OGC Newsletter - September 2004
OGC News:
September 2004
CONTENTS
Presidents Message
Incoming President's Message
Industry Day Planned for Chicago Meeting
Emerging Technology Summit Scheduled
Website of the Month
DEPARTMENTS:
Member Corner, New Members, OGC In The News, Events, Contact, Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Back issues of OGC News are available.
PRESIDENTS MESSAGE
A New Name for OGC, New Roles for Staff
On 1 September 2004, the Open GIS Consortium's Board of Directors (BOD) officially changed the name of the corporation to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The name change reflects the organization's commitment to meeting the broader geospatial interoperability needs of business, government, academic, and consumer users. At the same time, the BOD approved several management changes to increase the effectiveness and management of the organization.
I shall continue in my role as Chairman and CEO, concerned primarily with strategic positioning and organization development. Mark Reichardt assumes the role of President and, as COO, takes over day to day management of consortium operations. Carl Reed has been named Chief Technology Officer and will be responsible for planning the consortium's long-term technology strategy in addition to his current duties as Executive Director of the Specification Program.
Also with great pleasure, I announce the appointment George Percivall as Executive Director, Interoperability Architecture. Sam Bacharach will replace Mark Reichardt as Executive Director of Outreach and Community Adoption Programs. Both George and Sam are well known to the OGC community for their exceptional technical contributions and the role that they both play in the international standards community.
Our new name and our new organization reflects OGCs evolution to meet significant new challenges that are the result of the influence our collective efforts have had in reshaping the markets for geospatial information and technologies. I look forward to working closely with Mark and Carl to continue to shape the consortium's strategic direction with the objective of enabling spatial information of all kinds to become more accessible and relevant to the ICT community in all appropriate domains. With our new management structure in place, I look forward to working with and serving the OGC member community more effectively as it continues to aspire to, and achieve, that "next level." Such aspiration and achievement represent the unique spirit of optimism that from the beginning has characterized our common purpose.
In future columns, I can elaborate on our name change and aspects of our new organization and process. For now, I simply wish to welcome Mark to his new responsibilities and express my confidence that his creative leadership will energize the organization and bring us significantly closer to accomplishing our mission.
With these changes, the OGC embarks on its next phase to focus on market outreach and requirements, and the integration of technology programs into user uptake scenarios. As we proceed, I am satisfied that we have put the best talent where it can most effectively be applied, and provided it with the scope and direction to maximize our common success.
David Schell
CEO and Chairman, OGC
INCOMING PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
In future issues, David and I will be sharing this space in the OGC News to discuss relevant strategic and operational topics. I want to thank David for his leadership over the past decade and for his continued dedication as CEO and Chairman to the OGC cause in the years ahead. In my new role as President, I look forward to helping to advance the OGC vision and mission and to working as part of a team of members and staff dedicated to advancing interoperability worldwide.
As I take a deep breath in assuming my new role, I am mindful that our future success relies on the continued ability of our members to develop, agree upon, approve and field the many open standards born from community requirements. I also understand the need for OGC to support broad community outreach to assist in stimulating awareness and uptake, not only in those communities of interest that are aware of the benefits of OGC specifications, but across new communities who have yet to witness the benefits of standards-based geospatial solutions.
I will be asking OGC members and others in the geospatial community to help me gage our effectiveness and I will be asking them for their ideas on how we can improve our process to better meet our goals. I look forward to your suggestions.
Mark Reichardt
President, OGC
INDUSTRY DAY PLANNED FOR CHICAGO MEETING
An OpenGIS Industry Day will be held September 13 at the Holiday Inn Chicago - Mart Plaza. The event brings together OGC members and experts from industry and academia to explore geospatial requirements for several topical areas including homeland security, location-based services, and vehicle services. The event will focus on discussion of the role of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) in government deployments, the expectations for the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) and related standards activities underway to advance these technology areas.
Non-members involved in these areas are invited to attend. OGC members are encouraged to reserve a tabletop for demonstrations during an evening reception.
The event is sponsored by NAVTEQ, the Chicago Geospatial Exchange and OGC.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT SCHEDULED
The third Emerging Technology Summit (ETS III) will be held December 6-7 in Washington, DC. The focus will be "Advancing the Sensor Web." This year's event is sponsored by OGC, GITA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Advancements in sensor, wireless and Internet technologies, and the integration of these technologies, make network accessible sensors viable. Like websites, a wide variety of sensors will soon be offered as network resources, available to any application that needs near real-time observations and measurements. ETS III will bring together experts from across the community to engage in discussion on the integration and innovative application of sensors and sensor networks to address increasingly complex issues in business, government, and research. This symposium is an opportunity to hear from and interact with leaders from government, industry and academia as they discuss current successes and define the challenges for improved discovery, access and integration of real time sensor information for enhanced monitoring and decision-making.
WEBSITE OF THE MONTH
This month we take a break from highlighting websites that use OpenGIS Specifications to provide data and services to focus on a website about standards consortia, ConsortiumInfo.org.
The website is sponsored by Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a law firm that has represented over 60 standards organizations, including OGC. The website offers a variety of features, including:
- "The Essential Guide to Consortia and Standards" with information on how to pick the "right" standards organization for your business or interest, how to start a standards organization, intellectual property issues and other topics close to the hearts of those involved or interested in standards.
- A free monthly electronic newsletter, the "Consortium Standards Bulletin," written by Andrew Updegrove, OGC's legal counsel. The August issue explores open source issues and includes an interview with three leaders about the road blocks that may lie ahead for the movement.
- A News Portal on standards and standard setting (its updated every weekday).
- A thoughtful Standards Blog, which is also updated regularly and provides insight into a great variety of topics.
- A list with descriptions of over 400 consortia, together with links to their sites, standards and intellectual property rights policies.
Many of the site's offerings are available via RSS feed.
These resources are incredibly valuable if you, or your organization, are trying to make sense of how standards work and how best to be involved in the process.
Know of a website that uses OpenGIS specifications to solve a real world problem or demonstrates an interesting use? Drop the editor an e-mail with the details including the URL, organization behind the website, specifications used, technology used and the goal of the website.
adena [at] opengis.org"> adena [at] opengis.org
MEMBER CORNER
The National Center for Sensor Systems Interoperability and Information Assurance at Oak Ridge National Labs has joined OGC to support OGC's Sensor Web Enablement effort. The Center already has a program, SensorNet, underway in which operational prototypes are being tested by different sets of users to help Center personnel evaluate requirements and architectural issues. SensorNet is focused on Homeland Security issues, but the Center's various partners in government, industry and academia plan to apply the same interoperability architecture in other areas. NCSSIIA will be sponsoring OGC's Sensor Web Enablement Emerging Technology Summit in December.
NEW MEMBERS
OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.
FM Global (US)
Associate
Info-Dynamics Research (UK)
Small Company
Instituto Geográfico Nacional of Spain (Spain)
Government
Office International de L'eau (France)
Non-Profit/NGO
Oregon State University (US)
University
Mississippi State University (US)
University
University of Maine (US)
University
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
Technical
OGC IN THE NEWS
What's in a Name Change?
Carl Reed
Directions Magazine
September 8, 2004
Creating a Platform for Digital Rights, Sensor Webs and the Future
David Schell
GeoWorld
August 2004
Spatial Interoperability Project Kicks Off
Bob Jackson
Engineers Australia Magazine
August 2004
CubeWerx Announces CubeWerx Web Registry Server Solution
August 24, 2004
Environment Canada Publishes Its Data Online with Autodesk GIS Solutions
GISuser.com
August 19, 2004
GeoLeaders Announces Geospatial Design Competition
August 4, 2004
- OGC Press Releases
OGC Names New CTO and Executive Director, Interoperability Architecture
September 9, 2004
Mark Reichardt Named President of OGC
September 9, 2004
Web Simulation Workshop Registration Now Open
Sept 7, 2004
OGC Event to Highlight Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Solutions
Sept 3, 2004
Open GIS Consortium Becomes Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
Sept 1, 2004
Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference to be held in Cairo
Aug 25, 2004
Spatial Software Buyers Look for Technology Products Supporting Standards
Aug 10, 2004
OGC Announces Call for Sponsors for Spatial Web Services Initiative
Aug 4, 2004
EVENTS
September 13
Chicago, IL
OpenGIS Industry Day - Geospatial Requirements for Telematics:
September 13-17, 2004
Chicago, Illinois
OGC Technical Committee/Planning Committee Meeting
September 20-24, 2004
Denver, Colorado
Monitoring Science & Technology Symposium
September 26, 2004
Orlando, Florida
SpatialTech 2004
October 2-8, 2004
Pallanza (Verbania), Italy
ISO/TC 211 19th Plenary and WG meetings
October 12, 2004
Arlington, VA
Second Annual Workshop on Web Enabled Modeling and Simulation
October 20-21
Washington, DC
Interoperability 2004
October 26
Detroit, MI
2004 Great Lakes Regional Data Exchange Conference
For further info on events please contact Greg Buehler.
gbuehler [at] opengeospatial.org (Greg Buehler).
CONTACT
Please send comments and suggestions to:
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial.org
with "subscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
To unsubscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial.org
with "unsubscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
Visit our subscription page
CONTENTS





DEPARTMENTS:
Member Corner, New Members, OGC In The News, Events, Contact, Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Back issues of OGC News are available.
![]() |
PRESIDENTS MESSAGE
A New Name for OGC, New Roles for Staff
On 1 September 2004, the Open GIS Consortium's Board of Directors (BOD) officially changed the name of the corporation to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The name change reflects the organization's commitment to meeting the broader geospatial interoperability needs of business, government, academic, and consumer users. At the same time, the BOD approved several management changes to increase the effectiveness and management of the organization.
I shall continue in my role as Chairman and CEO, concerned primarily with strategic positioning and organization development. Mark Reichardt assumes the role of President and, as COO, takes over day to day management of consortium operations. Carl Reed has been named Chief Technology Officer and will be responsible for planning the consortium's long-term technology strategy in addition to his current duties as Executive Director of the Specification Program.
Also with great pleasure, I announce the appointment George Percivall as Executive Director, Interoperability Architecture. Sam Bacharach will replace Mark Reichardt as Executive Director of Outreach and Community Adoption Programs. Both George and Sam are well known to the OGC community for their exceptional technical contributions and the role that they both play in the international standards community.
Our new name and our new organization reflects OGCs evolution to meet significant new challenges that are the result of the influence our collective efforts have had in reshaping the markets for geospatial information and technologies. I look forward to working closely with Mark and Carl to continue to shape the consortium's strategic direction with the objective of enabling spatial information of all kinds to become more accessible and relevant to the ICT community in all appropriate domains. With our new management structure in place, I look forward to working with and serving the OGC member community more effectively as it continues to aspire to, and achieve, that "next level." Such aspiration and achievement represent the unique spirit of optimism that from the beginning has characterized our common purpose.
In future columns, I can elaborate on our name change and aspects of our new organization and process. For now, I simply wish to welcome Mark to his new responsibilities and express my confidence that his creative leadership will energize the organization and bring us significantly closer to accomplishing our mission.
With these changes, the OGC embarks on its next phase to focus on market outreach and requirements, and the integration of technology programs into user uptake scenarios. As we proceed, I am satisfied that we have put the best talent where it can most effectively be applied, and provided it with the scope and direction to maximize our common success.
David Schell
CEO and Chairman, OGC
![]() |
INCOMING PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
In future issues, David and I will be sharing this space in the OGC News to discuss relevant strategic and operational topics. I want to thank David for his leadership over the past decade and for his continued dedication as CEO and Chairman to the OGC cause in the years ahead. In my new role as President, I look forward to helping to advance the OGC vision and mission and to working as part of a team of members and staff dedicated to advancing interoperability worldwide.
As I take a deep breath in assuming my new role, I am mindful that our future success relies on the continued ability of our members to develop, agree upon, approve and field the many open standards born from community requirements. I also understand the need for OGC to support broad community outreach to assist in stimulating awareness and uptake, not only in those communities of interest that are aware of the benefits of OGC specifications, but across new communities who have yet to witness the benefits of standards-based geospatial solutions.
I will be asking OGC members and others in the geospatial community to help me gage our effectiveness and I will be asking them for their ideas on how we can improve our process to better meet our goals. I look forward to your suggestions.
Mark Reichardt
President, OGC
![]() |
INDUSTRY DAY PLANNED FOR CHICAGO MEETING
An OpenGIS Industry Day will be held September 13 at the Holiday Inn Chicago - Mart Plaza. The event brings together OGC members and experts from industry and academia to explore geospatial requirements for several topical areas including homeland security, location-based services, and vehicle services. The event will focus on discussion of the role of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) in government deployments, the expectations for the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) and related standards activities underway to advance these technology areas.
Non-members involved in these areas are invited to attend. OGC members are encouraged to reserve a tabletop for demonstrations during an evening reception.
The event is sponsored by NAVTEQ, the Chicago Geospatial Exchange and OGC.
![]() |
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT SCHEDULED
The third Emerging Technology Summit (ETS III) will be held December 6-7 in Washington, DC. The focus will be "Advancing the Sensor Web." This year's event is sponsored by OGC, GITA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Advancements in sensor, wireless and Internet technologies, and the integration of these technologies, make network accessible sensors viable. Like websites, a wide variety of sensors will soon be offered as network resources, available to any application that needs near real-time observations and measurements. ETS III will bring together experts from across the community to engage in discussion on the integration and innovative application of sensors and sensor networks to address increasingly complex issues in business, government, and research. This symposium is an opportunity to hear from and interact with leaders from government, industry and academia as they discuss current successes and define the challenges for improved discovery, access and integration of real time sensor information for enhanced monitoring and decision-making.
![]() |
WEBSITE OF THE MONTH
This month we take a break from highlighting websites that use OpenGIS Specifications to provide data and services to focus on a website about standards consortia, ConsortiumInfo.org.
The website is sponsored by Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a law firm that has represented over 60 standards organizations, including OGC. The website offers a variety of features, including:
- "The Essential Guide to Consortia and Standards" with information on how to pick the "right" standards organization for your business or interest, how to start a standards organization, intellectual property issues and other topics close to the hearts of those involved or interested in standards.
- A free monthly electronic newsletter, the "Consortium Standards Bulletin," written by Andrew Updegrove, OGC's legal counsel. The August issue explores open source issues and includes an interview with three leaders about the road blocks that may lie ahead for the movement.
- A News Portal on standards and standard setting (its updated every weekday).
- A thoughtful Standards Blog, which is also updated regularly and provides insight into a great variety of topics.
- A list with descriptions of over 400 consortia, together with links to their sites, standards and intellectual property rights policies.
Many of the site's offerings are available via RSS feed.
These resources are incredibly valuable if you, or your organization, are trying to make sense of how standards work and how best to be involved in the process.
Know of a website that uses OpenGIS specifications to solve a real world problem or demonstrates an interesting use? Drop the editor an e-mail with the details including the URL, organization behind the website, specifications used, technology used and the goal of the website.
adena [at] opengis.org"> adena [at] opengis.org
![]() |
MEMBER CORNER
The National Center for Sensor Systems Interoperability and Information Assurance at Oak Ridge National Labs has joined OGC to support OGC's Sensor Web Enablement effort. The Center already has a program, SensorNet, underway in which operational prototypes are being tested by different sets of users to help Center personnel evaluate requirements and architectural issues. SensorNet is focused on Homeland Security issues, but the Center's various partners in government, industry and academia plan to apply the same interoperability architecture in other areas. NCSSIIA will be sponsoring OGC's Sensor Web Enablement Emerging Technology Summit in December.
![]() |
NEW MEMBERS
OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.
FM Global (US)
Associate
Info-Dynamics Research (UK)
Small Company
Instituto Geográfico Nacional of Spain (Spain)
Government
Office International de L'eau (France)
Non-Profit/NGO
Oregon State University (US)
University
Mississippi State University (US)
University
University of Maine (US)
University
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
Technical
![]() |
OGC IN THE NEWS
- OGC in the Press
What's in a Name Change?
Carl Reed
Directions Magazine
September 8, 2004
Creating a Platform for Digital Rights, Sensor Webs and the Future
David Schell
GeoWorld
August 2004
Spatial Interoperability Project Kicks Off
Bob Jackson
Engineers Australia Magazine
August 2004
CubeWerx Announces CubeWerx Web Registry Server Solution
August 24, 2004
Environment Canada Publishes Its Data Online with Autodesk GIS Solutions
GISuser.com
August 19, 2004
GeoLeaders Announces Geospatial Design Competition
August 4, 2004
- OGC Press Releases
OGC Names New CTO and Executive Director, Interoperability Architecture
September 9, 2004
Mark Reichardt Named President of OGC
September 9, 2004
Web Simulation Workshop Registration Now Open
Sept 7, 2004
OGC Event to Highlight Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Solutions
Sept 3, 2004
Open GIS Consortium Becomes Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
Sept 1, 2004
Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference to be held in Cairo
Aug 25, 2004
Spatial Software Buyers Look for Technology Products Supporting Standards
Aug 10, 2004
OGC Announces Call for Sponsors for Spatial Web Services Initiative
Aug 4, 2004
![]() |
EVENTS
September 13
Chicago, IL
OpenGIS Industry Day - Geospatial Requirements for Telematics:
September 13-17, 2004
Chicago, Illinois
OGC Technical Committee/Planning Committee Meeting
September 20-24, 2004
Denver, Colorado
Monitoring Science & Technology Symposium
September 26, 2004
Orlando, Florida
SpatialTech 2004
October 2-8, 2004
Pallanza (Verbania), Italy
ISO/TC 211 19th Plenary and WG meetings
October 12, 2004
Arlington, VA
Second Annual Workshop on Web Enabled Modeling and Simulation
October 20-21
Washington, DC
Interoperability 2004
October 26
Detroit, MI
2004 Great Lakes Regional Data Exchange Conference
For further info on events please contact Greg Buehler.
gbuehler [at] opengeospatial.org (Greg Buehler).
![]() |
CONTACT
Please send comments and suggestions to:
adena [at] opengeospatial.org (Adena Schutzberg)
Editor, OGC News
Open Geospatial Consortium
35 Main Street Suite 5
Wayland MA 01778-5037
USA Phone: +1 508 655 5858
Fax: +1 508 655 2237
![]() |
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial.org
with "subscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
To unsubscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial.org
with "unsubscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
Visit our subscription page
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Copyright 2004 by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
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