What contributions (e.g., issue triage, tech support, documentation, bug fixes) have you made to the ODK community?
Tech support to projects using ODK (around 65 in 36 counties). ODK workshops within the D4H initiative (https://www.bloomberg.org/program/public-health/data-health/), ODK teaching to students at University of Basel (master and PhD students in Epidemiology). I served as TSC member last year and I contributed on providing feedback from several users, writing tech specs and helping on testing and validating.
How do you believe your contributions have benefited ODK?
Increasing the community of users. Providing lot of feedback from many country settings. I enjoyed to serve the TSC being a way for users that have seen their voice going from the field to implementation.
What do you believe the top priorities for ODK are?
Users are always first priority. The voice from the vield needs always to be taken into account. ODK is an example of enormeous success of an open source becoming a standard on the field. And the community growth in number and collaboration is the key that allowed this. Many users are now is looking very much to the new ODK Central that can provide features that were a limitation in Aggregate.
How will you help the ODK community accomplish those priorities?
Continuing to use, teachi and implementing ODK on many settings I can provide feedback. Providing documentation/slides used for teaching to facilitating new users to enter in the ODK family. Being and active member of the community people can refer to. Start to test and validate ODK Central in teaching activities and in some projects.
How many hours a week can you commit to participating on the TSC?
1-2
@aurdipas Really appreciated you being a voice for users (and your trying of betas) over the last year!
One of the things I worry about is we how we more easily gather feedback from the folks in the field who aren't on the forum or social media. Do you agree that this is something we must improve? If so, any ideas on how we could do that?
@yanokwa This is a big issue indeed. Most of the time we are far away from the final user.
Fieldorkers in remote areas are unlikely to join a forum, but depending on the country you can find many of them on facebook.
After 10 years at the Swiss TPH I learnt that the feedback you get from remote is very limited.
Normally the feedback on issues/bugs or requests for improvements go from fieldworker -->to field supervisor--> to data manager -->to PI on site and then finally to the technical person.
You get to know probably only critical or high priority issues but most of the original feedback is lost on the way.
That's why I visit often the field and I like to work side by side with the filedworkers.
They are a precious source of info and it is very interesting to see the way they use the tool.
Most of them are frustrated by the fact that when they complain for something not perfectly working or they indicate something that could facilitate their work, their voice doesnt't get anywhere, they are most of the time ignored and at one point they stop to give feedback as they don't see any value on doing it.
I really love my work because it gives me the possibility to go on the field, on remote places and work with these people and really experience the fieldwork.
And when I listen to them and help them, then I see that they feel more motivated on doing their job better and continue to give feedback.
Probably insist more on the social media (I would say FB) is a way to get more feedback.
Posting their pictures of the daily work or the screenshot of a problem could be a good idea.
I think incentives for them to help from time to time could be an idea, nothing complicated (maybe a draw of an ODK T-shirt, or another ODK gadget once in a while?).
I'll start to tell them this maybe from the next trip (Sunday I fly to Ivory Coast for a fieldwork in Taabo... @LN could help avec les français!
