A cornerstone of the process we adopted in developing the new strategy was being honest about the amount of time the membership has to dedicate to Geoshare activities. That time directly relates to the number and kinds of things that can be accomplished. As a volunteer organization the Geoshare Users Group runs on the goodwill and energy of the member companies.

Over time, as the size of the workforce has shrunk, the workload hasn't and Geoshare has improved, there has been a decrease in the time companies are willing to dedicate.

Another consideration was the ongoing industry efforts targeted around tighter integration and different transport mechanisms. I think it is important to recognize that these efforts exist and monitor them but not waste resources competing with them. On the other hand it is not currently clear whether or not one these efforts will ever functionally replace Geoshare.

Until that becomes clear and proven by significant and sustained industry take-up and demonstrated commercial success Geoshare will be there to provide loose integration. During the time all of this is sorting itself out Geoshare will not remain stagnant.

On June 16 the Users Group will hold the annual standards administration meeting and out of this will come Version 12 of the Geoshare data model and ancillary standards. We plan to continue the process of reviewing our standards on an annual basis and making member driven changes for the foreseeable future. Over the next three years our strategy also calls for a reduction of roadblocks identified in our survey, by improving access to user and development experts, new and more complete benchmark data sets, more domain specific code examples and improved communication with members through email and an improved web site.

To accomplish these things we will be focusing the efforts of the User Group on the E&P data specialist leaving efforts targeted at improving interfaces and tools for the G&G professional in the hands of vendor developers where they belong. However we will stop trying to figure out how to aggressively market Geoshare.

For a small organization like ours, marketing is best carried out through participation, support and sponsorship of events like the PNEC Data Integration and Management Conference. In these open forums we have the best opportunity to communicate our success stories with minimum cost and maximum impact. The Geoshare Users Group is an organization that is positive about its future, cognizant of its resources, aware of emerging technology, maintaining its standard and committed to implementing strategies it can achieve.