I had the pleasure of attending the third annual Koha-US Conference in Monterey, California, August 3-6, 2016. Although the weather didn’t turn out to be what I expected for summer in California, the conference more than made up for that. The event was hosted by the Monterey Public Library and followed the usual format of two days of presentations and two days of targeted instruction on customizing Koha, setting up a Koha test environment, and testing and signing off on bug patches.
The overall theme of the conference was Koha community participation and involvement. The keynote presentation was on the community and future of Koha, stressing the need for an active and involved community to guide the further development of the software. Another presentation involved Libki, the open source PC reservation system written by a Koha developer, and the need for a vigorous community to grow around it and aid in its development. Other talks were given on the pros and cons of open source software being used in libraries, Bibframes/Linked Data and vocabularies, and writing SQL reports for use in Koha. Biblioteca did a presentation on their RFID products and provided a free lunch.
It was great to see so many new faces get involved in the workshops on bug patch testing and customizing Koha this year. Hopefully these people will continue to build on what they’ve learned here and help the community squash Koha bugs and contribute to the functionality of the software. This year we had our largest turnout yet–over fifty participants. I can’t wait until next year’s conference to see what develops over the next twelve months.