[Koha] building a community

[Pat Eyler]

Hello,
I thought I'd take a moment to share some success that we've had (and some
less than successful efforts we've made), and ask what other methods
people have used and how they've worked.

We started french and german language mailing lists for Koha
tranlsation/development effort in August.  The french list has taken off
(growing to ~30 subscribers with ~25 posts/week); the german list has not
(~4 subscribers, ~2 messages/week).  We've also had on again/off again
interest in a couple of other languages.

I think that the keys to the french language success have been:
  translating publicity -- my bi-weekly newsletter is being translated
    into french and distributed by members of the mailing list.
  getting the word out -- some of the french speaking folk are actively
    talking up Koha within their milieu
  working together -- I wish I could read french ... I see several
    threads of discussion running on the list.  It certainly looks like
    they're working together to solve problems.

The Koha project has also been growing as well.   As with the french
group, I think the key has been building a community.  My biggest role as
Kaitiaki has been trying to get in front of people.  So far, we've been
fairly successful in parlaying Press Releases and my newsletter into
mentions on blogs, bigger articles in on-line magazines (LinuxPlanet,
Gnu-Friends, and Biblio-Tech), and interest from people who'd not seen
koha before.  We're hoping to make a succesful jump into conferences,
expos, and users group presentations over the next 3-6 months.

Which of these things have you been using?  How have they worked for you?
What other methods have you been using that I've missed?  Is there a way
that we can share the fruits of these efforts?  I'd certainly be happy to
use Koha announcements to shine some light on MARC::Record, or other
OSS4Lib efforts.  I'd hope that other projects would be willing to
cooperate as well.

What do you think?

-pate

Pat Eyler
Kaitiaki/manager               migrant Linux sys admin
the Koha project               ruby, shell, and perl geek
http://www.koha.org            http://pate.eylerfamily.org