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