Larry's KUDOS Thoughts

by Larry Baerveldt on May 5, 2011

KUDOS 2011 Take-Away:
I really enjoyed KUDOS 2011, and I’m sure that next year’s will be even bigger and better. Here’s just a few of my favorite presentations, comments, and moments from the conference.

Ian’s “Git 101” presentation. Great intro to git. Best advice: Every different thing you try to do, do it in a separate branch, and commit often.

Lightning Round – I love these. You can get lots of great ideas, or very few, but you can almost always walk away with at least one thing you didn’t know before. Plus forcing the speakers to just 3-5 minutes each really distills things down to the kernal of goodness. Every conference should have a lightning round.

Galen suggesting that MARC records could use a version control system, like git. I’m not sure I agree with him, but it’s a very interesting thought. I look forward to talking about it to some catalogers I know.

Ruth’s “Zen and the Art of ILS Migration” presentation. As someone else tweeted, “Who knew [an] ILS migration presentation could be so entertaining!?” Some favorite quotes:
* “Complexity is not always your enemy, but it is never, ever your friend.”
* “Have you stopped getting older? Then you can handle change.”
* In answer to what do you migrate: “‘Everything’ is frequently an invalid answer.”
* “Paper is the 2nd worst place to remember something.” (Guess what the first is.)

(What can I say, Ruth is very quotable.)

But mostly I enjoyed meeting with ByWater partners and other Koha users, sharing drinks and conversation. As is true with most conferences, the after-hours social interactions are often the most useful part. I’m already looking forward to next year.