Dublin: a Flying Visit

I caught an early morning bus down from Derry to Dublin and it was a great way to see the countryside.

Dublin is such a cool city. I was staying right in the middle of HQ Central for the Easter Uprising in 1916, virtually opposite the Central Post Office itself.

My visit to Dublin was a fleeting one. I arrived around noon and went straight to Trinity College and saw the long hall (amazing) and the Book of Kells (amazing too) and then I met Charles Quain from Interleaf for a gorgeous Japanese dinner before the usergroup meeting the next day.

It was so nice to meet the Interleaf guys; I'd been meeting their fans for weeks! A really good outcome was interest in forming a user group.

The question of Koha usergroups has come up many times over the last 6 weeks as I've been traveling round. While in Sydney Irma Birchall and I talked at length about important they are and how best Calyx as a vendor can support the user community. The trick is that while vendors can and should offer support, the usergroups should really be run by users not vendors. This question came up in Malaysia, Berlin and also again today in Stockholm.

Irma tells me that the North American Koha usergroup has done some great work formalising a structure and held a terrific usergroup meeting which her and Bob attended. Perhaps the North American model could be used by others as a starting point.