The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announces that on January 31 Carl Reed retired from his position as CTO and Executive Director Standards Program at the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Scott Simmons will assume the role of Executive Director, Standards Program and George Percivall, OGC Chief Engineer, will assume the role of CTO.
“Dr. Reed has been a leading figure in the geospatial industry for decades, and he was a strong proponent of open standards-based interoperability before the OGC’s formation in 1994,” said Mark Reichardt, OGC’s president and CEO. “We at OGC have been extremely fortunate that Carl decided to join OGC staff in 2001. Through his leadership, extensive technical insight, community experience and superb facilitation skills he contributed tremendously to the success of OGC’s global consensus standards process. He also helped establish important and pervasive alliances between the OGC and other leading Standards Development Organizations to assure consistent handling of location across the standards stack. We wholeheartedly welcome his desire to continue his involvement as an OGC member.”
Dr. Reed’s career in the geospatial industry began in 1969 with his coding of the first interactive mapping program in BASIC. In 1978 he finished the first version of the seminal MOSS vector Geographic Information System (GIS) for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, software that advanced technology still in use around the world. Dr. Reed led the development of the DeltaMap GIS and founded Delta Systems in 1986, which merged with Genasys II in 1989. While president of Genasys Americas, Dr. Reed was instrumental in the industry meetings and prototyping work that led to OGC’s founding in 1994. Dr. Reed was voted one of the top 10 most influential people in GIS in 1996. Recognizing the importance of providing a spatial foundation for the Web, he joined the OGC as CTO and Executive Director of the Standards Program in 2001. Through his leadership of the OGC standards process and his generous sharing of geospatial expertise with other standards organizations he has played a critical role in making the world’s geospatial information discoverable, shareable and useable. In 2009 Directions Media named him one of the top 10 people in the geospatial industry and in that year he was also inducted into the URISA GIS Hall of Fame. In 2014 he received Geospatial World’s Lifetime Achievement award.
Dr. Reed will continue to work with OGC members and the OGC to further the vision and mission of the OGC and to help educate the community on how incorporating OGC standards into business processes and technology enhances value and protects investments.
The OGC® is an international geospatial standards consortium of more than 500 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.