Aurelio Di Pasquale - TAB Application - 2022-04

Community
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Name
Aurelio Di Pasquale (@aurdipas)

Organization
Swiss TPH

What contributions have you made to ODK?

Tech support to projects using ODK (around 70 in 38 counties). ODK workshops, and tech support to Ministry of Health of Data for Health countries, ODK teaching to students at University of Basel (master and PhD students in Epidemiology).

I served as TSC/TAB the last 4 years and I contributed on providing feedback from several users, writing tech specs and helping on testing and validating. I supported community users on the forms whenever I could.

Furthermore, I tried to redirect some funds to develop an open source tool to print to PDF the XLSform and supported with feedback, ideas and some brainstorming Lucas Silbernagel at TPH for his wonderful tool repvisforODK.

How do you believe your contributions have benefited ODK?

I hope to generate at least curiosity on many people about ODK. To connect people in the ODK world in different countries. To constantly provide feedback to the ODK team, from all projects I've been involved with, from the final user, the one on the field.

Serving ODK so many years has been great and fun and joy, but at the same time has increased the trust of the users I've in touch with, because they could see their feedback been addressed.

What do you believe the top priorities for ODK should be?

Now that ODK is celebrating the great milestone this year, for being now fully funded by users, with most of that funding coming on a recurring basis :slight_smile: maybe the team should relax a bit...but not too much because we need the Longitudinal data collection enabled in ODK, and maybe the possibility to export directly data from Collect to CSV, to give the possibility to very small projects to fully work offline (no server needed).

How will you help ODK accomplish those priorities?

Continuing to be an ODK Evangelist, teaching and implementing ODK in many settings. Providing documentation/slides used for teaching to facilitate new users to enter the ODK family. Being an active member of the community, try to support every member of it. Push to see all ODK Aggregate instances migrating to Central.

How many hours a week can you commit to participating on the TAB?

2-3 Hours

What other data collection projects, social impact projects, or open source projects are you involved with?

ODK WHO VA (Verbal Autopsy) instrument

Please share any links to public resources (e.g., resume, blog, Github) that help support your application.

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You've served on the TAB for some time and know what kind of discussions take place - are there any profiles or types of person that you think are missing from the TAB?

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Dear @danbjoseph,

I really enjoyed being in the TAB for the last few years and I think we have been very well organized and structured and have achieved great goals.

I especially liked @LN's presence on calls from time to time and when some ODK developer members could join the call with us.

It might be interesting to have a format in which a DEV team member can regularly join the call.

Especially when joining @LN I really felt that TAB wasn't really gender balanced, and I think this definitely needs to be improved :slight_smile:

I would very much like in the TAB the experience or ideas of someone with technical skills on data analysis / visualization / interpretation (I'm probably a bit biased but I see @Thalie a good fit to cover this role).

Finally, I saw a lot of discussions in the forum, from people working in a completely different field from mine and from other members of the TAB.
(For example Agriculture, a real shame that no one has come forward to join the TAB).

perhaps an idea would perhaps be to sometimes invite some of these people to participate in the call and actively present their work and make proposals on topics to be discussed at the TAB that perhaps the TAB would not come up with.

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:joy: Well understood!

Yes, absolutely. We have been listening and reviewing notes but I agree that it's a richer experience to actually be there. Our goal moving forward is to always have at least one of us on calls. Thanks for making that request explicit.

How long do you imagine these presentations being? Do you see making this idea happen as something for the core team to do or something a TAB member could facilitate?

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the presentation could be short. I can imagine a format with a maximum of 10-15 minutes including questions. This type of invitation is not meant to be on a regular basis, but if someone on the TAB encounters an interesting post or a forum user that arouses particular interest, then that user could be invited to a TAB meeting.

Perhaps the showcase in the forum could be used as a platform for users who would like to have a voice in the TAB to give them the opportunity to go on stage and have 5-10 minutes to have their say :slight_smile:

1 Like