The OGC Blog

Last week in Austin, Texas, there was a meeting of the OGC members who are planning an OGC North American Forum. People working in organizations representing Canada, Mexico and the United States of America came together to outline the goals and the formulation of the forum. You are probably wondering what this has to do with the Middle East. Well, quite a lot actually.

There are many, many international geospatial conferences. There are those dedicated to scientific topics, some related to specific topics, such as the GSDI Association conferences and spatial data infrastructures, and then there are many vendor-specific conferences and exhibitions. However, there are very few geospatial events dedicated to bringing together all the industry leaders from the public sector, the private sector, academia and research.

If I were presented with an opportunity to choose my top 3 events with geospatial significance, the Eye on Earth Summit and Exhibition Abu Dhabi would be on the list. In terms of prominent speakers, useful content, business networking, amazing choreography and inspiration, this event had it all.

Next week a global event is taking place in the Middle East, specifically in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It’s called the Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit and Exhibition and it takes place at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) from 12th to 15th December.  The goal is to bring together world experts to facilitate greater access to environmental and societal data to help achieve sustainable development especially for emerging economies.

The OGC is involved in many ways. OGC Board Member Professor Jacqueline McGlade from the EEA will be speaking, as will Jack Dangermond from OGC Principal Member Esri and Rebecca Moore from OGC Principal Member, Google.

As part of my involvement in the SSSC 2011 international conference in Wellington, New Zealand I ran a workshop on Open Standards, Policy and Business Value, which was sponsored by e-Spatial New Zealand Ltd. Attendees came from both government and the private sector and they contributed to the development of the workshop, which will be delivered at other international conferences in coming years. The workshop will also be refined in line with activities of the OGC Business Value Committee.

The OGC is invited to provide speakers at hundreds of events worldwide. We support events in areas that are relevant to member interests and areas where OGC’s open standards can add value. Two such targeted and focused events will take place in the next 3 months. The first event is the Eye on Earth Summit & Exhibition 2011, 12-15 December 2011 at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi www.eyeonearthsummit.org. The second is Defence Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) 2012, 23-26 January 2012 in London www.dgieurope.com.

Last week I had the pleasure of joining my colleague Athina Trakas and about 20,000 others at Intergeo 2011, one of the largest geospatial conferences in the world [http://www.tradefairdates.com/Intergeo-M5482/Nuremberg.html]. During the course of the week it struck us that there was very little time dedicated to open geospatial standards, so we spent some time with the organisers discussing some possibilities for Intergeo 2012 in Hanover, Germany. Although it is very early days it would be great to hear from you if you are interested in supporting such activity, one of the ideas is to have a series of presentations around publicly available information from domain working groups.

The level of interest and activity around open geospatial standards has been steadily increasing over recent years and as such, I’m happy to be in a position to introduce the OGC blog. Our plan is to use this blog to augment the frequency and broaden the range of topics previously covered in the OGC Newsletter. In addition to comments and opinion from OGC staff, there will be blog posts from OGC members and guests. There is also a new home page for the OGC public website where you can learn about different communities of interest that are active in the OGC. In each of these communities people need to share geospatial information to achieve their organizational vision and mission. We’ve tried to make it easier for you to find open standards information relevant to your domain.