Does Ideas4OGC Fix Problems with OGC Standards?
Remember the OGC REST API standard blowup earlier this year? Yea, great times. It reinforced the notion that the OGC is run by those who donate the most to the organization. Smartly it was withdrawn and we can all go about our business without some crazy new standard being rushed through. Cameron Shorter highlighted a new initiative at the OGC to try and address these issues brought up by the REST debacle.
You may remember the contentious proposal for the GeoServices REST API to become an OGC standard? After strong community concerns, largely focused on duplication of existing standards, the motion to approve the proposed standard was withdrawn. The fact that the proposal progressed as far as it did, to the point where it was almost ratified as a standard before being blocked, was a primary driver leading the OGC to initiate an “Ideas for OGC” (Ideas4OGC) review, aimed at re-baselining OGC priorities and processes.
The OGC has the Ideas4OGC initial recommendations on their wiki page:
Formally kicked off on June 20th, 2013, the Ideas for OGC (Ideas4OGC) process has collected a broad set of comments, recommendations and constructive criticism from across the membership, the public and OGC staff.
Yea they heard us. Head over to that wiki page and read up and input your comments. Sounds like they are totally rethinking how they operate on this kind of stuff. Hopefully this means that any new standards proposed will have to go through a process that is open and meaningful, rather than a rush job so one company can prove their software is OGC compliant. This gets a thumbs up from me!
Best Picture Ever
Blockholm: Crowdsourcing City Planning with Minecraft
Minecraft and planning. Seems so right doesn’t it?
The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design has announced a project where the topographic site for Stockholm has been reproduced in Minecraft and people are invited to rebuild the city virtually.
Blockholm opens on 24 October and allows people to realize the city they always dreamed of. It is interesting as it allows a form of modelling and design rarely practiced on a large scale in city planning.
What’s really awesome is you can follow the builders live on this web map. That map itself is built using Leaflet.js and is of course mobile compatible. Backend awesome is built on PostGIS with some FME help. I love the simplicity of it all!
Blockholm: Crowdsourcing City Planning with Minecraft
Minecraft and planning. Seems so right doesn’t it?
The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design has announced a project where the topographic site for Stockholm has been reproduced in Minecraft and people are invited to rebuild the city virtually.
Blockholm opens on 24 October and allows people to realize the city they always dreamed of. It is interesting as it allows a form of modelling and design rarely practiced on a large scale in city planning.
What’s really awesome is you can follow the builders live on this web map. That map itself is built using Leaflet.js and is of course mobile compatible. Backend awesome is built on PostGIS with some FME help. I love the simplicity of it all!
Doing GIS
We all need an elevator pitch
You get the question all the time:
“What do you do?”
You pause and then respond:
“I do GIS for [insert organization].”
Doing GIS is what we do I suppose. I’m not sure that most diciplines have this problem:
“What do you do?”
“I do accounting for [insert organization].”
I’ve been talking to my group that we need to be better at elevator pitches. Not so much that I expect them to close deals with VCs in a SFO hotel lobby, but it better describes why we do what we do. My job has many roles so I have multiple pitches I give when I need to. But “doing GIS” isn’t one of them.
“What do you do?”
“I ride unicorns on rainbows for URS Corporation.”
See isn’t that better?
Doing GIS
We all need an elevator pitch
You get the question all the time:
“What do you do?”
You pause and then respond:
“I do GIS for [insert organization].”
Doing GIS is what we do I suppose. I’m not sure that most diciplines have this problem:
“What do you do?”
“I do accounting for [insert organization].”
I’ve been talking to my group that we need to be better at elevator pitches. Not so much that I expect them to close deals with VCs in a SFO hotel lobby, but it better describes why we do what we do. My job has many roles so I have multiple pitches I give when I need to. But “doing GIS” isn’t one of them.
“What do you do?”
“I ride unicorns on rainbows for URS Corporation.”
See isn’t that better?
My GIS in the Rockies Keynote
Last week I was lucky enough to give the keynote at the GIS in the Rockies conference in Denver, CO. It was a bit of a different talk from me than I’ve given in a while. Less snark and more practicality. The conference committee video taped (why do we still say “taped”?) it and you can watch it below. Geoff Zeiss was at the keynote and wrote up his take on my talk.