David Schell

History

Member for

14 years 19 weeks

Personal Information

About Me

David Schell serves as Chairman of the Board of the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. which he founded in 1994 with both public and private sector support to evolve "OpenGIS®" into a global standard for interoperable geoprocessing. Mr. Schell is primarily responsible for directing OGC's Board of Directors operations, including oversight of corporate business planning and management, and strategic planning and development initiatives designed to ensure OGC's continued leadership in evolving and expanding technology markets.

Mr. Schell's activities in the area of geospatial technology standards began in 1985 with his work at Massachusetts Computer Corporation (Masscomp), and later with Okidata Microsystems, where he focused on development and marketing of real time measurement and control, document management, and spatial imaging systems. During this period, Mr. Schell worked closely with the US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USACERL) to support development and industrial application of USACERL's widely used open source GIS product, the Geographical Resources and Analysis Support System (GRASS). In 1991, he was elected to lead the non-profit corporation founded, in partnership with the Corps of Engineers, to formalize technology transfer of GRASS to the private sector, and to begin organizing industry support for the creation of an infrastructure to support the development of geospatial interoperability. Renamed the Open GIS Foundation, the organization focused on industry outreach and the integration of diverse geospatial product capabilities in the UNIX and internet environment, and defined the concept of "Open GIS" which resulted in the creation of the Open GIS Consortium, Inc., with Mr. Schell as its president and chairman. Mr Schell led OGC in this capacity until 2004, when he assumed the role of Chairman and CEO upon appointment of Mark Reichardt to the new position of President and Chief Operating Officer and the renaming of the corporation the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Mr. Schell began his career as a systems analyst for IBM Corp., and subsequently worked in technical marketing for Honeywell Information Systems and Data General Corporation. In the early 80's, he worked with several UNIX-based workstation companies as marketing director, focusing on strategic alliances, the integration of UNIX-based productivity tools, and the development of industry business models for third party marketing.

In October of 2002, CIO Magazine presented Mr. Schell with the CIO 20/20 Vision Award for being one of the 20 most influential developers of technology essential to today's business process.

Mr. Schell earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from Brown University and the University of North Carolina respectively, and currently holds an appointment as Special Professor in Geospatial Interoperability in the School of Engineering at the University of Nottingham, UK.