[Board] LAS, standards, consensus, etc

[Suchith Anand]

Carl,

Thank you for sharing your years of experience and wisdom on collaboration and building consensus.Greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,

Suchith

________________________________________
From: board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Cameron Shorter [cameron.shorter at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2015 10:59 PM
To: Carl Reed; standards at lists.osgeo.org; board at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Board] LAS, standards, consensus, etc

Hello Carl,
Thank you so much for sharing your years of wisdom on collaboration. With your permission, I'm sharing with the OSGeo community as I feel your advise too good not to share. (Including the bit where you slap me around a bit.)

For those who haven't met Carl yet, he has been coordinating the OGC standards development for as long as I can remember. I've always found him insightful, respectful, and effective at bringing strongly opinionated people together into consensus.

Thanks Carl.

On 8/05/2015 7:12 am, Carl Reed wrote:
All -

I am writing as a long time GIS developer, business executive, and more recently standards professional. I am writing as an individual and not as an ex OGC employee. Feel free to share this email if you wish.

I am providing the following as guidance. I have been following the LIDAR standards discussion for some time, including the development and release of the "open letter".

Martin, in a recent email you used the word "demand", to whit: " . . . please read the demands of the Open Letter more carefully". Demands, whether implicit or explicit, do not work in the world of standards development. They create barriers to collaboration, discussion, and consensus. Discussion and consensus are at the core of any standards work. I just finished a book chapter on consensus in the OGC. In that chapter I stated,
Consensus decision-making is a group decision making process that seeks the consent of all participants. Consensus may be defined professionally as an acceptable resolution, one that can be supported, even if not the "favorite" of each individual.
(Thanks Wikipedia). Another key aspect - true in the OGC, IETF, OASIS, W3C and other SDOs, is that consensus does not need to be unanimous. Also, as you know, reaching consensus is hard and can take time.

When the issue of LAS standards "fragmentation" was raised, the resulting discussion started the consensus process. I know the OGC quickly responded and began contacting interested individuals to participate in an open discussion at the next OGC TC meeting. This was planned well over a month ago and was partly in response to OSGeo community concerns. Awareness was raised and cross community discussions started. The OGC also planned weeks ago to meet with ASPRS management at this week's ASPRS meeting to discuss LAS and joint activities between ASPRS and the OGC. Esri responded very positively to the first posting of the open letter to the OGC tc-discuss list. Yes, Cameron, I read your blog posting refuting the Esri response. Too bad you saw the Esri response as a negative and not a positive. Stirring the pot the wrong way (in my opinion).

So, the "standards pot is boiling". Time to stop stirring! By this I mean if you keep pushing and pressuring and demanding, people will stop listening. Human nature. The ball is rolling. Join the discussion in a positive way. All the key players are engaged! But beware - you may not agree with the end result! That can happen when a global, large community with many stakeholders and constituents is engaged in a dialogue for the development of a standard.

Now one more point: fragmentation. Martin, you have no idea what real fragmentation of format standards is like! Back in the 1980s, there were dozens of format standards, such as DXF, IGES, SAIF, VPF, SDTS, Arc Export, and on and on. I know that the company I operated back then had a single product for format translation that supported 21 separate standards! That was fragmentation. Different semantics, models, some topologically structured, some not. A real mess. This was one of the main reasons my company joined the OGC in 1994!

I will be participating in the OGC Point Cloud ad-hoc in Boulder. The agenda will soon be released. Hopefully someone from the OSGeo community familiar with LAS and with requirements and use cases will participate!

Warm regards

Carl
--
Carl Reed, PhD
Carl Reed and Associates

Mobile: 970-402-0284

45 Years as a Geography and GIS professional and still going strong!


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Cameron Shorter,
Software and Data Solutions Manager
LISAsoft
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