Name
Waylon Brunette (@W_Brunette)
Organization
University of Washington
What contributions (e.g., issue triage, tech support, documentation, bug fixes) have you made to the ODK community?
I am one of the founders of ODK and have been contributing to the project for almost a decade (9.5+ years, wow time has flown by). During this time I have been involved at all levels of the project and have helped design, build, deploy, and provide support for both the ODK 1 Tool Suite and ODK 2 Tool Suite. I have contributed code, tech support, vision, issue triage, documentation, bug fixes, code reviews, reports, etc. The last couple of years my focus has been on 1) releasing the ODK 2 Tool Suite and 2) transitioning the ownership of the Open Data Kit project from the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering to a self-governed open-source project. I also currently serve on ODK’s Project Management Committee and have worked on tasks ranging from the ODK Convening to the Mission and Values statement.
How do you believe your contributions have benefited ODK?
I believe my early contributions helped establish the ODK project as a domain independent platform for mobile data collection with an ecosystem of compatible tools that follow open standards. My personal commitment, along with many others, to keep ODK project viable and working for the last 9.5+ years has allowed the ODK project to blossom. These commitments helped influenced organizations to adopt ODK by providing stability and enabling organizations to trust that ODK project would be supported and continue to grow for many years to come.
What do you believe the top priorities for ODK are?
- Expand the overall number of contributors to ODK to balance the workload better.
- Expand the number of part time contributors to increase the diversity of contributions to ODK.
- Simplify the configuration and setup processes for the ODK 2 Tool Suite.
- Finish transitioning the ODK project from UW-CSE to a self-governed open-source project with a diverse set of stakeholders participating in the governance.
How will you help the ODK community accomplish those priorities?
I plan to help recruit contributors by continuing to engage with organizations to find ways for their employees to participate on a part time basis. I also believe the TSC can help improve contributions by lowering the barriers to people making contributions with following improvements: 1) communicating a future vision; 2) building a road map and schedule enabling people to better plan their ability to contribute to the common vision; and 3) creating a community based process for selecting features so contributors feel that they have share in the ownership of the roadmap. Additionally, by simplifying the configuration and setup for the ODK 2 Tool Suite I believe we can lower the barriers for contributors to get started. Finally, by establishing a well functioning TSC with community contributor input mechanisms, the ODK project will be further along in the process of transitioning to a self-governed open-source project.
How many hours a week can you commit to participating on the TSC?
Between 6 to 12 hours depending on the week.
What other mobile data collection projects, social good projects, or open source projects are you involved with?
ODK has been a my primary open source focus for the last 9.5+ years and this caused the vast majority of my time to be spent on the ODK project; thereby, eclipsing my other small contributions to other social good projects.
Please share any links to public resources (e.g., resume, blog, Github) that help support your application.