Saturday, January 10. 2009

OGC/OSGeo Agreement Finalized

The agreement, a Memorandum of Understand, states that the Open Geospatial Consortium (mission:advancing open geospatial standards) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (mission: advancing open source geospatial software and data) will work toward their related but different goals. The details: OGC will grant 6 "individual memberships" to OSGeo. These low cost ($500/year), no-vote memberships are typically aimed at small consultants not related to or covered by larger members. OSGeo will select which of its members will receive these memberships. Right now OGC lists 11 individual members.

Human Behavior and a Google Earth Tour

At 8 am on Saturday morning about 20 of us were in Ray and Ruth's living room. Ray was quieting the crowd to show us a Google Earth flyover of the "long run" route we'd be traversing in a few moments. He'd recorded it complete with narration and was playing it back on the TV. After about the first major turn the room buzzed again with chatter. Ray, to his credit, said, "I guess no one is interested" and proceeded to hand out what he called "turn by turn" directions or what cyclists call "cue sheets." (Side note: I can't figure out why runners and cyclists in my region don't use the same technology or conventions...there are many who travel in both circles...) As usual about the half the runners took the sheets; the other half planned to stay with someone who had the sheets or knew the route.

Why didn't we want to watch the video?