2017-07: Robby O'Connor

Congratulations to Robby O'Connor on becoming the Volunteer of the Month for July! We are grateful for Robby's work and dedication to the OpenMRS community, so we asked him a few questions regarding his involvement in the community to get to know more about him.

About Robby O'Connor

Name: Robby O'Connor

OpenMRS ID: r0bby

Background

I have a CS degree and have been doing a lot of infrastructure work. I've used Linux on and off for well over 15+ years.

Robby's Picture

When I started with OpenMRS

Back in 2008 - nearly 10 years ago - time flies.

How did you get interested in OpenMRS

I liked that the work made an impact and that it didn't directly benefit me.

How do you participate in the community

I initially joined the OpenMRS community as a Google Summer of Code Student from 2008-2009 (2010 I was a student with the Sahana Software Foundation). I maintained an active presence and occasionally contributed (I did a significant amount of work on the Groovy Module). After I graduated with my Bachelors in Computer Science, I started helping out with Google Code-In and volunteered to help review the pull requests which revamped the ID Dashboard design. This quickly snowballed into me actively maintaining it. I've since made it easier for new developers to get started by dockerizing the application. This also lead me to join the Infrastructure Team (which I actually resigned from in September of 2016). I have since been helping out on and off and working on ID dashboard whenever time permitted. I still occasionally offer my input in the Infrastructure Chat on matters as I catch them.

What drives or inspires you to work with OpenMRS

The community. There are thousands of patients, clinicians and clinic staff who rely on our community existing and remaining up and running.

What are your favorite hobbies to do in your free time

I'm usually tinkering and/or keeping up with the latest technologies.

What makes OpenMRS special to you

The community.

How has working with OpenMRS impacted you

I have gained a good deal of professional experience by working on the infrastructure team.

 

Thanks again to Robby for all his hard work!