yanokwa
ODK is an open-source platform used by thousands of organizations worldwide to collect billions of data points for disease surveillance, supply chain traceability, environmental monitoring, and more. It enables users to build powerful forms and reliably collect structured data, even in places with little or no Internet connectivity.
ODK has been actively developed for 18 years. We have a mix of self-hosted and SaaS users across many sectors. We're looking for a senior product manager who will own product discovery and prioritization across this diverse user base. To be successful, you'll need to find the common needs behind very different workflows and turn them into opinionated product improvements.
Because the team is small and the user base is large, this is a high-autonomy role where product decisions have an unusually direct impact. You should have substantial experience managing complex B2B or technical products. Experience with open source, self-hosted software, and small, fully remote teams is a plus.
Details and application: https://getodk.org/about/jobs/senior-product-manager
If it's a library, make it easy for developers to contribute code.
If it's an app, make it easy for individuals/businesses who value it to pay (e.g., cloud hosting).
I gave a talk about this at the launch of WHO's Open Source Program Office[1].
In practice, being a DPG makes your project slightly easier to choose in UN and government procurements. In most cases, they're choosing your platform because it's free, so it's unlikely that money or code contributions will come your way. It can even be a downside, because your software may end up deployed on an under-provisioned government server that generates a flood of support requests. Ask me how I know...
You may also get a bit more visibility and become eligible for some DPG-related funding calls. But in my experience, funding ultimately depends on demonstrated impact, donor relationships, alignment with national digital strategies, and the ability to deliver at scale.
If you are mostly on unreliable and high-latency connections, mosh will likely feel better, but with no native scrollback.
[2] https://www.africakicksoutwildpolio.com/the-top-five-tech-so...
Sensitive data that is collected from participants that users interact with are typically governed by policies set by Institutional Review Boards or Ministries of Health.
ODK is an open-source mobile data collection platform. The common use-case is a data collector in the field fills out a form while offline. Whenever a connection is found, the data gets sent to a server where it can be seen and acted on.
ODK is basically the Land Cruiser of mobile data collection apps. It's designed to be very reliable in challenging settings and it's trusted for that reason. ODK is unique because the tool is generic, but it's primarily used by organizations working in humanitarian aid and global health. It's also unique because it's got a very friendly community of developers and users who hang out at https://forum.getodk.org.
You asked about impact? The impact of ODK on global health alone is pretty wild.
* ODK was a key tool in the eradication of wild polio in Africa (https://www.africakicksoutwildpolio.com/the-top-five-tech-so...)
* ODK was used to collect the clinical trial data for the recent malaria vaccine (https://forum.getodk.org/t/odk-s-role-in-the-first-malaria-v...)
* ODK is used to measure the global burden of disease through verbal autopsies (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/health/death-records-afri...)
And that's just global health...
* Jane Goodall Institute uses it to track the health of apes (https://www.google.com/nonprofits/success-stories/jane-gooda...)
* Red Cross uses it in most crises they respond to (https://americanredcross.github.io/2019/01/08/odk-collect-im...)
* Carter Center uses it for election monitoring (https://getnemo.org/)
* Honduras uses it to track education progress of students (https://proceso.hn/imperdonable-invisibilizar-casi-2-millone...)
* Sierra Leone is using it to monitor the planting of millions of trees (https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/freetownthetre...)
So yeah, if you want to work on something that is objectively having positive impact, ODK is a great option!
ODK is open-source software that helps users build powerful offline forms to collect the data they need wherever it is. It's trusted by leading social impact organizations like the World Health Organization, Red Cross, the Carter Center, and more.
ODK is led by a small, diverse, and distributed team. We care deeply about having social impact, building open-source software, and empowering our global community of users.
Academic research is like a marathon and the Ph.D. is like a marathon training program. If you don't want to run a marathon, you probably don't need a marathon training program. Yes, a marathon training program is an interesting and rewarding way to improve your running, but it's very likely you can find equally interesting and rewarding ways to improve your running that don't have the grind of a marathon training program.
I'd strongly recommend you read The Ph.D Grind at http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm before you consider starting a Ph.D program. It's a good summary of what a Ph.D. experience at a top CS university in the US is like.