Downtown innovation and entrepreneurship center T-REX has teamed up with an international geospatial organization to form a partnership focused on providing its startups with more resources and greater visibility.
T-REX and Wayland, Massachusetts-based Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) have inked a memorandum of understanding designed to bring organizations together to collaborate on events and projects to boost geospatial technology development. OGC is a global geospatial standards organization whose membership includes more than 500 businesses, government agencies, research organizations and universities.
The new partnership is the latest initiative undertaken by T-REX in recent years as part of its effort to boost St. Louis’ burgeoning geotech sector. T-REX’s fourth floor includes its Geospatial Innovation Center, which spans more than 16,000 square feet and has several geospatial companies operating there. Additionally, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency recently opened Moonshot Labs, its first unclassified innovation center, at T-REX. That facility totals about 12,000 square feet on T-REX’s third floor and is designed to provide a software factory and digital maker space to drive geospatial technology innovation among the public and private sector.
Through their partnership, T-REX and OGC will work together to stage seminars, conferences, and research and development projects. Additionally, OGC will have space in T-REX’s Geospatial Innovation Center that it says it plans to use to host workshops, networking, and innovation and R&D activities.
OGC CEO Nadine Alameh said her organization found the partnership attractive because “St. Louis is becoming the Silicon Valley” for geospatial technology. She said T-REX provides a key hub to connect with St. Louis startups and organizations that could play a role in its work developing industry standards.
“We wanted to be a part of that community to bring the global community to St. Louis via T-REX,” she said.
Mark Tatgenhorst, T-REX’s geospatial program director, said the global nature of the partnership will provide the more than 50 geospatial-focused organizations that call T-REX home a new avenue to increase their prominence within the industry.
“The important thing for T-REX in this relationship is that it gives our startups the education and the international visibility that they need to execute their mission,” he said. “It really will help springboard our startups into Europe and Asia, where (OGC) is well connected. But also for startups in Asia and Europe to springboard into St. Louis."
