Forget Mass Market, it's All About the Web

Returning from the OGC's Technical Committee meeting, Ed Parsons writes:

... OGC needs to embrace and recognize the needs of the mass market, as I pointed out in my presentation maybe there is now a new requirement for interoperability, above the levels of W*S services at the mapping API level.

Ed's right, although I would eliminate the wishy-washy "mass market" term, cut right to the chase, and rephrase the statement as:

The OGC needs to embrace and recognize the needs of the Web.

W*S protocols have opened minds and hinted at possibilities, but are not engendering a geo-web. Pictures and data flow dutifully through channels, but there is no evolution of linkage, no complex, organic patterns or structures, no sum that is bigger than its parts. There's no web here.

It's time for a new approach. It's time to geo-enable the Web.

Update: Jo has more on the subject. I agree, "Mass Market" is patronizing.

Comments

Re: Forget Mass Market, it's All About the Web.

Author: Paul Ramsey

Isn't the web geo-enabling itself just fine? The web runs about 10 times faster than the various members of the OGC, and the OGC exists to serve its members. If OGC is always playing catch-up, are they likely to ever be in the game at all?

Re: Forget Mass Market, it's All About the Web.

Author: Jason Birch

It's better than "Cheetah" :) Seriously, I think it's a sign of the traditional GIS "community" not fully understanding that there's been a paradigm shift in the last couple years. I do see the OGC as playing an important role for proprietary vendors and their products, and for large organisations wanting to implement to an accepted standard. It means that _eventually_ all of the platforms I have to support will get at least a reduced-functionality view of my information. Of course, if they have to wait for the standardisation process to complete in order to deliver features that the open source community is implementing immediately, it's a competitive disadvantage for these entities. Which is good for open source geospatial.... Jason

Re: Forget Mass Market, it's All About the Web.

Author: Ed Parsons

Jason, You are right the "traditional" industry has not recognised the changes of the last few years.. the challenge for OGC as an organsiation is to embrace the change - and time will tell if this is successful. ed

Re: Forget Mass Market, it's All About the Web.

Author: Sean

Thanks for the comments. I forgot to mention that the open source GIS community needs to change its tack as well. Instead of pushing the OGC protocols -- which are only about geo-enabling enterprises -- out onto the Web, we should be exploring better methods that go with the grain of the Web. The tiling spec that Paul is pushing forward is a great start, and I'd like to see it (or something like it) displace WMS and WMS-C (for caching) on the World Wide Web.