Greetings, fellow members of the Koha community, My name is Jared Camins-Esakov. There are two reasons that name might sound familiar. The first is that in my day job I do a lot of work with Koha (hosting, support, bespoke development, and all that jazz). The second is that just over a month ago I finished my term as Release Manager for Koha 3.12. I am very proud of what we did during my six month term. Koha has more features and works better for more libraries than ever before. I think that's a big deal. During those six months, I spent a lot of time working on Koha, as my wife can attest. I think I could count on my fingers the number of days in the entire release cycle (more than six months!) that I didn't do _anything_ related to the Koha release. I did this because I believe that Koha is important, and a better Koha is better for all of us.

From a business point of view, volunteering my time was a good investment because I am now selling and supporting a better system.

But you know what? I don't expect to be paid for all that time I spent volunteering my time for the community. Volunteering my time to build Koha 3.12 was its own (sometimes frustrating) reward. That's what Open Source is all about*, and I am proud to be a member of a community that understands this. Regards, Jared Camins-Esakov *Not to say that you can't or shouldn't make money from working on Open Source projects. I believe strongly that you can and should (and, of course, my company does), but contributing to an Open Source project like Koha is about more than just money. P.S. Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to ask everyone in the Koha community to take a moment to thank your friends and family for sharing you with us. -- Jared Camins-Esakov Bibliographer, C & P Bibliography Services, LLC (phone) +1 (917) 727-3445 (e-mail) jcamins@cpbibliography.com (web) http://www.cpbibliography.com/