In attendance

• Waylon Brunette (UW, ODK)
• Falk Schuetzenmeister (Ecoengine, BIDS)
• Guillaume Kroll (CEGA / BITSS)
• Javier Rosa (TIER / Mezuri)
• Matt Podolsky (TIER / Mezuri)
• Sidney Alexander Feygin (CE:Systems)

• Temina Madon (CEGA)

• Mia Bruch (Matrix)

Agree on a plan for the seminar

• Several have proposed (and Mia concurs) that smaller meetings this semester to bang out details for a great seminar in fall is great
• Summer plans?
• Quick review of what’s in google drive, website, etc.
• Waylon: (agrees with Temina) in person intro (Dav: plus community building) - use recorded modules for details
  • Seminar could provide overview, with reference materials for later use
  • Project-based learning in teams could be valuable (pedagogically)
  • Harness junior developers to work on specific features?
• The class may equip people to decide if they are excited / interested in contributing
• TODO: Send outline documents to Waylon
• TODO: Reach out for tentative project sources – ODK mailing list, mobsci, data on the mind, Mezuri
• TODO: Collect materials – work with David Culler?
• related: talk to Shankari about e-Mission (Culler advisee and Mobile data collection enthusiast).

Check in with Waylon with a specific focus on ODK

• What should we target for a fall seminar?
• Are there materials / short tutorials we should be running now (e.g., in Matrix or D-Lab)?
• TODO: We should get existing materials for training on ODK. Biggest training is Google Earth Outreach Team (also survey CTO, nefundi)
• At UW, stopped offering training because “it doesn’t get anybody a PhD.”
• Magda Baladinski is now Waylon’s co-advisor
• New directions in ODK(ish):
  • UCSD - data collection w/ SMS + data cleaning & viz
  • Podolsky - energy space (not very Mezuri specific)
  • Berkeley - Airtime transfers (as currency)

Update on what folks in the group are doing

• E.g., Falk and Dav have been working with undergrads on sensors and public APIs
  • Data Science Collaborative (Dav): Students are working on random problems, like optimizing university procurement systems or (potentially) solving problems with NGOs/health agencies. Aim should be to advance quality of the research done by seminar participants, once they leave the seminar.
• There is a lot of interest in looking at the software development process and connecting this with what’s going on in a physical space (happening more at UW also, with Bill Howe & Dan Halperin)
• Ari Meir (previous PhD) instrumented tracking of google development
• Healthcare overseas ends up being difficult with resource-limited organizations (research adds an overhead, takes away from direct care). Dav thinks this could be a good argument to develop these low-cost technologies in the developing world, where this is less of a problem.