Mark Reichardt receives special edition of OGC Gardels Award

13 December 2018: Last night at the December meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Technical Committee in Fort Collins, Colorado, OGC’s outgoing President & CEO, Mark Reichardt, was awarded a special edition of OGC’s prestigious Kenneth D. Gardels Award.

The Gardels Award is presented each year to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to advancing OGC's vision of fully integrating geospatial information into the world's information systems. This special edition of the award, the second Gardel’s Award to be awarded in 2018, was awarded to Mark by the OGC Board of Directors in recognition of his years of leadership, commitment, passion, and dedication to the advancement of interoperability and open OGC Standards.

OGC Chair, Jeff Harris, commented that: “Mark Reichardt’s keen understanding of the application of technology across diverse missions and markets has enabled significant innovation, which has resulted in improved public safety and business outcomes. His leadership of the Consortium has built enduring relationships that will enable increased location data interoperability.”

Mark joined the Consortium in November 2000 as Director of Marketing and Public Sector Programs, becoming President in 2004 and additionally taking on the role of CEO in 2008. Mark has since lead a global team of members and staff to innovatively drive geospatial data sharing for all. Under Mark’s leadership, the Consortium has grown and established itself as the world’s leading organization for open geospatial standards and innovation. OGC’s standards development process and Innovation Program have since repeatedly enabled the rapid transformation of ideas into implementations.

Time and location, when aligned, shared, and acted upon, improves and saves lives. Mark’s evangelizing of this concept, coupled with an appreciation of geospatial technology as a mission-enabler, not only resulted in impressive operational improvements across a variety of diverse domains, but also created new connections between disconnected domains, and opened new markets to the value of geospatial information.

During all his time at OGC, Mark has demonstrated the integrity, humility, and dedication in promoting spatial technologies to address the needs of humanity that characterized Kenneth Gardels’ career and life.

Image - Mark Reichardt (left) receives a special edition of the OGC Gardels Award from OGC Board Member Dr. Chris Tucker.