At the June meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC(R)) in Exeter, England, David Wesloh received the OGC's prestigious Kenneth D. Gardels Award (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/awards). The Gardels Award, a gold medallion, is awarded each year to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance OGC's vision of geospatial information fully integrated into the world's information systems.

David Wesloh's contribution has been his unflagging support for the OGC standards process and his management of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's relationship with the OGC since 2004. He has consistently shown a high degree of personal commitment and technical awareness in working with NGA to establish NGA's requirements for OGC interoperability initiatives. David has done much to educate others in his community about the importance of OGC standards and the OGC process. He has earned respect in the Technical Committee for his depth of technical understanding and his interest in working the consensus process to deliver maximum value for OGC stakeholders.

David Wesloh has been actively involved in OGC testbeds for the last six years, as well as numerous plugfests, concept development studies and pilot projects initiated under the OGC's Interoperability Program. He frequently plays an active role in OGC Technical Committee Standards Working Groups to bring testbed results into the standardization program.

Currently, David is chair of the OGC Web Services Context Standards Working Group, a charter member of the Geosynchronization Standards Working Group, and a participant in numerous other OGC working groups.

The Gardels Award is the OGC’s highest honor bestowed upon a Consortium member representative. It is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, a founding director of OGC and OGC's former director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term "Open GIS," and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of geographic information systems. He died in 1999.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 445 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.

Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.