[Koha] Join Us In Paris For KohaCon 2006

[Russel Garlick]

MEDIA RELEASE: Join Us In Paris For KohaCon 2006

27 March 2006

The Koha community is excited to announce the first ever Koha Conference 
to be held in Paris France May 2nd and 3rd 2006.

We'd like to extend an invitation to libraries, developers, media and 
library supporters to attend our first conference. This event is the 
first formal gathering of the wider Koha community, including 
developers, users and supporters, since version 1.0 of the world's first 
Open Source Integrated Library System (ILS), was released in 2000. It 
provides an opportunity to join together to celebrate achievements to 
date, and discover more about the Koha ILS. Many of the presentations 
will focus on what Koha 3.0 will offer the community.

The conference will be held over two days in Paris, France.

DAY ONE - DISCOVER KOHA
May 2nd 2006, Paris
The Discover Koha day will include talks on what is Koha and open source 
software, what does this mean for libraries along with a presentation of 
the new features in Koha 3.0 and some background on what is involved in 
moving to Koha from another ILS.

DAY TWO - KOHA USER GROUP (Europe)
May 3rd 2006, Paris
The User Group day will be more hands on and provides existing Koha 
users with an opportunity to discover more about the current system and 
learn about what is coming in the future released. There will 
demonstrations of new functionality.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
If you are already a Koha user, or perhaps you have been interested in 
Koha and want to find out more, then you should attend KohaCon 2006. A 
large number of Koha developers from around the world will be there, and 
this is your chance to meet with them.
They include, amongst others:

* Chris Cormack, Version 1.X Release Manager, Katipo Communications, New 
Zealand.
* Paul Poulain , Version 2.2 Release Manager, Independent Koha 
Consultant, France.
* Joshua Ferraro, Version 3.0 Release Manager, Liblime, United States 
of America

A full programme outline speakers and topics will be published on 
http://www.koha.org website.

For more information about KohaCon 2006, please go to 
http://www.koha.org/community/conferences/

REGISTRATION IS FREE, BUT ESSENTIAL

This is a free event, but if you would like to attend you will need to 
register. You can register online at 
http://www.koha.org/community/conferences/registration.html.

Once you have registered, you will be contacted by the conference 
organising committee with further details.

The Koha community would like to thank Ecole Nationale Suprieure des 
Mines de Paris (ENSMP) for providing a venue for KohaCon in Paris.

KOHA DEVELOPERS WEEK
May 8th-12th 2006, Marseille

Following on from the conference, a group of core Koha developers will 
be meeting in Marseille to work on Koha 3.0.

If you are a Koha developer who is interested in contributing, then 
please attend a Koha Project IRC meeting. Meetings are held every Monday 
at 20:00 GMT. See http://www.koha.org/community/irc.html for IRC channel 
information. Space is limited at the Development Week venue. If you 
would like to attend, please ensure that you are at a project meeting in 
the next two weeks.

The Koha community would like to thank Bibliotheque du Centre de 
Mathematiques et Informatique (CMI) at the Universite de Provence for 
providing a venue for the Developers Week in Marseille.

ABOUT KOHA
Koha is a full-featured Open Source library management system first 
deployed in January 2000 at Horowhenua Library Trust. It is currently 
maintained by a team of software providers and library technology staff 
from around the globe. Several companies around the world support Koha, 
providing libraries with a full array of vendor services including 
installation, migration assistance, data integrity testing, staff 
training, software maintenance, support and customization. To learn more 
about Koha, please visit http://www.koha.org/.
-- 

Russel Garlick
Operations Manager
Katipo Communications
Ph:  +64 4 934 1285
Fax: +64 4 934 1286
Mob: +64 27 537 1377
Skype: russelgarlick
Web http://www.katipo.co.nz