I wanted to do a quick debrief of the convening and share some of the outcomes that affect the broader community.
Our high-level goals for the convening were to enable the TSCs that lead ODK and ODK-X to meet in person and make progress on tool suite priorities. Another goal we had was to reach consensus on governance that the PMC uses to lead the overall project.
We had 49 people (participant list) at the convening to work through our detailed agenda. I’m happy to report that we were able to accomplish our goals, and importantly, do so in a fun and motivating way (see convening photos and the success stories and cool tools demo).
ODK Suite
For the TSC responsible for the ODK Suite, the key outcomes were:
- We learned that we need to be more transparent about who is funding development, who does the work, and what systemic risks exist with that pairing (see slides and notes).
- We have reached consensus at the TSC that structural changes will be needed to ensure greater sustainability of the tools and there is desire within the TSC to make those changes.
- We gained greater clarity into the popularity of the various tools and discussed a rough strategy for the next few years (see slides and notes).
- We spent quite a bit of time defining a minimal viable product for supporting longitudinal data collection in the ODK suite (see notes). We also built a list of features for map-centric data collection (see notes) and discussed with ODK-X's TSC how we could work together to make the docs easier to contribute to (see notes).
ODK-X Suite
For the TSC responsible for the ODK-X Suite, the key outcomes were:
- Created a prioritized a backlog of issues that will feed upcoming year's roadmap (see notes).
- Generated a plan to overhaul ODK-X's documentation with a focus on learning pathways of different types of readers (e.g, field workers, developers)
- Discussed how to improve the usability and flexibility of the ODK-X architecture by upgrading certain features (e.g., async_assign, synchronization protocol) (see notes).
Overall
One of the exciting outcomes is that we’ve reached consensus on a governance structure that we believe will work for the overall project. We'll share detail on in the coming weeks, but until then, our convening facilitators that helped us reach consensus have prepared a detailed report that shares their perspective of the preparation, event activities, and outcomes achieved. You can find that report below.
WCWIO's Open Data Kit Convening Report.pdf (245.7 KB)
A big thank you to everyone who participated in the convening! And to those who we did not have space for this year, I fully expect that we’ll do another convening in about a year. The best way to be secure a spot to the next convening is to participate in the project. Quick ways to contribute is a great place to start!