Jason Smith, CIO at OMG
Industrial Talk is onsite at the OMG Quarterly Standards Meeting and talking to Jason Smith, CIO of OMG about “Industrial Standards and the Passion for Accuracy”. Get the answers to your “Standards” questions along with Jason's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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Company Website: https://www.omg.org/
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
omg, industry, standards, members, communities, jason, pnp, absolutely, consortium, specification, conversation, passionate, industrial, task force, experts, organization, talk, wrangle, consensus, formed
SPEAKERS
Scott MacKenzie
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's try
once again, welcome to industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, Jason, that celebrates industry professionals all around the world because you are bold, brave, you dare greatly. You're making my life and the world a better place to live. That's why we celebrate you. Hey, there's a right there. There's a fan right there. There he is right there. And that's why we celebrate you on this podcast. All right, we're going to be broadcasting all week. From just one second. Don't Don't help me. I've got my cell phone here. This is the book. It's Don't Don't. Don't give me a hard time. This is the fourth quarter member meeting. I see. And if you do yourself a favor, go out to IC we're talking to Jason Macomb Smith. We're just gonna go with Jason. Let's get cracking. Yeah. How you doing? Doing well. So he's, Jason, I appreciate your patience. We were setting up all the gear and everything. And we're going to be striking after this. So once we end this conversation, we're going to be booting you out and until I got right, man, we got Dave with a drink works for me. So how long have you been let's let's talk a little bit about background. Give us a little background and give the listeners let's level set on who Jason is. Give us a one one.
Okay, so I am the Technical Director of the OMG standards development organization. And it is a partner to IIC and other community and the OMG incorporated ecosystem. And I oversee the standards body that helps codify expert opinion expert consensus from around the world and bring it to industry so that folks can actually build on top of a foundation that is well formed has a solid basis and lets them innovate in their way without having to reinvent all the wheels.
It's it's a hell of a service, quite frankly, because I couldn't keep up with it quite I would be one of those into visuals just sort of curled up in the corner just shaking. Like, I know, I'm supposed to do this, but I don't know where to start what to do, and what's good, bad and ugly and all of that stuff for just for clarification. Sure. We've got OMG we've got these consortiums. Yep. We've got these rulemaking bodies with, give us sort of paint that picture of what that looks like. Because you know what, I've been talking to you guys forever, and I still stumble. It's like, oh, my gosh, this guy's an OMG gun
yet, right? We have either the best or the worst accidental acronym ever. Really.
We could think about when I was a pup, it's like, Hey, this is object the object oriented? No, no. OMG Oh, my God, right?
That's exactly. We've gotten more comments about that at conferences for folks walking through going, what is that, but it's the Object Management Group. It was formed in 1989. And as the standards body around software engineering and data sharing, so make sure that you know, folks in industry, if they're sharing data they have everybody understands what they're sending, what they're receiving, how to interpret, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's a small amount of success, I would say, you know, little things like CORBA UML, system, l. BPM and business process modeling notation, we have a ton of different things that kind of have come out of the OMG. And about a decade ago, folks kind of realized that we know how to form communities, we know how to build communities, and how to bring experts together to let them have a space to collaborate and argue a lot. But come to a consensus on what constitutes best practice and industry and how to codify it so that we'll be able to take advantage of it. And that was where we started to see the rise of a Australe IoT consortium IIC was the name changed a couple of years ago. Excellent. So but anyway, yeah, the AIC was our first sort of sister community. And now we have 10 or 11. We've got another one coming on board, but we've grown so what we have as a community of communities, so we have the standards body group, we have IIC, we have the digital twin consortium, we have area which is the augmented reality enterprise Association, we have Sisk, which is it goes back to information quality, BPM plus health, which is all around using BPM Business Process Modeling systems and understanding how systems work and applying it to healthcare to try and and improve patient outcomes. So it's a lot of different things in a lot of different areas. Everything every industry, you can imagine, has a representative of some sort here at OMG. And
how do you keep up with it? I mean, it's the velocity of what's taking place out there. And, and the the need for rules, you just, you just rattled off, like augmented reality. Right? Still, like, we just started.
There's just so much going on. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, we have a really good mix of different communities that are established solid, they've been here for, you know, a decade or more. And we have the communities that are just starting up and really bringing a lot of energy to them. So, you know, to the, to the entire ecosystem and sort of getting new ideas and new technologies, that innovation wave moving through the communities in general. So yeah, I see is one of them. I mean, it was built around IoT, it was built around what the industry needed for a lot of the communication needs. The dynamic and the ad hoc communication needs from what maybe, you know, sort of smaller or less expensive hardware to provide a little bit of flexibility. But yeah, it's it's just a, it's a mixed bag of everything.
But boy, talk about a tiger by the tail. There's passionate, right? There has to be there's just super passionate about each one of these organizations. These consortiums, shall we say, are very passionate about what they do. How do you determine what to focus on? It's, it's like this, yeah, but you know, not all of that. But we should just do this. And then we can begin to do it, whatever, well, everything's
member driven. So it's not, we don't have staff sitting here going, we think we should do this. We don't we lose, sometimes we'll go here, that'd be a really good idea, guys. But for the most part, it's the members come to us with the ideas that they have, or the problems that they have is really where the the whole situation starts, we've got this problem, we're not entirely sure 100% of how to address it, we'd like to get a larger consensus, larger body of experts and on the, you know, the discussion. And that's really what we host here is, especially this week, at the we have a horse quarter, fourth quarter, that's right fourth quarter meeting, where we've got OMG and IIC, and DTC all co located in the hotel this week to allow all the communities a chance to intermix and really learn from each other and invest in each other as well. So it's a really good opportunity, but it is a lot. So the members come to us four times a year we have these meetings, and it is a ton of work a ton of organization, but it's all it's all from the members. I mean, it's I can't I can't stress that enough. It is its member driven. They decide what the topic spaces are, they decide what the problem spaces are, they formed the task forces to address them, they do all the work on a volunteer basis. It is phenomenal how much work and effort they put into this.
Maybe Maybe I'm just sort of that guy that's going well, now what we got all this paperwork, and we got all these people talking about these points and all that stuff. And then I got to figure out how to sort of wrangle that all in and yes, you're a tie is this and this is good. And we all had this debate and all that I just, it's it's phenomenal. About what you guys do. I mean, I just like it's a tsunami tsunami of just wow, that's good information. That's true that it really is just like a constantly doing
it really is. And we have we have absolutely some of the the same experts, the same technical experts from industry that come to us with the the ideas, the solutions, the you know, the conversations, they also run the meetings of all the different task forces, so members step up and they become a chair of a particular task force. And some of the been been doing this for 1015 20 years. And they're doing it because they absolutely love it, they have that passion. To it to just, this is how we move the ball forward for everybody. And that's really what has to happen is that you have to be able to not just provide a solution, not just get it out into industry, but also make sure that it is accessible. And that is usable by pretty much everyone. So it's like we give away our standards for free. That's the accessibility part. Anybody can go to our website and download any of our standards, you don't have to pay for them. You don't have to be a member, just go to the website. And if you you're like I would really like to take a look at the details of some specification. It's yours. Go take a look, dive in, figure out what you know what you want to do with it. If you want to implement it, if you look at it and go, I think this could be better. Anybody can file an issue against our specifications globally. And we take every single one of those. And by we I mean the members, of course, take every single one of those, discuss it, decide what to do about it and produce the next version of the specification incorporating all that global input. So it's really a it's a conversation that not only happens here among the members, but it goes out into industry into the public pulls the information and analyzes it digests it goes back out into industry comes back and you go through another analysis phase and we just have this constant refresh cycle.
Still, maybe Maybe I'm just not that smart. But you just started, boom, boom, boom. And I'm going oh, my gosh,
I will I will say that it's one of the things that really makes this work at all. First of all, it's It's the passion of the members, as you mentioned, it's the energy of everybody. It's the intellect. But it's also our procedure. So we have our procedures policies are PNP. Yeah, we the PNP. That's when the heavenly choir opens up and sings when you say that word. But the PNP is essentially our it's our roadmap. It governs every process that we have here. And it was authored by and continues to be maintained by members. So if they decided that something in a process just isn't working, they can change it.
But again, I'm gonna have to ask it, it's like you're not, I'm not going to say, hey, hey, I think we need to change it. I'm going to do it right now. Just don't Don't mind me, right? I'm not gonna do that. No, no, that's where the process kicks in. It's absolutely, yeah, let's do it, you know, and then right and, and then hone the value of whatever that changes or whatever that new standard is
added. So give an example. I actually chair the, in addition to being technical director for the whole enchilada. I also chair the the process subcommittee of the Architecture Board, which is a review board. But the EB PSC is actually devoted to editing the PNP. So if anybody says, Hey, I saw a problem, so we actually use that as part of our process to author the process document that drives the process. It's all very meta. So
the conversations are always like, Nope, it needs to improve. I hear you, you need to improve. I was thinking about this one needs to be improved. This one needs to be changed. Everything is around that. Oh, yeah. I don't know how you even have you roll it out.
Have you been to one of these weeks now?
This is I've been to the IoT solutions World Congress cut, that's just a conference. Like, hey, check that tech stuff. And I'm just I am so excited about seeing this because no one else.
It's, I will say that in the younger days of the of the organization, I hear tales, it was a bit like the Wild West, could you had, you know, luminaries in the field? yelling at each other in rooms? Like, oh, yes, it's not how it was, you know, it was it was apparently something to behold. But it's for the most part, you know, people people rein it in, but sometimes the passion gets out, it gets interesting. But they always go ahead and come back to being professionals
see, but but that's what it'll take. Absolutely. Because there's this just generally speaking, you know, being out there looking at all the innovation that's taking place, all the changes that are happening, all this stuff is is just frothy with excitement, and all of this good stuff. But it's just there's got to be some sort of way of being able to wrangle that. And, and I you guys, I'm just telling
you right now, I gotta say that I was a member for eight years, authored a couple of specs, I was on the architecture board before I came on to staff. And it is positively one of the neatest environments that I've ever been in. I started in academia, I went to industry, and then ended up here. And this is like the perfect blend of those two. It has the you have the academic bent of folks who are just frighteningly brilliant. And they really want to make this just as perfect as it can be. But at the same time, they come from industry, and they realize that there's a pragmatic end that they must meet. So they balance each other beautifully. You end up with the incredibly deep academic intellectual discussions. I mean, angels dancing on my head of a pin has nothing on some of the discussions were out here. And then they turn around and go, that's great. But we've got a deadline. We have companies waiting on this, let's figure it out. And so they buckle down and they make the decisions that they have that that they have consensus. And it's it's truly a wonderful, wonderful Stroman. It's just a it's a it's a constant training.
It's so needed, I think, I think, quite frankly, the masses don't know that this happens. It's like, Hey, I'm a manufacturer, and I'm just trying to, you know, manufacture my widget in the best way. But I hear this whole thing needs to happen. What do I go? What do I do, right? That that message needs to get out? Because this is so important.
It's fundamental, I'm getting really, I mean, it's like anybody who goes to a grocery store or target or any retail store, right? Our retail Task Force is actually the group that defined unified point of sale, which is the standard that lets the cash register, talk to the printer, talk to the scanner, talk to all of that unified POS is the standard that that governs all of that. That was from here. We're like the real like the stealth organization, the most successful the standards organization no one's ever heard of, right. It's just it's it's kind of bizarre. But yeah, the work that's done here literally affects people on a global basis, across every industry you can think of, in one way or another and Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a ton
of fun. I'm just telling I did we even cover? standards? We just sort of ripped on everything else except for what? Okay, or here's one for you. Yeah. What's this elemental reason? I got another card. Yeah, here. Another card right there.
Yeah. So Scott was like, what's, what's the MCC stand for? Without? drew it out of my God? Yeah, that's my middle name. But the so element of reasoning is actually from my own academic background, right. And I started off in academic research, got my doctorate at UNC Chapel Hill, and in software engineering and abstraction analysis and design patterns, and just, you know, sort of how you comprehend about systems. And I ended up here, and it's just, it's, yeah, it's just, it's a lot of fun. I love this community.
So you're in Seattle. I am indeed. I built a terminal in Grays Harbor. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of history there. There really is. I love the area. But
it's it's not so hot as New Orleans. I'm just going to pitch that
maybe about five, maybe seven degrees less. Yeah. Which I doubt. I highly doubt that. But I remember driving, you take all fly into sat the Seattle Tacoma, head south, turn right at Olympia, and then head on down that chest? Absolutely. I don't know the road was just like, Oh, it's beautiful. Absolutely. All right. A couple of couple of action items here. One, Jason, how do they get ahold of you? They're saying, like his passion, how
do I want to find out more? Yes, you can get a hold of me at jason@omg.org.
And, and, again, they can become they can they can just sort of find these standards out? On g.org. Absolutely. I'll say I've got this and no problem. Nobody's gonna sit there. And hey,
no, no, they're all freely available. And again, they can give feedback as well. They look at and say, I found a bug, or I think it could be done better. Give us feedback. We'd love it.
You are great. Like this conversation. I really dug it. Hey, thank you very much.
Thank you for having me on. It's been great. Yeah. Hey,
all right, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side, we're gonna have all the contact information for Jason. And both. You mind if I get the other email if you want to? Okay, I can't because it's on my website, industrial talk.com. It does feel tech. Anyway, we're gonna have all that contact information. But we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk, Podcast Network.
All right. So the moral of that conversation was that one, we need standards to I me personally, and you should to be thankful for organizations like omg that are absolutely passionate about dialing in those standards, debating those nuggets of truth, and be able to deliver something that we industry have the ability to be able to access freely, so that we can be a success. That's OMG. That's Jason Smith, that is out on industrial talk, reach out, contact him can be a part of OMG figure it out. navigate those waters, it's all out there. So omg.org Jason Smith, absolute Istat cards. Great. It's right there, that card. Anyway, that was a cue for the OMG meeting. And I gotta tell you, the the reality is, is that it's always fun to see these individuals that are truly passionate about getting it right. There it is. All right. We're going to have more conversations we just begun the the conversations at omg so there's gonna be a lot more to come. So stay tuned.
Transcript
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's try
once again, welcome to industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, Jason, that celebrates industry professionals all around the world because you are bold, brave, you dare greatly. You're making my life and the world a better place to live. That's why we celebrate you. Hey, there's a right there. There's a fan right there. There he is right there. And that's why we celebrate you on this podcast. All right, we're going to be broadcasting all week. From just one second. Don't Don't help me. I've got my cell phone here. This is the book. It's Don't Don't. Don't give me a hard time. This is the fourth quarter member meeting. I see. And if you do yourself a favor, go out to IC we're talking to Jason Macomb Smith. We're just gonna go with Jason. Let's get cracking. Yeah. How you doing? Doing well. So he's, Jason, I appreciate your patience. We were setting up all the gear and everything. And we're going to be striking after this. So once we end this conversation, we're going to be booting you out and until I got right, man, we got Dave with a drink works for me. So how long have you been let's let's talk a little bit about background. Give us a little background and give the listeners let's level set on who Jason is. Give us a one one.
Okay, so I am the Technical Director of the OMG standards development organization. And it is a partner to IIC and other community and the OMG incorporated ecosystem. And I oversee the standards body that helps codify expert opinion expert consensus from around the world and bring it to industry so that folks can actually build on top of a foundation that is well formed has a solid basis and lets them innovate in their way without having to reinvent all the wheels.
It's it's a hell of a service, quite frankly, because I couldn't keep up with it quite I would be one of those into visuals just sort of curled up in the corner just shaking. Like, I know, I'm supposed to do this, but I don't know where to start what to do, and what's good, bad and ugly and all of that stuff for just for clarification. Sure. We've got OMG we've got these consortiums. Yep. We've got these rulemaking bodies with, give us sort of paint that picture of what that looks like. Because you know what, I've been talking to you guys forever, and I still stumble. It's like, oh, my gosh, this guy's an OMG gun
yet, right? We have either the best or the worst accidental acronym ever. Really.
We could think about when I was a pup, it's like, Hey, this is object the object oriented? No, no. OMG Oh, my God, right?
That's exactly. We've gotten more comments about that at conferences for folks walking through going, what is that, but it's the Object Management Group. It was formed in 1989. And as the standards body around software engineering and data sharing, so make sure that you know, folks in industry, if they're sharing data they have everybody understands what they're sending, what they're receiving, how to interpret, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's a small amount of success, I would say, you know, little things like CORBA UML, system, l. BPM and business process modeling notation, we have a ton of different things that kind of have come out of the OMG. And about a decade ago, folks kind of realized that we know how to form communities, we know how to build communities, and how to bring experts together to let them have a space to collaborate and argue a lot. But come to a consensus on what constitutes best practice and industry and how to codify it so that we'll be able to take advantage of it. And that was where we started to see the rise of a Australe IoT consortium IIC was the name changed a couple of years ago. Excellent. So but anyway, yeah, the AIC was our first sort of sister community. And now we have 10 or 11. We've got another one coming on board, but we've grown so what we have as a community of communities, so we have the standards body group, we have IIC, we have the digital twin consortium, we have area which is the augmented reality enterprise Association, we have Sisk, which is it goes back to information quality, BPM plus health, which is all around using BPM Business Process Modeling systems and understanding how systems work and applying it to healthcare to try and and improve patient outcomes. So it's a lot of different things in a lot of different areas. Everything every industry, you can imagine, has a representative of some sort here at OMG. And
how do you keep up with it? I mean, it's the velocity of what's taking place out there. And, and the the need for rules, you just, you just rattled off, like augmented reality. Right? Still, like, we just started.
There's just so much going on. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, we have a really good mix of different communities that are established solid, they've been here for, you know, a decade or more. And we have the communities that are just starting up and really bringing a lot of energy to them. So, you know, to the, to the entire ecosystem and sort of getting new ideas and new technologies, that innovation wave moving through the communities in general. So yeah, I see is one of them. I mean, it was built around IoT, it was built around what the industry needed for a lot of the communication needs. The dynamic and the ad hoc communication needs from what maybe, you know, sort of smaller or less expensive hardware to provide a little bit of flexibility. But yeah, it's it's just a, it's a mixed bag of everything.
But boy, talk about a tiger by the tail. There's passionate, right? There has to be there's just super passionate about each one of these organizations. These consortiums, shall we say, are very passionate about what they do. How do you determine what to focus on? It's, it's like this, yeah, but you know, not all of that. But we should just do this. And then we can begin to do it, whatever, well, everything's
member driven. So it's not, we don't have staff sitting here going, we think we should do this. We don't we lose, sometimes we'll go here, that'd be a really good idea, guys. But for the most part, it's the members come to us with the ideas that they have, or the problems that they have is really where the the whole situation starts, we've got this problem, we're not entirely sure 100% of how to address it, we'd like to get a larger consensus, larger body of experts and on the, you know, the discussion. And that's really what we host here is, especially this week, at the we have a horse quarter, fourth quarter, that's right fourth quarter meeting, where we've got OMG and IIC, and DTC all co located in the hotel this week to allow all the communities a chance to intermix and really learn from each other and invest in each other as well. So it's a really good opportunity, but it is a lot. So the members come to us four times a year we have these meetings, and it is a ton of work a ton of organization, but it's all it's all from the members. I mean, it's I can't I can't stress that enough. It is its member driven. They decide what the topic spaces are, they decide what the problem spaces are, they formed the task forces to address them, they do all the work on a volunteer basis. It is phenomenal how much work and effort they put into this.
Maybe Maybe I'm just sort of that guy that's going well, now what we got all this paperwork, and we got all these people talking about these points and all that stuff. And then I got to figure out how to sort of wrangle that all in and yes, you're a tie is this and this is good. And we all had this debate and all that I just, it's it's phenomenal. About what you guys do. I mean, I just like it's a tsunami tsunami of just wow, that's good information. That's true that it really is just like a constantly doing
it really is. And we have we have absolutely some of the the same experts, the same technical experts from industry that come to us with the the ideas, the solutions, the you know, the conversations, they also run the meetings of all the different task forces, so members step up and they become a chair of a particular task force. And some of the been been doing this for 1015 20 years. And they're doing it because they absolutely love it, they have that passion. To it to just, this is how we move the ball forward for everybody. And that's really what has to happen is that you have to be able to not just provide a solution, not just get it out into industry, but also make sure that it is accessible. And that is usable by pretty much everyone. So it's like we give away our standards for free. That's the accessibility part. Anybody can go to our website and download any of our standards, you don't have to pay for them. You don't have to be a member, just go to the website. And if you you're like I would really like to take a look at the details of some specification. It's yours. Go take a look, dive in, figure out what you know what you want to do with it. If you want to implement it, if you look at it and go, I think this could be better. Anybody can file an issue against our specifications globally. And we take every single one of those. And by we I mean the members, of course, take every single one of those, discuss it, decide what to do about it and produce the next version of the specification incorporating all that global input. So it's really a it's a conversation that not only happens here among the members, but it goes out into industry into the public pulls the information and analyzes it digests it goes back out into industry comes back and you go through another analysis phase and we just have this constant refresh cycle.
Still, maybe Maybe I'm just not that smart. But you just started, boom, boom, boom. And I'm going oh, my gosh,
I will I will say that it's one of the things that really makes this work at all. First of all, it's It's the passion of the members, as you mentioned, it's the energy of everybody. It's the intellect. But it's also our procedure. So we have our procedures policies are PNP. Yeah, we the PNP. That's when the heavenly choir opens up and sings when you say that word. But the PNP is essentially our it's our roadmap. It governs every process that we have here. And it was authored by and continues to be maintained by members. So if they decided that something in a process just isn't working, they can change it.
But again, I'm gonna have to ask it, it's like you're not, I'm not going to say, hey, hey, I think we need to change it. I'm going to do it right now. Just don't Don't mind me, right? I'm not gonna do that. No, no, that's where the process kicks in. It's absolutely, yeah, let's do it, you know, and then right and, and then hone the value of whatever that changes or whatever that new standard is
added. So give an example. I actually chair the, in addition to being technical director for the whole enchilada. I also chair the the process subcommittee of the Architecture Board, which is a review board. But the EB PSC is actually devoted to editing the PNP. So if anybody says, Hey, I saw a problem, so we actually use that as part of our process to author the process document that drives the process. It's all very meta. So
the conversations are always like, Nope, it needs to improve. I hear you, you need to improve. I was thinking about this one needs to be improved. This one needs to be changed. Everything is around that. Oh, yeah. I don't know how you even have you roll it out.
Have you been to one of these weeks now?
This is I've been to the IoT solutions World Congress cut, that's just a conference. Like, hey, check that tech stuff. And I'm just I am so excited about seeing this because no one else.
It's, I will say that in the younger days of the of the organization, I hear tales, it was a bit like the Wild West, could you had, you know, luminaries in the field? yelling at each other in rooms? Like, oh, yes, it's not how it was, you know, it was it was apparently something to behold. But it's for the most part, you know, people people rein it in, but sometimes the passion gets out, it gets interesting. But they always go ahead and come back to being professionals
see, but but that's what it'll take. Absolutely. Because there's this just generally speaking, you know, being out there looking at all the innovation that's taking place, all the changes that are happening, all this stuff is is just frothy with excitement, and all of this good stuff. But it's just there's got to be some sort of way of being able to wrangle that. And, and I you guys, I'm just telling
you right now, I gotta say that I was a member for eight years, authored a couple of specs, I was on the architecture board before I came on to staff. And it is positively one of the neatest environments that I've ever been in. I started in academia, I went to industry, and then ended up here. And this is like the perfect blend of those two. It has the you have the academic bent of folks who are just frighteningly brilliant. And they really want to make this just as perfect as it can be. But at the same time, they come from industry, and they realize that there's a pragmatic end that they must meet. So they balance each other beautifully. You end up with the incredibly deep academic intellectual discussions. I mean, angels dancing on my head of a pin has nothing on some of the discussions were out here. And then they turn around and go, that's great. But we've got a deadline. We have companies waiting on this, let's figure it out. And so they buckle down and they make the decisions that they have that that they have consensus. And it's it's truly a wonderful, wonderful Stroman. It's just a it's a it's a constant training.
It's so needed, I think, I think, quite frankly, the masses don't know that this happens. It's like, Hey, I'm a manufacturer, and I'm just trying to, you know, manufacture my widget in the best way. But I hear this whole thing needs to happen. What do I go? What do I do, right? That that message needs to get out? Because this is so important.
It's fundamental, I'm getting really, I mean, it's like anybody who goes to a grocery store or target or any retail store, right? Our retail Task Force is actually the group that defined unified point of sale, which is the standard that lets the cash register, talk to the printer, talk to the scanner, talk to all of that unified POS is the standard that that governs all of that. That was from here. We're like the real like the stealth organization, the most successful the standards organization no one's ever heard of, right. It's just it's it's kind of bizarre. But yeah, the work that's done here literally affects people on a global basis, across every industry you can think of, in one way or another and Yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a ton
of fun. I'm just telling I did we even cover? standards? We just sort of ripped on everything else except for what? Okay, or here's one for you. Yeah. What's this elemental reason? I got another card. Yeah, here. Another card right there.
Yeah. So Scott was like, what's, what's the MCC stand for? Without? drew it out of my God? Yeah, that's my middle name. But the so element of reasoning is actually from my own academic background, right. And I started off in academic research, got my doctorate at UNC Chapel Hill, and in software engineering and abstraction analysis and design patterns, and just, you know, sort of how you comprehend about systems. And I ended up here, and it's just, it's, yeah, it's just, it's a lot of fun. I love this community.
So you're in Seattle. I am indeed. I built a terminal in Grays Harbor. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of history there. There really is. I love the area. But
it's it's not so hot as New Orleans. I'm just going to pitch that
maybe about five, maybe seven degrees less. Yeah. Which I doubt. I highly doubt that. But I remember driving, you take all fly into sat the Seattle Tacoma, head south, turn right at Olympia, and then head on down that chest? Absolutely. I don't know the road was just like, Oh, it's beautiful. Absolutely. All right. A couple of couple of action items here. One, Jason, how do they get ahold of you? They're saying, like his passion, how
do I want to find out more? Yes, you can get a hold of me at jason@omg.org.
And, and, again, they can become they can they can just sort of find these standards out? On g.org. Absolutely. I'll say I've got this and no problem. Nobody's gonna sit there. And hey,
no, no, they're all freely available. And again, they can give feedback as well. They look at and say, I found a bug, or I think it could be done better. Give us feedback. We'd love it.
You are great. Like this conversation. I really dug it. Hey, thank you very much.
Thank you for having me on. It's been great. Yeah. Hey,
all right, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side, we're gonna have all the contact information for Jason. And both. You mind if I get the other email if you want to? Okay, I can't because it's on my website, industrial talk.com. It does feel tech. Anyway, we're gonna have all that contact information. But we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk, Podcast Network.
All right. So the moral of that conversation was that one, we need standards to I me personally, and you should to be thankful for organizations like omg that are absolutely passionate about dialing in those standards, debating those nuggets of truth, and be able to deliver something that we industry have the ability to be able to access freely, so that we can be a success. That's OMG. That's Jason Smith, that is out on industrial talk, reach out, contact him can be a part of OMG figure it out. navigate those waters, it's all out there. So omg.org Jason Smith, absolute Istat cards. Great. It's right there, that card. Anyway, that was a cue for the OMG meeting. And I gotta tell you, the the reality is, is that it's always fun to see these individuals that are truly passionate about getting it right. There it is. All right. We're going to have more conversations we just begun the the conversations at omg so there's gonna be a lot more to come. So stay tuned.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
