Wayland, MA, USA, April 19, 2002 – The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that Carl Katz has joined the organization as Director of Documentation and Knowledge Management. Mr. Katz brings over 10 years of experience developing and managing corporate knowledge. Prior to joining OGC, Mr. Katz was the Director of Knowledge Management for USPowerSolutions, where he developed programs to improve enterprise collaboration, document management, corporate education, product development, and process adoption. Before USPowerSolutions, Mr. Katz held technical documentation management positions with several Boston-area software companies, including HPR, Inc., INTERSOLV, and the Reed Elsevier Technology Group.Mr. Katz will establish process and quality assurance procedures to manage OGC technical and specification documents and associated database processes. He will guide the development of an OGC Document Knowledge Portal to support rapid discovery of and access to information in OGC technical documents. In addition, Mr. Katz will chair and participate in the OGC Document Subcommittee and will oversee the technical writing and editing of OGC documents.David Schell, President of OGC, said, “We are extremely pleased and fortunate to have Carl on staff. The role of documentation and corporate knowledge management is a critical one for the Consortium. Through Carl's leadership, we expect to realize significant gains in our capacity to manage an ever increasing collection of OpenGIS® specifications, and a myriad of critical program documentation resources required to advance interoperability for geoprocessing and location based services around the globe.”Mr. Katz holds a Master's degree in Technical and Professional Communication from Northeastern University and a Bachelor's degree in Business and Technical Writing from the University of Delaware.OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 230 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS® Specifications support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web and mainstream IT, and empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org .– end –“