[OSGeo-Standards] Re: OGC Meeting in Stresa - any news?

[Arnulf Christl]

On Tue, December 11, 2007 08:08, Jody Garnett wrote:
> So any updates guys? So far all I have got back is a little bit of news
> from Martin; and a request for people on a GeoAPI working group. Jody

Hi,
Jeroen couldn't make it but Jo and Adrian are here. I didn't hear from
anybody else through this list. There are more folks more or less involved
with FOSS but not directly associated with OSGeo. Most at least are aware
of OSGeo which is a signal that we are catching on.

There was more discussion on extending OWS common with SOAP bindings to
enable restrictions management. 20 minutes of the 60 minutes slots was
used as regards content, the remaining 75 minutes were taken up by finding
out how to proceed formally correctly. This sounds horrible and it
actually is. In parts the reason it that the OGC changed its internal
rules and regulations concerning work group membership and standards
development. People are still trying to absorb the new policies.

Ha - you see, I do the same thing, only talk about how things are not
working instead of talking about what was actually discussed. It is
probably contagious. :-)

I am sitting now in the Mass Market Geo work group and when/if it becomes
interesting I will irclog on some of what is being discussed on #osgeo
[0].

Tomorrow is the ORCHESTRA day (parallel and woven into the OGC meeting)
and they invited me to give a presentation on Open Source; interestingly
in the Business Block. For those who did not notice, ORCHESTRA applied for
incubation some time back[1] but OSGeo was slightly at a loss what to do
about this because it is very different to all projects that have come
under the OSGeo roof so far.

We restarted some discussions regarding OSGeo involvement at EU level and
again the unanimous opinion was that OSGeo needs to have a legal entity
based in Europe to be able to do anything of relevance. Hopefully it will
be possible to get some of the local chapters interested to do this or
maybe even create a loose intermediary under European jurisdiction to take
on that job.

Yes, all this might not be what one expects from a standards body meeting
but it is a great chance to meet with many stakeholders in one place.

Last bit: Paul Smits from the JRC gave the introductory talk and addressed
the audience as "we need you, the industry to help us get INSPIRE[2]
going" which I think is an articulate message that the perception of OGC
is a place to talk to and with "the industry". This is one of the main
personal reasons why I am here, I want the FOSS world to be perceived as
part of the industry and not leave that to the proprietary corporates
only. Looking at the shares of attendants the "industry" actually only
makes up the smaller part but obviously they (or rather "we") are the
enablers so we make up a good part of the interest that people have in OGC
meetings.

Still reading? Amazing, considering that this is the standards and not the
advocacy list - sorry for burbling...

Regards,
Arnulf.

[0] http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/%23osgeo.2007-12-10.log
[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/incubator/2007-October/000781.html
[2] http://www.inspire-geoportal.eu/index.htm

>> Hi Standards,
>>
>>
>> next week the OGC will meet in Stresa, Italy. I know that Jeroen and Jo
>> are coming, I will be there too. Anybody else coming?
>>
>> At the FOSS4G BoF in Victoria Raj presented a new membership type
>> "individual independet developer" and announced that OGC will kindly
>> provide for 10 slots to be used by OGSeo members. As the BoF was not well
>> attended and I never got around tio writing this email followed up we
>> did not make use of this possibility yet. Jo will be the first to opt in
>> to the OGC meeting through this mechanism and I can imagine that over
>> time others will want to join in. I have prepared some information wrt
>> the OGC membership slots in the Wiki.
>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Standards
>>
>>
>>
>> If you are interested please read through that page, check whether
>> conditions apply to you and contact me through this list or directly to
>> work out the details.
>>
>> To get a better overview I have created a Category:Standards page,
>> please use it to tag relevant pages.
>>
>> We might want to create a committee some day to organize the formal
>> communication with the OGC as an organization. The current low level of
>> interest by OSGeo members does not justify this effort yet but maybe
>> some day it will. In the meantime if you need anything from, for or
>> against OGC feel free to contact me. (Jeroen Ticheler,  Jo (zool) Walsh
>> and Michael Gerlek might also be happy to talk to you but I did not ask
>> them yet). I currently act as Planning Committee representative of the
>> WhereGroup, member of the Architecture Board, in
>> the Security WorkGroup and will give an intro to RESTful design in the
>> Technical Sub Committee REST next week. No wonder that I don't get
>> anything else done anymore...
>>
>>
>> Chris Schmidt asked for the OGC Tiled WMS discussion paper on IRC
>> yesterday. For some technical / procedural reasons it is not yet
>> available publicly yet (ask Carl for details) but it sits on my box here
>> and I am authorized to give it to interested parties.
>>
>>
>> Best regards, Arnulf. _______________________________________________
>> Standards mailing list
>> Standards at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/standards
>>
>
>


-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.wheregroup.com