Name
Martijn van de Rijdt (@martijnr)
Organization
Enketo LLC
What contributions (e.g., issue triage, tech support, documentation, bug fixes) have you made to the ODK community?
I am working on the Enketo Project. The Enketo (Express/Validate) application plugs into ODK tools and can be used for data collection and more. I have contributed to discussions about new features, XForms documentation, and XLSForms documentation.
How do you believe your contributions have benefited ODK?
I think the ecosystem benefits from having multiple tool options available. Enketo has provided alternatives for ODK Collect and ODK Validate. Having options makes an ecosystem more attractive for people looking to create a custom Information Management system. They can pick and chose tools that most closely match their requirements. Moreover, with Enketo ODK has become suitable for a larger user base (e.g. those wanting to collect data with iOS devices, laptops, or an online/email campaign). It has also provided unique features that were previously not available (form previews, form pdfs).
I think that my work on the ODK XForms specification has been useful because that specification is really the core of the ODK ecosystem. Managing this specification carefully will have a positive impact on the long-term health of the ecosystem. It is very tempting to quickly hack something together (syntax-wise), and we need people (like myself) that say 'Hold on! Let's figure out how to do this properly so it won't bite us later'. It's very hard and costly to undo bad decisions.
What do you believe the top priorities for ODK are?
Finalizing the governance transition. Guarding against feature bloat. Sorting out a sustainable way of ensuring continuing development (funding/contribution) of ODK tools. Letting ODK Central become a great modern sleek small ODK server solution that can be easily installed and updated. Helping to get some important ecosystem tools, such as Enketo, become equally well-governed multi-stakeholder projects.
How will you help the ODK community accomplish those priorities?
By providing my inputs during discussions, and contributing directly towards some of these.
How many hours a week can you commit to participating on the TSC?
1-2
What other mobile data collection projects, social good projects, or open source projects are you involved with?
It's all within the ODK Ecosystem for me and has been since around 2012, when I discovered ODK.
Please share any links to public resources (e.g., resume, blog, Github) that help support your application.