Hi Everyone! I’m DK, Secretary-Treasurer on the ODM Board. For the last 6 months, we have been working hard to build the organization, and I am happy to say we are finally officially a 501c3 organization! With that in place, we can really ramp up operations and start making key decisions around resourcing, finding partnerships, and developing the ODM suite of software to be at the cutting edge of the photogrammetry space.
To best position ourselves to do that work, we have drafted a Strategic Plan. We plan to approve the plan at our next board meeting on 10 August, so until that date the document is open for public comment. We value the voice of the community, and are taking steps to make sure we incorporate your feedback and ensure the future of ODM is in your hands.
The strategic plan is the guide for the organization to align with the goals of the organization, and to allocate resources effectively to reach those goals. We spent a lot of time thinking about our values as individuals on the board, and how those translate to the organization values. If we agree on a clear set of values, then the decisions along each step of building and pushing the organization forward are easy. The second half of the document outline broadly the vision, how we will find and allocate resources to achieve that vision, and the strategic priorities that will direct the staff and board for the first few years.
So please give us your thoughts. We will answer any questions and try to add more context or clarity where needed in this thread.
Hi DK, is the knowledge hub mentioned in the document a brand new site, or an extension to the current docs? Sounds like a cool project to work toward.
I’ll let Stephen go into more detail, but the broad concept is to leverage the expertise of the community into a comprehensive space for learning about drones, photogrammetry, ODM, use cases, all that and more. The scope and implementation (for all the strategic priorities) will be the mandate of the staff. In other words, the path forward is open to great ideas
Both editions of the ODM guides include flying tips to improve image quality at the point of collection. While it wouldn’t be in-scope for ODM to develop reference implementations, it might be appropriate for ODM to evaluate applications for their suitability and provide recommendations to developers to improve the usability of their software for these purposes.
It is a bit niche, but the Solex MAVLink/ArduPilot GCS for Android by Kelly Schrock already has a survey mode that follows Stephen’s methodology exactly.
Kelly added it for me a few years back
We’re hoping to see if we can foster that relationship a bit more, and see if we can maybe bring other SDKs to the fold.
Yes, not much to add here yet, given this is still written as a strategic priority not a workplan yet. That said, documentation as well as this forum are core and serve as the starting place for any additional educational resources. Documentation is likely to get the first (and maybe even second) pass before any other initiative. Some of that is restructuring, some is capturing frequently asked questions here on the forum in an easier to find format, etc…
Next will be to identify appropriate gaps and opportunities: for example, what does a new or existing user come looking for, how do they find it, and how do we make that process better and have them find the resources they need.
Beyond a needs assessment, looking at other educational platforms for inspiration will also be an important part of the discovery process prior to a workplan.
Something else came to mind, which I think is important to long term sustainability. I didn’t see any mention or emphasis on the projects that OpenDroneMap currently depends on, but I think part of the vision should include “The support of downstream open-source projects that OpenDroneMap relies upon”. Or something like that.
Yes. To note, some projects are better funded than others, but some certainly could use funds to make on-going improvements, which in turn benefit the upstream projects.
Great point to bring up! As an aside, I talked briefly with some folks at Mapillary/Meta at State of the Map and they said that OpenSFM would continue to be maintained as it is part of their core work. That said, we should keep on our toes with an ever-changing tech landscape. I will add addressing critical dependencies to both the Partnerships section and the Roadmap priority.
