Happy New Year! We hope you are ready for an exciting announcement about Kohacon24 – the event we’ve all been eagerly awaiting!

Dates and Venues

Mark your calendars for Kohacon24, scheduled to take place from September 23 to September 27, 2024, in the vibrant city of Montréal, Québec, Canada. The conference will unfold over the five days as follows: two days of insightful presentations, a day dedicated to cultural exploration, and two days filled with engaging workshops and hackfest activities.

September 23 and 24: Conferences

  • Venue: Amphitheatre of the Coeur des sciences de l’UQAM (200, Sherbrooke Ouest, SH-2800).
  • Coffee breaks and work tables: Salle polyvalente in the same building (200, Sherbrooke Ouest, SH-4800).
  • Conferences will be live-streamed online (more details to follow).

September 25: Cultural Day

  • Stay tuned for exciting activities!

September 26 and 27: Workshops and Hackfest

  • Venue: Goethe Institut (1626, Saint-Laurent Blvd.).

Theme: “Learning and Building Together”

This year’s theme is “Learning and building together.” We believe that collectively, we can learn and grow, with each participant contributing their unique knowledge and experience as a building block to the broader Koha project. Kohacon embraces the spirit of collaborative learning through conferences and collaborative building in workshops.

Call for Speakers

We are thrilled to announce the opening of the call for speakers! We welcome your contributions, either in the form of a presentation, a workshop or a B-side discussion.

Presentations

A presentation is a session where one or more people share their knowledge on a topic. This year, presentations can be delivered in English or French. This is something new we are trying in order to honour the cultural significance of the French language in Québec. Interpreters will be available to translate presentations into the other language.

Submitting a presentation? Please include:

  • Your full name
  • Presentation title
  • Summary for the program
  • Length (15, 30, or 60 minutes)
  • Language (English or French)
  • Contact email

A few weeks before the conference, we’ll ask for your slides in PDF format to facilitate translation.

To get your brain cells going, here are subjects that were mentioned in the answers to the survey.

  • Ways to use Koha to improve day-to-day operations
  • Interesting and unusual uses of Koha
  • Case studies
  • Workflows (especially acquisitions, ERM, preservation, serials, and ILL)
  • Updates, new features, and future roadmap
  • History of Koha
  • Koha discovery for new users
  • OPAC customization
  • Documentation
  • Translation
  • Ways for non-developers to get involved
  • Plugins
  • CSS / JS tips
  • Improving and modernizing Koha (new technologies, new needs, funding, wish list of things to improve)
  • Linked data
  • Technologies behind Koha (Perl, Vue, Plack, Elasticsearch, etc.)
  • Koha installation (hardware, docker, automation, resource sharing)
  • Integration with third-party products, external search engines

Workshops

Workshops and hackfest are community-led hands-on sessions around a specific topic. One or more person can lead the session and everyone works together towards a common goal. Workshops can be led in English or French, but they will not be translated.

Submitting a workshop? Please include:

  • Your full name and co-leaders (if any)
  • Workshop title
  • Summary of the workshop or learning objectives
  • Language (English or French)
  • Contact email

To get your brain cells going, here are subjects that were mentioned in the answers to the survey.

  • Helping librarians get involved (signing off, translation, documentation)
  • Customization with CSS / JS
  • SQL and reports
  • Plugin development
  • Koha testing docker
  • How to QA

B-side

The Salle polyvalente, a large room where we will have coffee breaks and where work tables will be installed, is spacious enough for informal gatherings during the conference days. If you have a specific topic for discussion or want to form a working group, let us know, and we’ll include it in the program to garner interest.

We look forward to your participation in making Kohacon24 a memorable and enriching experience for all. Let’s learn and build together!

The Kohacon24 organization team (Caroline, Eric, Marie-Luce, and Olivier)
kohacon24@inlibro.com