaki John Brice wrote:
Dear Koha Mail list Member:
Announcement!
We will be having a formal organizational meeting of Kudos (Koha Users Group) at PLA. We are still working on the date and time of the event. Once it is determined we will e-mail everyone on the list of current developments. The meeting will be broken into two parts first meeting will be for existing Koha users or Koha users planning to be up and running within six months. This meeting will be an organizational meeting to discuss what type of national organization to form the agenda will be as follows:
1. How did we get here? A short history of Koha 2. Do we need a formal users group for Koha? 3. Develop a mission statement. 4. What type of structure do we need? 5. Form a committee of three to write a by-laws proposal. 6. Schedule next meeting.
The second part of the meeting will be a general interest session and will be opened to anyone who is interested in Koha.
I understand that there is an IRC meeting being organized to talk about exactly these same issues. I request that the meeting be postponed to after PLA. I ask for this postponement based on the following reasons:
Previous meetings between vested parties of Koha, from many different nations, asked that any organizations based on the Koha ILS be based on national boundaries, ie the French Koha Organization.
I believe that any Users Groups should be limited to only those individuals who are using Koha presently or are planning to use Koha within a relatively short time, say six months or so.
Using the IRC to form an new organization as complicated and unique as a Koha User's Group would be difficult at best and and anarchy at worst. Once we have some sort of structure in place we can then use the IRC channel to discuss specific steps and or issues. But to get started we need at least one sit down meeting with 7 to 10 vested users of the Koha ILS.
I understand that many of you may be asking yourselves what the heck is going on here, who is in charge of the Koha Users Group? Well the answer is no one is at this time, hence the confusion and multiple paths of discussion. Each library has to make their own decision about the best path to follow in helping form a users group. Anyone else interested in discussing this matter with me can reach me at jbrice@ccfls.org or call me at 814-336-1773.
Sincerely,
John Brice System Administrator Crawford County Federated Library System
Executive Director Meadville Public Library
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