At the celebration of the Open Geospatial Consortium's 20th anniversary banquet, numerous remembrances were delivered on behalf of founders and benefactors such as David Schell, Dr. Fred Limp, Ken Gardels, Kurt Buehler, Dr. Bob Moses, Larry Ayers, and many others. However, it was Dr. Chris Tucker, founder of MapStory and current OGC board member, and Steve Liang, of the Universary of Calgary (photo at right), who articulated the vision for the next 10 years.
Become more real-time
OGC will go far beyond maps, features, imagery and sensors - with a complete embrace of the Geospatial Revolution an how it is manifesting itself in realtime and ubiquitous technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT … the location-enabled IoT), mobile devices, location-aware robotics, wearable/embedded technologies, and the Makers Revolution.
Be completely global
OGC will see vigorous international participation from every region. Every region of the globe will have an active, organic OGC forum - specs will be translated into every language and governments, industry, universities and NGOs around the world will invest in these processes in order to drive the evolution of their own spatial data infrastructures.
Do more things like GeoPackage
There will be open source componentry (like SQLite) that both open source and commercial players can leverage. We will generate specifications that themselves are technology, but which are married to our traditional services interfaces. And, the OGC will more readily, and preternaturally embrace specifications originating outside the OGC such as GeoJSON, GeoRSS, etc. (for more info on GeoPackage watch this webinar)
See more startups
OGC will reach out far beyond the Technical Committee and empower innovators all over the world to leverage OGC interoperability as basic, commodity building blocks of the Makers Revolution. There will be more entrepreneurs, angels, VCs in the OGC community. Startups will disrupt the status quo and create value with geospatial interoperability.
Become "Certifiable"
OGC will come to offer opportunities for individuals to achieve professional certification that will enable them to leverage their knowledge geospatial interoperability at both an architectural and an implementation level, for the purposes of career advancement. Abundant, up-to-date OGC learning materials and tutorials will become available in different languages. The OGC will empower educators, students and developers (including K-12 and post-secondary) to think spatially and to innovate
Become a bridge between academia & industry
OGC will enable more innovations to move from research institutions to industry. Geospatial interoperability innovation centers as collaborations between government, industry and academia will leverage OGC process to seed commercial innovation.
Become the Muse of the Geospatial Revolution
OGC will provide thought-leadership that industry, government, academia, and the social sector will look to as they attempt to successfully navigate the Geospatial Revolution.