Name
Dan Joseph (@danbjoseph)
Organization
American Red Cross
What contributions have you made to ODK?
I am a regular presence on the ODK forum (mostly in the Support category) and am up to 92 solutions given. I try and spread the word about how great ODK is to the Red Cross Red Crescent global network whenever the opportunity arises. I use ODK (and KoBo) in my day-to-day work and strive to bring my experiences back to the community and the core maintainer/developer team.
How do you believe your contributions have benefited ODK?
I think I've helped some with the evolution of the geo-related aspects of the roadmap. Hopefully I've convinced a few other people and groups to be fans and users of ODK - although once they try it out, it's the software that does all of the convincing!
What do you believe the top priorities for ODK should be?
Get ODK has done an amazing job keeping up a regular maintenance and development cycle; and it's great to see how they've used ODK Cloud to sustain the the core team. In no particular order:
- It seems that the group answering questions regularly on the forum skews small and I think it would be good to try and expand that group.
- I think ODK's adaptability/flexibility are a tremendous strength and asset. As the functionality is advanced and enables more complex workflows, I think it will be important to make sure it doesn't get pigeonholed into a specific use-case.
- I think more can be done to highlight and demonstrate how Central is designed to link into other tools for data analysis. In my experience people are sometimes put off but ODK not being an out-of-the-box holistic solution, and seem to lack knowledge on how it can be easily linked up to your BI software, etc.
How will you help ODK accomplish those priorities?
I can help with sense-checks on the roadmap. I think I can bring the perspective of a large, non-profit, institutional user. I think I can also bring the perspective of a user that, while somewhat technical, is outside of a software developer profile. In my role at Red Cross, I'm moving into more management and strategy and hope to have more opportunities to influence how American Red Cross and other National Societies engage with open source and ODK.
How many hours a week can you commit to participating on the TAB?
2
What other data collection projects, social impact projects, or open source projects are you involved with?
I'm a regular OpenStreetMap mapper and have also positioned my team at Red Cross to work on how to make our organization better contributors, stewards, and users of OSM. I'm an (irregular) user and contributor to OpenDroneMap - including helping maintain the project's documentation website.
Please share any links to public resources (e.g., resume, blog, Github) that help support your application.