If you have some exciting ideas for the evolution of ODK that you’d like to see happen but can’t devote a lot of time to, read on, this could be a great opportunity to make them come to life!
Outreachy enables members of underrepresented groups to participate in open source projects. Participants are paid a stipend of $5,500 and receive a $500 travel stipend to work with a mentoring open source project for about 3 months. This helps them improve their skills and confidence and in return, mentoring projects get some useful work done. It’s similar to Google Summer of Code which has been a big success with @Shobhit_Agarwal this summer but instead of being only students, participants are often career changers or folks returning to computing after an absence. The program runs twice a year starting in May and December.
Would anyone be interested in mentoring an Outreachy participant from December to March? I would be happy to be the community organizer if there is interest. Mentoring is entirely remote and takes an estimated 5 hours a week which can be split between more than one mentor. Read more here. Responsibilities would include making sure there are small tasks available for applicants to do in September and October as well as reviewing applications, defining and scoping the project and working with the participant on a weekly basis. I can commit to helping with the application process and helping define the project.
Currently, internships are open internationally to women (cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people. Additionally, they are open to residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.
Our deadline for applying to participate is August 31st.
Outreachy projects don’t necessarily have to be programming-related. They can also include a series of loosely related tasks rather than having one single output. Here are some rough ideas:
ODK user-facing website
This could include design work, interviewing community members, information architecture, etc. It’s related to Future of new ODK web site? so @calum, @Ronald_Munjoma and others may be interested.
Reusable graphics
Flow charts, visualizations, brochures that would help with core documentation efforts and that community members would find useful for their projects. See here for an example @downey was involved in at OpenMRS.
Show off the showcase
We have a showcase but have not been able to fill it consistently with all the awesome ODK deployments out there. For this project, the Outreach intern will find ODK users, interview them, share showcases, market them on social media, and build a culture in the community around sharing cool projects.
Volunteer coordination
We've heard that it should be easier for people to discover and pitch in to help with non-coding tasks to make ODK a more productive community. The intern could help to set up and adjust current or new tools to support this process, work to get the community using them, recruit/train people to help maintain the backlog of these non-coding issues and help make sure they're getting done! Example outputs could include an “ODK Local Meetup Organizer Kit”.
Adding testing and making structural improvements to Briefcase
This might be a tricky one for someone junior to take on but with the right mentor it could be a great learning opportunity.
Improve all the docs
We’ve launched a docs effort. The Outreachy intern can pick their level of engagement. If they are mostly into writing, they can help with a Collect user guide, frequently asked questions, form design tips. If they are more on the technical side, they can help automate screenshot taking so docs ship faster. This could also include ”how-to” videos and/or screencasts.
If you have ideas for a project and/or would like to be a mentor, please comment below!