Jeff Beorse TSC Application - 2018-09-03

Name
Jeff Beorse (@Jeff_Beorse)

Organization
Eir Birch LLC

What contributions (e.g., issue triage, tech support, documentation, bug fixes) have you made to the ODK community?
Was a core developer for three years. Have since contributed new documentation (contracted by UW) and mentored a Google Summer of Code student. Otherwise generally on the forums and slack responding to questions.

How do you believe your contributions have benefited ODK?
As a core developer I helped ship ODK 2 for its public release in October 2017. My contributions to the documentation have helped new ODK 2 members more easily learn the tools (Community contributions to upcoming ODK 2.0 documentation refresh - #8 by ferd) and existing users better understand them (see Ben Green of Eliminate Dengue’s comments in the developer call on August 27th). As a GSoC mentor, I helped the student deliver a new tool to the ODK 2 suite that solves an issue requested by multiple users.

What do you believe the top priorities for ODK are?
ODK 2’s top priories include: reaching parity with ODK 1 in tooling and testing, fostering a community of contributors, and improving the learning curve. Also, as it is still new, it should be learning from its users and incorporating their feedback.

How will you help the ODK community accomplish those priorities?
I have and continue to work with the existing user community to encourage contributing back (Community contributions to upcoming ODK 2.0 documentation refresh - #9 by elmps2018). I will continue to attend each developer call and take the community feedback there and help synthesize that into new feature priorities. I will also continue to make direct contributions, which are often focused around aiding and encouraging broader community contributions (for example, transcribing a non-technical user’s documentation contributions, and cleaning up the GSoC project and making it build on all platforms).

How many hours a week can you commit to participating on the TSC?
2 (assuming this is exclusively TSC hours, I already spend more than that on broader ODK 2 activities).

What other mobile data collection projects, social good projects, or open source projects are you involved with?
I work full time at Watsi, a non profit focused on healthcare in developing regions. I run a part time consulting business, Eir Birch, that focuses on providing services around ODK 2 in the social good space. My contributions to ODK 2 are a mixture of personal volunteering and Eir Birch business.

Please share any links to public resources (e.g., resume, blog, Github) that help support your application.