The First Ever Joint FACE™ and SOSA™ Expo and Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM)

By Chip Downing, Chair, FACE Business Working Group Outreach Subcommittee and Senior Market Development Director, Aerospace & Defense, Real-Time Innovations, Inc.

I am very much looking forward to the first ever joint FACE™ and SOSA™ Expo and Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) event on September 17, 2019. Hosted by the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) and sponsored by Green Hills Software, this event will include demonstrations of the functionality and interoperability of both the Future Airborne Capability Environment™ (FACE) and the Sensor Open System Architecture™ (SOSA) Consortia Members. It’s a great opportunity to showcase the progress that the Members of The Open Group FACE and SOSA Consortia have made for creating new war-fighting capabilities for the services. Over 50 exhibitors will be at this event.

This Expo and TIM will supply program managers and procurement managers across all armed services, along with their contractors and suppliers, with in-depth information about these standards-based solutions. The TIM will include keynote presentations by the US Air Force leadership. It will also feature presentations on using the FACE Technical Standard and business practices, as well as the SOSA draft Technical Standard and business practices.

As Rich Kutter, SES, US Air Force Senior Leader for Embedded Systems and Software stated,“Both the FACE Technical Standard and the SOSA draft Technical Standard, along with their business practices and ecosystems, are essential components of Air Force strategy to increase agility, flexibility, and affordability in warfighting capabilities we provide. This event is an excellent opportunity to see how well all the services are collaborating with industry to advance open systems approaches for aviation critical software and sensor systems.” –

This event is free and is open to all – simply register here.

These events grow larger every year — we have moved from small facilities in museums and hotels to large convention centers.  This year, the Expo and TIM will be at the Dayton Convention Center in downtown Dayton at 22 E. 5th Street.  The keynotes begin at 8AM and the exhibits are open from 9AM to 4:30PM on September 17th.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Chip Downing is the Senior Market Development Director of Aerospace and Defense at Real-Time Innovations (RTI).  In this position he manages RTI’s global aerospace and defense business and helps drive the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS) industry standard into the commercial and military aerospace market with the RTI Connext DDS platform, now used by over 250 customers in over 1,200 global aerospace and defense programs.

Mr. Downing currently serves as the Chair of the FACE Consortium BWG Outreach Subcommittee, promoting the FACE approach globally.  He also serves as the VP, Ecosystem of the DDS Foundation, where he is tasked with growing the sphere of influence of the OMG DDS standard with organizations that have companion specifications.

A veteran of the embedded systems industry and an innovator for creating COTS safety certification for commercial RTOSs, he previously served as Senior Director of Aerospace & Defense at Wind River Systems, where he was responsible for the business development of the company’s global A&D markets. During his 14-year Wind River tenure, design wins grew for certified avionics products grew to more than 500 projects.  Mr. Downing has also led sales, marketing, and consulting organizations at Esterel Technologies (now Ansys), Validated Software, OnCore Systems, and Mentor Graphics (now Siemens).