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In 2013, I migrated our old ILS to Koha, an open-source system developed by Katipo Communications and the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand in 1999. The best way I can think of to describe the Koha Community is as a self-regulating anarchy with devoted participants. Every year, the international Koha community holds a conference; this year's conference was held in Portland, Oregon. There are additional local Koha users' groups, including one in the United States, koha-US, which co-sponsored the 2018 conference. I'm Member at Large on the koha-US Board of Directors; I don't do anything, but I do it very well and I'm serving my second term.
If you're looking for actual information about KohaCon 2018, you're better off going to the Bywater Solutions KohaCon 2018 page, where you can find a schedule, presentation slides, more photos (they had a better camera) and videos of the presentations.
Usual disclaimers apply: Any opinions, either stated by me or inferred by you, are strictly my own, and do not necessarily reflect any opinions of my employer, co-workers, the avenging chicken or any of the stuffed animals shown in these photographs. The cat can keep his opinions to himself.
The other Adventures of Fred and the Avenging Chicken can be found here.
Looking for the poetry? It's over here.
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Photo credit: Bywater Solutions
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This time the cat didn't even come up to watch me pack. Perhaps he knew that I was going to get horribly sick and have to put off the trip for two days. Tip: don't reschedule airline tickets three hours before departure. It's expensive.
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But finally we were packed and ready to go.
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I know some planes leave BWI during daylight, but I've never been on one.
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Changing planes in Dallas.
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I'm not sure why this airline has a flight from Love Field to Love Field.
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We arrive in Portland and head for the coast to spend a few days in Depoe Bay. Their claim to fame is having the world's smallest harbor. Who am I to cast aspersions? I have a stuffed chicken.
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Whale watching at Depoe Bay.
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There's gotta be one out there somewhere...
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Thar she blows!
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We visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium and are quite taken with the Pacific sea nettles.
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And the sardines.
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And the sea anemonies.
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The car rental agency gave us a large, black, nondescript vehicle. In our neck of the woods, these are usually driven by men in suits with ear-pieces who talk into their lapels. I never did find out how to turn on the blue flashing lights.
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Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
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We visit Oregon's tallest lighthouse and climb to the top.
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That's a lot of stairs!
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Alas, this part of the trip comes to an end. We take a last look at Depoe Bay.
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And at the ocean.
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Serendipity in action: I was trying to turn left from the beach parking lot and realized I'd never be able to. I turned right, then pulled into a parking lot to turn around. Then we realized it was Robert's Books, which we had hoped to find. We make some purchases.
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No trip to Portland would be complete without a trip to Powell's. It's amazing.
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They have a good History of Medicine section, too.
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We return the car and take the light rail to the conference hotel.
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Getting closer.
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But then we realized that the train stopped near the Portland Market. We stop to take a look.
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And take a look at the river.
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Preston does a caricature of us.
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It's very nice. Under copyright law this is considered a work for hire, so I can post it here without getting permission.
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We check into our hotel.
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KohaCon 2018 begins!
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Stephanie Chase gives the keynote address.
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One of the presentations ended early, so I did another reading of The Access Code. I think I'll have to find a new poem to read next time.
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Christopher Brannon chairs the koha-US meeting.
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We meet Sekhar Mallampati of Guyana and Sher Afzal Khan of Pakistan. We're all interested in making Koha easier to set up and use since it's a low-cost solution for resource-poor countries and libraries with limited budgets.
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We say hello to Robin Hastings, past president of koha-US.
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Joy Nelson talks about bears breaking into servers to eat the delicious disk drives. Or something like that. Maybe it was about data lakes. The statements was interesting, but tough.
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Koha Family Feud!
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I think this question was "What is the most confusing Koha field tag?"
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We meet Chris Cormack, father of Koha.
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Nate Curulla and Brendan Gallagher are CRO and CEO of Bywater Solutions, Koha support vendor and organizer of the conference. All of Bywater did a fantastic job with the conference.
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Tired after the second day.
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Mengu Yazicioglu talked about Koha in Turkey. The picture I took of his presentation didn't turn out, but we did get a group picture.
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We meet Katrin Fischer, QA goddess.
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John Sterbenz, financial wizard, talks about Koha Collection Finances.
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Chris and Katrin talked about Koha documentation. They think it's a good idea.
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Hanna Dehlin, Kerstin Herrström, and Hans Pålsson of Kristianstad University Library talk about the Swedish Koha User Group.
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The chicken hails from Seattle, and had a reunion with Elaine Bradke and Doug Kingston who ended up there after many adventures of their own. They work for the English Folk Dance and Song Society, based in London. They telecommute.
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Cultural Day! We start out with a trip to the river.
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There are many installations of public art in Portland. This probably isn't one of them.
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A coffee shop in a bank, complete with an ATM so you can pay for your beverage.
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As a librarian with a certificate in Copyright Compliance, I was attracted by this coffee shop.
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We take a walking tour.
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A Benson Bubbler--one of the originals.
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And in the afternoon, we visited the Japanese Gardens.
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The Japanese Gardens look out onto the city.
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We meet the Library Hamster, from Latah County, Idaho.
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Hackfest Day! We start out the day with a trip to the World's Smallest Park.
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And stop for breakfast on the way back.
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I remember seeing a lot of these things when I was younger. I think they're phones installed for use by the public and you have to pay to use them. I can't remember what they're called.
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Hackfest begins!
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The Library Hamster and Avenging Chicken join hackfest.
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Joy Nelson and Nick Clemens take a break from doing hackfest things.
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Kyle Hall talks about something complicated.
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Any e-mail we need to respond to?
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And we thought the conference was exhausting!
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The koha-US Board of Directors. We're hoping for a little diversity at some point.
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I took this one by accident, but I think I'll keep it.
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David Kuhn, Margaret Hade, the chicken, and I spend some time with Lusefine Adala from Kenya, to help her become more familiar with Koha. Mostly we told her "If I can do it, you can do it." Come to think of it, that's a pretty good description of Koha.
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Every Saturday there's a farmers' market next to the building where we met. This is a panoramic picture, which is why parts of it look a bit strange.
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I was overwhelmed with information, so naturally I made another trip to Powell's. I bought another basket of books.
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Portland has food trucks all over the place. We ate at a different one every day.
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One near the conference building. I don't know what they serve now.
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And one mustn't forget Portland beer.
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Maybe that second one was a bad idea.
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Hackfest begins to wind down.
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One last picture, this one with Paul Poulain.
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The main branch of the Portland Public Library is a lot fancier than our little medical library.
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Packing dilemma: how to get a volume of 1.5x of stuff into a suitcase with a capacity of 1.0x. It's possible, but not easy.
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Back to the airport.
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In the St Louis airport. Remember the Talking Heads song "Road to Nowhere"?
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You can get whiskey in Portland at 8:00am, but you have to wait until 3:00 for a beer in St Louis. Not here, anyway.
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Arewethereyet? Arewethereyet? Arewethereyet?
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Baltimore!
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And finally back home.
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