Brooke: A. Inclusiveness
So are you saying that there can only be one worldwide Koha group, and that there cannot be national or regional level Koha groups and corresponding meetings? Do you presume that anyone from outside North America would be unwelcome at a North America/United States meeting? Would it be appropriate for the NA/USA group to openly solicit world-wide attendance, and possibly seem to be competing with World KohaCon? There may be topics of interest only to US organizations, like eRate, LSTA grants and US laws, like privacy legislation, that may be important and need to be discussed but which may be avoided in an effort to be inclusive of other countries attendees if those were many. Concession: there is sometimes, and possibly in this case, the tendency to equate North America (23 countries per Wikipedia) with the United States. That is more a careless, linguistic peccadillo, I suggest, than a felony warranting a call-to-arms. B. Time of Meeting I don't think meeting in a particular month carries the same weight of concern as your first point about inclusiveness, or even your last about attendance fees. C. Attendance Fees Libraries, few in the US rich, don't always have good conference rooms, especially if there are conference break-out sessions. That may mean renting some hotel meeting room space for $1,000 a day. If it requires a $20 charge per person to get some good facilities I think that's reasonable. I have always, albeit typically privately, supported the idea of a reasonable attendance fee. I greatly appreciate it when a hosting organization provides coffee, maybe juice, and pastries for breakfast so that I don't have to run all over a hotel in the morning trying to find the $5 coffee and $4 donuts, being late for the inaugural address, and spilling now-cold coffee all over the nice lady in the row in front of me as I say "excuse-me, excuse-me" as I trip over people trying to get to the only open seat in the middle of the row in the middle of the room. Having coffee and donuts provided at the event is worth some coin to me and something more to the ex-nice lady soaked in cold vanilla hazelnut coffee which clashes terribly with her /parfum du jour/. Greg -------------------------------------- On 11/19/2015 02:19 PM, BWS Johnson wrote: > Salvete! > > >> The Koha North America User’s Group would like to invite agencies and >> libraries located within the United States to host its third annual meeting >> held in early August, 2016. This meeting offers participants two days of >> instructional sessions and presentations, followed by a two day hackfest. > > At risk of beating a dead horse, I am once again disappointed that this > body has taken up the mantle of "North America". There are plenty of > Libraries, Organisations, and Agencies within North America that do not fit > your group's stringent United States centric viewpoint. I am also continually > saddened that this body will only consider meeting in early August. It is > further too bad that you all charge fees for your meeting. The three of these > problems in combination send a strong repeated message that inclusivity is > not an aim of your organisation, whether that be a valid conclusion to draw > or no. I do so hope that at some point in future, this group might reconsider > any or all of those matters. > > > Cheers, > Brooke > _______________________________________________ > Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org > Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz > https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
