A great big thank you goes out to Kristina Hoeppner for working so hard to share the conference will us all!

Visit Blip.tv to see the videos.

The Library Trust is honoured that Muaupoko, the tangata whenua or people of the land, are hosting us at Kawiu Marae following the Mayoral reception in Council chambers. This is a first for the Library Trust and the purpose of this post is to encourage Conference attendees to join us for what will be a very special evening.

We will be welcomed onto the Marae in a traditional manner. This will include the karanga where we are called on the Marae, a wero or taiaha challenge (to see if we come in peace), the laying down of koha, speeches, waiata (songs) a hakari or meal and kapa haka entertainment (singing, poi, haka). Information about the various components of the powhiri and what to expect can be found here.

There are also a few basic rules or tikanga which visitors will need to be aware of:

1. Do not sit on the tables anywhere,
2. Do not smoke or drink alcohol,
3. Do not throw food,
4. Do not pass food over anyones head.

The cost of the trip is $75 per person which includes return travel between Wellington and Levin, plus koha for our hosts and the entertainers.

Partners and children are very welcome to join us (no charge for kids). Prepayment and bookings are essential so we can confirm arrangements with our hosts. To book and pay online click here.

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Please forward this to lists or people who will be interested.

KohaCon10 starts on October 25th in Wellington, New Zealand. We have an exciting line up of speakers on a range of topics related to Koha and Open Source and Open Standards in libraries. See our programme for details.

http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/program/

KohaCon10 is a free conference (that is right it will cost nothing for you to attend), but you still need to register to reserve your place.

Registrations from the international Koha community have been very strong. Over half of all available spaces are already taken.

If you have been holding off on the premise that you will have plenty of time to do this later, then please register now. Please do not rely on there being free spaces on the day.

Registration is quick and easy via the website. http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/registration/

We look forward to seeing you in Wellington,

Russel Garlick
on behalf of the KohaCon10 Organising Committee

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What is KohaCon10?

KohaCon is an opportunity for the entire Koha community, librarians and developers alike, to come together, meet each other, swap ideas and learn something new.

The conference is split into 2 parts.

The community conference will be held over 3 days – 25-27th of October. This is not just a developer’s conference. There will be presentations from librarians and developers alike.

The second part of the conference is the Hackfest for Koha developers that will be held from 29th-31st of October.

For more information see our website http://www.kohacon10.org.nz.

Click here for details of the trip.

Signup

Please copy the headings below into an email and send it to: jransom@library.org.nz with  KohaCon Roadtrip in the subject line:

• Name/s of people,
• Arrival in Auckland details:  carrier and flight number, date and time,
• Accommodation preferences: share twin / double / single (surcharge will apply) and who you want to share with (if known,
• Which nights you want accommodation for in Auckland.

Deposit

$NZD 200 per person deposit is required to secure place on the road trip. Can be made my Paypal but please add $NZ 4.50 Paypal commission per $100 because someone has to pay it and I havn’t added any padding to the trip costs.

Salvete!

You might not have realised it, being neck deep in the hypnotising pages of your AACR2R, or perhaps your tawdry RDA, but

There’s a Conference!

and

It’s happening where the tricksy Hobbitses live!

Yeah, yeah, I know the lame yet understandable and valid excuses you’re about to spout about it being very, very, very far indeed as well as quite expensive. But here’s how I look at it. I am young right now at this very moment. Folks that I served committee with have since taken the West Road, so now is the best time to reward myself with the trip of a lifetime, seeing as how I have no terrible lower back pain, fake knees, heart conditions, et cetera. Also, Chris has hauled hisself to the US who knows how many times on our account, not to mention totally missed the millennial New Years programming Koha. Consider the same for Paul, and think about how bad the US will look if we don’t play nicely with the other Koha kids that swim many miles of rough choppy dolphin infested current to come and visit us every time we put on a conference.

If you know me at all, you know at least three things

1) I am painfully cheap. Some people think that it’s frugal or Foolish, but I see it as cheap.
2) I am quite stubborn and will spend a very long time indeed handling a Reference question or researching summat.
3) I can be quite squirrelly and do not generally enjoy being pent up in confined spaces, such as airplanes, for prolonged periods of time.

If I can get mahself to NZ, so can you.

Und nao, to ze point.

I finally broke down this very morning and secured passage to NZ. While trying to figure out the cheapest/fastest/best way to get there, I learnt many things. I considered just about every option – private jet, freight on a steamer, becoming an air courier, upgrading my tickets, swimming from one island to the next, et cetera. Hopefully some of these are useful to other people that haven’t yet booked their trip.

* You’re prolly gonna have to fly through Los Angeles. (LAX) That said, it was very much worth flying cheaply from the right coast to the left coast. I had daydreams about taking Amtrak at one point, but I didn’t want to super duper prolong the inevitable. So, went with Southwest from my backyard to LAX for $250 roundtrip. Be extra super duper careful when you break up travel to LA, as you’re wrestling with the dreaded International Date Line, not to mention connecting flights. Large mice have been spotted in a neighbourhood known as Disneyland about a half hour to an hour south of the city, so mind your purse and any cheese you might have on your person. In theory, you could win a sky auction from LAX to WLG for about $900, but I’ve never done it myself before, and I didn’t want to experiment this time round.

* Many places that fly to New Zealand also fly to Hawai’i and other island Nations, such as Fiji. This allows you to see sights or take a short holiday in non Hobbit populated areas, should you so choose. A ticket on posh Hawai’ian Air from LAX to HNL (Waikīkī) was $379ish this morning. Magic dates from HNL to SYD were 15,17, and 19 October for Air Pacific. For Qantas, *THE* magic day was Wednesday 20 October. If I tried to push that forwards or backwards AT ALL, the cost of my trip bundle varied ridiculously to the tune of several hundred to several thousand (yes thousand) dollars. I desperately tried to book on New Zealand, but no matter how hard I hit the computer, it would not allow me to do so at a reasonable rate since I was going other places. Opted not to go to Fiji since there was some regionalised cyclone damage, and it’s a little too much adventure for this go. If you opt for Fiji instead of Hawai’i and skip Australia, there might be a
pleasant cost savings on Air Pacific.

* If you’re clever, you just noticed that I used the airport code for Sydney back there. Why yes, yes, I did. “But Brooke,” you might posit “Australia is not actually part of New Zealand. Koalas v. Kiwi.” Yeah, yeah, I know that. It’s just that I desperately wanted to see Uluru and a brevicauda. Gonna have to settle for the Opera House (which I’ve wanted to see since I was quite little), cause a trip to Alice Springs is just way too much money and time to squeeze in this go, regardless of method of transport, and willingness to contort to ridiculous dimensions. I’m hoping maybe, just maybe, they’ll have a brevicauda in the zoo, though it looks like I’ll only have a frilled neck lizard for companionship. For marital dispute purposes, Sydney is *not* the capital of Australia, as anyone with better than mediocre geography coursework knows. However, like LAX, a heck of a lot of flights are rerouted through Sydney, so you might as well stop over and
decompress if you’re not on a tight schedule, or if you notice a ridonkulous 18hr layover on your schedule.

* You do want to do all of the cool pre conference stuff, don’t you? I mean, if Joann jumped off a bridge, you would follow her, provided you were properly secured, yes? They _did_ spend a lot of effort drumming up cool things to keep the Americans busy, so you may as well get to where ye’re gettin’ early. After all, Hobbitses are wiley, and if you wanna see em, Joann scares them, so you’ll need to go alone. You *definitely* want to take a roadtrip, ya? So be sure that you fly into Auckland, home of the nefarious JAFA, in time for the night of 22 October, if the Conference page is still to be believed. Also, meet the Mayor of Levin and tell him how super cool he is, as well as tell HLT how super cool they are for innovating. That’s on 28th October. Hurry it up, wouldja? Joann needs to have headcounts and whatnot to confirm stuff for things.

“Yeah, yeah. What’s the bottom line?”

Fine, I’ll tell you, but keep in mind it’s for a highly customised, very, very squirrelly itinerary. For reals, Expedia was quite unhappy with me at least 3 times during my fidgeting with dates and departure points. There were cheaper, longer, and more expensive options to choose from. Also, do not swim for at least 3 hours after reading the bottom line.

$1801 IAD>LAX>HNL>SYD>AKL then WLG>LAX>IAD. So that’s there and back again between 14 October and 3 November, air and taxes only. If you want to know the precise dates for searching purposes, shoot me an off list email, and I’ll hook you up with when I left from where. To sweeten the deal, I intend to buy at least one round at the local pub, and I’ve heard rumour that the beer is really, really quite good.

Cheers,
Brooke

Day 1:  Friday 22nd Oct

Arrive at Auckland International Airport.

Transport into the city hotel is easy. Just go outside and head over the carpark to the waiting shuttle vans and taxis. If you are on your own a shuttle van is heaps cheaper, they run often and will take you to the door of the hotel, otherwise grab a taxi.

We have a nights accommodation at the Mercure Hotel in the city.  If you are arriving before this night we can book you extra nights if you like.  Its not top of the range but is perfectly adequate and lets face it, you’ll be so tired you’ll sleep anywhere Accommodation is on a share twin basis.

Dinner in town at one of the Viaduct harbour restaurants, venue of the America’s Cup series. We can easily stroll here from the hotel.

Day 2:  Saturday 23rd Oct

We’ll collect the rental van, load up the trailer and head south, stopping at Tirau which is a groovy little Kiwi town with great coffee.

We’ll arrive in Rotorua around 1pm or so, depending on how much we dawdle along the way.  We head over to Te Puia for the Te Po combo experience at 4.15 so you will have time for a snooze or a swim in the thermal hot pools  at the Rydges Hotel (make sure you bring your swim suit).

Day 3:  Sunday 24th Oct

9am Drive south to Wellington, stopping briefly at Huka Falls before turning off to Mokai Gravity Canyon for optional activities like bungy jumping and the flying Fox. These are both adrenaline filled Kiwi adventures. Bungy is where you fall off  a very high bridge into a river with only an elastic band around your ankle, and the flying fox is where 1 – 3 people are strapped into a harness and then fly through the air along a cable above a canyon – really really fast.  Not for the faint hearted.

We head south for another couple of hours, grab a quick ice cream at Levin (we make the best icecreams) and then on down to Wellington for the Conference.

Costs: looking like $270 per person but will confirm exact costings once final quotes have been received and we know who wants twin rooms and who wants to sleep by themselves (because they snore like tractors!).

The next meeting of the KohaCon 2010 volunteers is scheduled for for Wednesday, March 17 2010, 10am NZST (Tuesday, 16 March 2010 at 21:00:00 UTC+0) in the #koha IRC channel (server: irc.katipo.co.nz).

Registration is free but we do need to know numbers. If you wish to donate to help with running costs there is a paypal button as well. Space is limited so please register only if you are coming.

Russel Garlick has called an IRC meeting for KohaCon 2010 planning at 10:00 NZDT on Tuesday, 16 Feburary 2010 (AKA 21:00 UTC+0 on Monday, 15 February):

Thanks to all who have offered to help out with KohaCon 2010.
http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:kohacon2010:volunteers

We will be having our first IRC meeting for all conference volunteers at 10am Tuesday 16th of Feb in #koha on irc.katipo.co.nz.

For those of you in different time zones: http://bit.ly/9wnoaI

AGENDA

1. Catch up/Present overall plan – (there will be something posted on
   the wiki in the next week or so)
2. Confirming roles
3. Set time for regular catch up meeting on IRC.

Update: Minutes from the meeting are now available.