Standard urgency

For the OGC Montreal meeting, I was asked to take part in the debate. This is my opening statement.

In rugby, there is a kind of pass called a hospital pass. This is where you pass the ball to your teammate, and they almost immediately get tackled by the opposition. Usually with some vigour, with some urgency, perhaps.

Photo by Zhen H on Unsplash

I was asked to attend the Montreal OGC meeting happening this week. In addition, I participated in their first Oxford-style debate. Below is the motion, clearly a verbal hospital pass.

"In an era of ever-increasing data availability, there is a pressing need for digital interoperability to solve today’s biggest problems through rapid innovation. Standards only slow this down and are therefore no longer necessary.”

So, go to a standards event and argue that standards have become irrelevant. Ouch. My opening statement is below. Remember, this is a debate so a side had to be taken. I am sharing this because I think there is some truth in this hyperbole.

I am arguing for this statement, but it's, in part, wrong. Data is not increasingly available. If anything, data availability has diminished. The sheer amount of data has increased enormously, perhaps exponentially, perhaps more, I haven't done the math. This Niagara of data is multi-sensory, multi-vendor, multi-dimensional, multi-format. Open data alone is a Tower of Babel; it has been for years, forever. 

<<In my three minutes, I want to communicate one idea. Urgency.>>

To be clear, this is not a wave or even a tsunami of data; it is a dense, heavy, unending flow. The point is that the acceleration of data accumulation is such that our society does not have the appropriate tools to understand or even just manage the flow adequately. One of those tools would be format, another is structure. With a million new gigabytes of raw data accumulating daily, are we served by adding further complexity and needless null values? 

<<Present standards are just opening umbrellas under the Niagara.>>

In the statement, there are references to interoperability and standards, as if these two words mean different things. To have interoperable systems, we need standards. At least, we need more than one system to agree on a way to communicate. Standards imply some kind of commonly understood interface, that would be interoperable. The implication that interoperability exists without a standard is just techno-arrogance, 

<<it just might not be your standard>>

What we don't need is for a group of academicians to mull over opinion-driven complexity in an attempt to model the entire universe in xml when all we want is pass a csv file between two computers. More so we don't need those academicians to try to enforce their view on an industry that has already evolved epochs beyond their mullings. Evolved, due to operational necessity. 

<<And, necessity is, of course, the mother of innovation>>

Our industry desperately needs an injection of urgency because what we do matters. We need the adrenalin shot because what we have traditionally considered standards are delivering nothing but slow systems. The geospatial industry has a chance to make an enormous difference to a world that is, quite literally, failing around us. Socially, politically, climatically, and ecologically failing. 

<<And there is literature; people in this room are writing it>>

Our industry holds some of the most critical observational and projected data for monitoring landscape changes and human activity, but we refuse to innovate with urgency. 

I am a huge believer in open systems. 

<<Open systems, open minds>> 

But with our community's economic, ecological, and social fabrics in the balance, we cannot wait for those who have been anointed to create standards, pontificating in their ivory towers high above the rising oceans… 

<<while Tuvalu drowns?>>