From transaction processing to transaction design.

To suggest that high levels of transaction processing will be included in People, Ideas & Objects should not be a surprise to anyone. This is standard fare in any system that manages the commercial aspects of an oil and gas concern. The real key in generating value in the oil and gas industry is in the area of what I call transaction design.

First lets get to one of the assumptions that I have used in preparing the Draft Specification. That is, the pursuit of growth within the organization is misguided. The focus of the producer firm is to determine where the value resides. Pursuing value versus growth implies that "activity", where both value is created and destroyed, will be eliminated through tools to design the transactions and their execution. This is done in the Accounting Voucher module of the Draft Specification.

The JOC is the method that the industry uses for all of its operational decisions. This is systemic on a global basis. Yet not one ERP system (Oracle, SAP & others) recognizes the JOC as the key organizational construct of the industry. It is also important to note, as I recently stated, the participants that sit on the JOC are ideally the actual investors that own the property. It will be those that are members of the JOC that evaluate the quantitative and qualitative analysis that supports the decisions being made.


What I am trying to say here is that the muddling of accountability across many organizations and departments leaves no one accountable for the success or mistakes that are made. The source of the bad decision could be in any one of the JOC member companies where analysis of what went wrong is not available to any of the other producers. Not that the idea is to punish people, but to learn from those mistakes and make sure they don't happen again. Mistakes are a necessary part of the innovation process. Without the capacity to analyze the mistakes that are made, will only fuel the same mistake being repeated elsewhere. The same is said for the successful operational decisions. What was it that caused the success to occur is a necessary analysis that should also be completed.

These elements of transaction design have been implemented in the Accounting Voucher module of the People, Ideas & Objects application. The interface elements of the module provide access to the information and resources that reside in the producers that are members of the JOC. This enables those members of the JOC to test and implement their understanding and what new science may have been developed. This is a key focus of how and where the innovation within the oil and gas industry will evolve. As the science increases, more innovative and creative uses of the science will be implemented, leading ultimately to more new science. This incremental looping is facilitated through the Accounting Voucher modules transaction design elements.

Technorati Tags: People's Specification Research Knowledge

Google Health, and it's user interface.

I seem to be spending a lot of time writing about Google and the technologies that they're releasing. I have to say that what they are putting out is very impressive and reflects the massive development that has been ongoing there for the last few years. Click on the title of this entry to watch a video of how Google Health was built. Of particular interest is the amount of time and discussion that is dedicated to the users experience.

Other discussions talk about the many issues around access to the confidential data. Of course health related information is highly confidential, but there are many people that you would want to have access to it, like an emergency room doctor. I think in the People, Ideas & Objects application we face many of the same data integrity and security issues. Proving that this information can reside on the web and that their are solutions to these issues.

The centralization of data comes up as a big advantage in this video. I recently talked about the Google G:Drive or Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Having one certifiable copy of the data with access control privileges; answers so many of the related security risks and is able to get the right information in the right hands at the right time.

Finally the Question & Answer session of the video shows the level of detailed thinking that has to be put into something like this type of secure application. The questions and answers are some of the best I have ever seen being raised in an open forum such as this video.

Again I want to impress upon you the urgency that I feel we proceed with this software development project. Nothing more can be done with out the financial resources necessary to commence and continue development. If you know of an investor in oil and gas, please send them the URL to this web log and encourage them to sponsor this worthwhile project.

Technorati Tags: People's Google Interface Specification

Access Management for Web Applications

A series of blogs has been put up by Maria Sum at Sun Microsystems. The seven part series discusses the Sun products for security and access control. These are the products that have been selected in the Draft Specification for the Security & Access Control  module.


In the Draft Specification, the Security & Access Control module is also the first module to be built. Using Sun Identity, Federated and Access Management frameworks. How this is implemented in the People, Ideas & Objects application modules is that we will be building the application module almost immediately. It will then be used by the community to test and develop the module to the needs of the community. Making the module so that it is Single Sign On (SSO) and that everyone in the community has a hands on understanding and use of the module right from the start.

This is certainly a different way of developing the application, usually the Security & Access Control are the last things that are cobbled together as an after thought. Sun has something to say about that and the use of their product frameworks.  

Typically, the number-one problem in developing Web applications is that identity is often an afterthought," Jamie observes. "Developers tend to focus on the logic, UI, and other aspects until it dawns on them, toward the end of the cycle, that they must secure the applications for, say, user login's and protect the data. Then come the important questions of what tools to use for verifying and authorizing access, what maintenance tasks are involved, whether to adopt federated identity—all afterthoughts at the eleventh hour.

The security of the information held within the People, Ideas & Objects application modules is of a mission critical, highly sensitive and confidential basis. Add to the fact that we are interacting between the community, the producers and their partners and all members of the service industry the security of the system becomes the number one priority. This also brings up the nature of the code that is compiled into the module. This needs to be open and reviewable by those that use the code. It is not enough to say "trust me", people, producers and suppliers have to be able to independently verify that the security level is achieved through their own review. And in People, Ideas & Objects the source code is available to the community and producers for just this purpose.

As with most of Sun's products this independent review of the source code is available to their products. Sun is strongly committed to Open Source Software and therefore their code is openly reviewable as well as that of the People, Ideas & Objects application modules. These products include the following four components.

• Sun Java System Access Manager
• Sun Java System Federation Manager
• Sun Java System Directory Server
• Sun Java System Identity Manager

By implementing the application early, we are able to use the SSO as the method that our community accesses "Google Apps for People, Ideas & Objects Domain" and "SalesForce.com". Permitting our Users to sign on once and have access to all of our systems with one very secure sign in page. Early use will educate our users on its value and features and debug our implementation. Ideally we will need to have the authentication, verification and audit procedures and policies in place before the system is provided to our customers. A system that is used by all members of the community first, and then as production code for our producer clients.

I want to stress a major point of how this application, as defined, is implemented in the greater scheme. If producers are not satisfied with the level of security offered, they are able to deal with the Users and Developers directly to get the solution they want. Try that with either Oracle or SAP. It is reasonable therefore we will have the most secure system possible operating in the ERP market space. And yet, by using Sun's products in this fashion we inherit the following.

Again, Jamie emphasizes, The goal is to free up developers to do their primary jobs instead of fiddling with security.

and

Jamie strongly advocates access management being part of the application design. Applications that work centrally with access management are the answer, he says; otherwise, "you end up creating a load of mundane and unnecessary work for professional-service engineers and system integrators." Typically, as in health-care applications, you "retrofit or use a wedge to incorporate SSO into applications."

This is the model that Sun uses to provide the product. What Sun's Chief Open Source Officer calls the try-prototype-buy support model. Making the extensive costs of developing a high level system such as this much more affordable for development. Interestingly Sun states this in two different phases of a development projects life cycle. When you have time but no money, free is great, and when you have more money then time, the Sun services are there to provide the support.

In Part 5 of the series Sun engineers talk about the "build" model of how the applications go from Open Source to commercial release. The feature differences between the different builds and the expectations from each product. They also state that the application when used in an environment such as People, Ideas & Objects, should have the most recent version of the Sun products.

Lastly I don't expect this preliminary operating feature consider the Military Command & Control Metaphor, or digital signing of documents like agreements and A.F.E.'s in this first build of the module. 

I will be adding this information to the Draft Specifications for the Security & Access Control module in the wiki. To begin this development we need to have our targeted audiences, the oil and gas investor that is disgruntled by the bureaucracy, and governments that need to resurrect the economy, provide the financial resources. If you know of someone that meets that requirement, please send them the URL to this website and encourage them to contribute, and join me here.

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How does the oil and gas investor fit in?

How does the investor fit into this software development project? Like a glove. The People, Ideas & Objects system modules we are building add a few new dimensions that will be of interest to oil and gas investors. First, as their soon to be former management cries over its un-cashed and now worthless stock options, the investor has to take control. The days of the separation between management and ownership is over. In this posting I want to provide support for the idea of the investor as the one sitting at the virtual Joint Operating Committee (JOC) table.

In the Preliminary Research Report Professor Giovanni Dosi instructed how the focus needs to be on the situation in hand. Companies apply strategic policies on a blanket basis to all the properties they own. Irrespective if the policy is of advantage to the asset or not. This can no longer be the case if we are to have innovation based on the local focus that Professor Dosi suggests is required. Recall the JOC provides this level of focus. All aspects of each and every JOC are unique to the characteristics of all others. We need to tap into this uniqueness and build upon it. When the participants are engaged in discussion there is no ambiguity as to which property is under discussion. There is also no ambiguity as to which direction the property should take. Even though the strategies of participant are individually unique, consensus is driven by financial motivations. If these JOC participants are the actual investors, we have eliminated the management, and tied the incentives of the property to the decisions made by those that are the benefactors.

The Financial Marketplace module provides some of this uniqueness. Having the ability to secure bank financing based on the JOC participants ownership interest in the JOC. Not on the basis of the corporate entity. If each property were individually secured by the bank that provided all of the services just for that JOC, then we would have a highly focused team where the application of the policies are in the best interest of the JOC and irrespective of any other (corporate) considerations.

Another critical element in this software is the movement of the Compliance & Governance module to be aligned with the cultural, financial, operational decision making and legal frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee.In today's corporate environment compliance is used by management as the justification for the managements existence. The Compliance & Governance module is a fall out of the decisions made in the JOC. This alignment will provide the accountability that is missing in today's corporate environment. As I've stated in the Preliminary Research Report, the separation of governance and operational decision making is the recipe for a breakdown in accountability.

In a related discussion Carl Icahn had an interview on Bloomberg in which he was talking about the extent of the governance issue in the United States. He extends the scope of the current meltdown to not only
the financial side, but also on all corporations lack of accountability. Icahn also states "There is no accountability in companies and boards. You've let the fox guard the hen house." I'd be willing to bet that Icahn knows the better solution would look very similar to the People, Ideas & Objects Draft Specification.

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Google Chrome and Single Sign On (SSO)

One area that Google may be working on is having their new Chrome browser able to remember it's state during your last session. Imagine for a moment that you were able to move from machine to machine and have the same environment displayed just as you had left it. A working environment that remains constant through-out your day-to-day travels and changing work stations.

In People, Ideas & Objects I think this is a worthwhile type of feature for our users. The current specification states that we are using Java Web Start as the windowing agent of the application. Java Web Start provides a similar level of state recall for the application. The difference to the two products, assuming both products are built with these features, is that the Chrome browser provides a web application interface and People, Ideas & Objects being a stand alone ERP application.

The Chrome browser is open-source and uses WebKit as its core. This allows us to embed the browser within Java Web Start and as a result, have Chrome embedded into the People, Ideas & Objects desktop. Providing access to applications such as Google Apps and Salesforce.com as one application.  I will therefore add this feature into the Draft Specification.

This software development project is at somewhat of a standstill due to the lack of financial resources. We have identified the oil and gas investor as gaining substantial value as a result of this application being built. Value in the form that their oil and gas assets are managed in the most profitable manner. If you know of an investor who fits this description, please send them the URL to this website and have them consider filling this role.

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That's going to hurt.

What a difference a day makes. This credit crunch is now in its last moments before total seizure. I hate to be the one to be the bearer of bad news, so I won't. This crisis is the biggest opportunity that mankind has ever faced. We are now moving at lightening speed from the total collapse of the old economy that we depend upon. To be replaced by the hugely productive economy based on Information & Communication Technologies.

What we are facing in the oil and gas industry is that all of our assumptions about the future are being turned up-side down. Companies such as Canadian Natural Resources Ltd will cease to exist in as little one year. The gas production and prices, and the oil production and prices as reflected in these articles are collapsing, on a temporary basis, slaughtering firms like CNRL's revenues. On the costs side, the ability to do anything operational in the short term will be impossible due to the lack of cash to pay people. These companies, like CNRL who have a Working Capital Deficiency of $3.2 billion, are toast. And if investors followed my advise they would have sold out of their positions and waited for the fire sale of oil and gas assets to start in earnest very soon.

The bureaucracy is dead, long live the producer.

That is if they had the systems necessary to organize themselves. And that is where "Innovation in Oil and Gas" comes into play. We need to rebuild the industry based on the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) and the Draft Specification. To do nothing on this front will reduce us to barbarians fighting over the littlest things. Without the systems to support organizations, people and society we will regress to barbarianism. I thought this was a good news entry? Well it is and I just want to reiterate an important point of what our actions need to be. Here is President George W. Bush's comments after singing the bail out on Friday.

In October 4, 2008 Sunday Herald the following comments were made. They resonate with essentially the same things that I am saying here about what will happen to the banking system in Europe. There article too is a positive one when you see their point of view.

While it is unlikely that we are going to see a return of the era of the Captain Mainwaring-style bank manager, the culture of spivvery, and high-pressure sales that has permeated most British banks will also certainly become a thing of the past.

In its place we are going to see a banking system that looks much more like the "utility" model which Britain had in the 1950s and 1960s. It will be a low-risk banking system, and one where the profits are going to be much lower than they were in the 1990s and the noughties. Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's says that "the survivors are going to be those banks that have learned and applied the lessons to live with new realities, not those which hanker for a past that no longer exists".

Financial regulation is also going to be tightened up, as banks cannot be granted a liberal safety net by the taxpayer and expect to go back to the loosely regulated free-for-all that existed before. Ian Blackford, former managing director of Deutsche Bank and head of its Dutch equity business says: "Our political leaders now have a responsibility to put in place regulation that prevents this crisis ever happening again.

"There needs to be a far-reaching debate on how regulation should work and at what level. These are global problems and they require global solutions. Capital, after all, is mobile."

At a dinner in Edinburgh last Thursday Michael Howard, the former leader of the Conservative Party said that Britain needs to return bank supervision to the Bank of England, where it was housed prior to 1997.

In the long term, these sorts of changes are going to be hugely beneficial to both business and society. It will mean that rather than the abuse of customer relationships that has destroyed most people's trust in their banks, the banks will once again recognise that their main role is to serve their customers rather than to enrich themselves and their shareholders.

One London commuter said: "Outside the City bubble, many people are shocked to find that bankers, once serious folk you'd doff your cap to for a loan, are in fact bonus-fuelled casino operators. What a mess."

The writing is on the wall. We have work to do and that is to define the Preliminary Specification. As mentioned we are looking for 100 people to help identify this system. It is derivative of the Draft Specification and I have established reasonable deadlines for this work to be completed. Please understand as well that I will only be able, at best, to have 1 out of every 20 people who reply, through this process, to sign on. Nonetheless there will be significant opportunities for everyone as soon as the Preliminary Specification is completed. Please be patient. Help me raise the needed revenues for this project, and join me here.

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Project Charter - Preliminary Specification

Based on the Draft Specification, this community will complete the following tasks in publishing the Preliminary Specification. Ideally the number of members of the community defining the Preliminary Specification should be up to 100 individuals. They will have a broad background in oil and gas in all professions, geographic regions and organizations, including service industry businesses.

The most important attribute of these people is they should be leaders in their field and well versed in the oil and gas industry. These People are accessing this work on the basis that their leadership skills will provide a sound Preliminary Specification, and develop a cornerstone of the "Community of Independent Service Providers" offering to the producers. They are expected to develop the Preliminary Specification on the basis where their cost of time is incurred on their behalf as an investment in defining and developing that service offering.

This investment by the leadership of "Community of Independent Service Providers" is the basis of the beginnings of these organizations. They will be able to provide users (upon approval) of their organizations to
this software and service offering. Where the People, Ideas & Objects and producer companies are their clients. The costs of Users in the Detailed and Final Specification will be fully funded before any work is started.

Establish deadlines for the Preliminary, Detailed and Final Specifications of the People, Ideas & Objects application modules. I propose the following on the basis that our $180,000 budget is raised through donations from producers. (Proposed time-lines.)

• Draft Specification                 Published August 1, 2008.
• Preliminary Specification        Publish May 31, 2009
• Detailed Specification            Publish November 30, 2009 (Commence Software Development)
  
• Final Specification.                Publish April 30, 2010

General overall task of the Preliminary Specification are to define the scope of the People, Ideas & Objects application modules.

• Geographic Scope.
• Minimum Scope: is established as North America and the North Sea.
  
• What other jurisdictions regulatory and compliance requirements fit within the minimum scope.
• Maximum
  Scope: is established as all jurisdictions that produce oil and gas and are willing to support their regulatory and compliance development costs for their jurisdiction.
• Scope of Functionality.
• What priorities and dependencies exist in bringing the application to market in its minimum form. (This is an iterative software development application.)
• What "scale" related issues will this application require in terms of
  
• Technology
  
• Architecture,
  
• User capability,
  
• Community development etc.
• Define in detail the functionality necessary for Release Candidate v 1.0.
• Organizational Requirements.
• Define how the People, Ideas & Objects communities are supported in their regions.
  
• What unique strengths and advantages does the firm and development provide.
• What are the weaknesses and threats of this development and firm.
• Define the expectations and demands of the producers in developing this application.
  
• Refine People, Ideas & Objects Business Model.
  
• Define roles and responsibilities of the Users in the development of this software.
  
• Who holds authority, whom reports to whom. What "hierarchy" is needed to organize the Users.
  
• Define the requirements in terms of policies and procedures of the "Community of Independent Service Providers" qualifications and capabilities necessary to support the software in the producer firm. 
• Process Definitions.
• Define and map all processes in draft.
  
• Algorithm Research.
• We have some algorithms in the modules that are state of the art. Particularly in the Accounting Voucher and Partnership Accounting.We need to establish a group that is focusing on those algorithms development. This Specification should detail the needs of that group.
  

Project Deliverables

This is a creative process in which these Users will be able to fill in areas where the Draft Specification has missing components. The Users are not limited in any fashion in terms of the numbers of modules and
the areas they need to develop.

Detailed tactical and strategic analysis supporting the commercialization of "Release Candidate 1.0".

Preliminary Unified Modeling Language (UML) based on analysis conducted. (Please note UML is also a deliverable in both the Detailed and Final Specifications. Users will have access to the Petroleum Producer Data Model (PPDM) operating on Sun Microsystems Project Hydrazine.

Please note I have purposely kept this Preliminary Specification detail as broad as I can. The People who are this community should exercise the judgment and authority necessary to further define the Preliminary Specification as they require. 

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It's not enough.

The bailout package being discussed in the U.S. is not enough to fix the system. Keep the $700 billion and use it to help build the "new" systems after the failures are purged from the landscape.

Attempting to refill the toilet bowl as it's flushed is, and always will be, futile. The systems supporting our economy are no longer adequate to meet the needs of our economies. The way they are structured is based on many of the principles established in the 1930's depression era. Have we learned anything about economics since then? Has Information & Communication Technologies developed since then? Let the failure occur.

If we read Professor Carlota Perez, who's analysis has shown this is a systemic economic event. That has happened consistently over the past 300 years. We should welcome this decline for the opportunities that it provides. This turning is as violent and disruptive for a reason. Organizations don't change from the old technologies that brought the economies along. They have to collapse in order for the new players and organizations to rise from the ashes.

The entire world economy will be going through the same problems. Europe is stuck in an economy that is static since Margaret Thatcher, and she was only able to bring Britain into the 20th century. With everyone falling, the economic leaders will remain the economic leaders in the next era.

The energy industry is not immune to these events. We have seen some high profile oil-sands projects canceled for one reason or another. I suggest financing is not available. And as I have suggested CNRL's Horizon project will be one of those eyesores that quietly rusts in the middle of nowhere. When credit systems fail, capital intensive industries such as oil and gas will feel it. What should someone who has worked in oil and gas do after they have been laid off from the oil and gas companies? They should join me here in making this software that will define how the new oil and gas industry is rebuilt. Unfortunately this is the only way that business can make the fundamental changes from era to era.

One thing that is systemic in all of Professor Perez writings is the scope and speed of the new environment that we are moving towards. Very quickly we will see the focus of people move away from the housing and consumer focus that brought the system down. They will now understand and appreciate that the greatest miss-allocation of capital (the past ten years) is over and they can begin building a new and more prosperous life from the ashes. It's time to invest in those businesses that will lead the world out of the old economy.

I noted earlier that the Financial Marketplace may have seemed a bit of a stretch in terms of the changes that were proposed in the Draft Specification. With the events of the last couple of months we see that the banking system is inadequate for our future needs. New regulations and technologies will be introduced into the system that will mirror the changes I have proposed in the Financial Marketplace module. Professor Milton Friedman has this to say about the "crisis" we find ourselves at the beginning of;

Only a crisis-actual or perceived-produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. Friedman 2002, Capital and Freedom.

This projects pace has slowed to a crawl. I am unable to move the project any further without the financial resources necessary to make this real. If there is any doubt in your mind as to the need for such a "radical" change, it should be put to rest by these recent events, and those that will be coming. If you know of someone in our revenue profile, an oil and gas investor disgruntled by the bureaucracy, send them the URL to this web log and encourage them to keep this project moving forward. And, join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Change Specification Trends Perez Friedman

A Budget and a Plan.

More and more I feel the case for proceeding with this software development project has been made. I need to move-on from griping to the more constructive activities of budgeting and planning for this projects development. So lets start slow and see what develops.

This is what I have come up with for year six.

• I would like to see up to 100 individuals contributing to the Preliminary Specification. Google charges $50 / user for the collaborative environment. ($5,000)
  
• Preliminary testing of the MySQL database with the PPDM data model on Sun Project Hydrazine. (approx $25,000)
  
• Hardware and software. Define technical architecture. ($50,000)
• Overhead. ($60,000)
• Contingencies. ($40,000)
  

A budget of $180,000.00 for the entire year does not seem like a bold move. I agree, however, we have no idea where the revenue will come from to make that possible. So instead of projecting an unworkable demand in our first year of development, I want to ensure that we aspire to perform and begin the difficult process of generating revenue; while also starting the comprehensive work of defining the Preliminary, Detailed and Final Specifications.

Some of the initial projects that I have established in the wiki include:

• A1) Develop a user-based definition of Security & Access Control requirements.
• A2) Develop User Archetype's with Military Command & Control Metaphor
• A3) Develop and test the Security & Access Control Module using Sun's Federated Identity and Project Hydrazine.
• A4) Go live with Security & Access Control with Single Sign On of People, Ideas & Objects
• B1) Algorithm research. Establish resource requirements for comprehensive algorithm research.
• B2) Determine the languages People, Ideas & Objects should have.
• B3) Develop global standard chart of accounts for upstream industry.
• L1) Preliminary testing of MySQL database with Petroleum Producer Data Model.
• L2) Determine the interface elements with Java WebStart and JavaFX.
• L3) Client, Producer, and JOC Client Side Application design and build interface framework.
• L4) Can Google Translate API dynamically convert language attributes in application modules.

These are only to start the process. The list of projects are open for all users to participate and post new or other projects. These projects are part of the Project Management Office that will develop in time with the Specifications. The process to begin your participation is as follows:

User and Developer Task List

Users and Developers are compensated for their time involved in this development. (Please note that with no revenue large enough to compensate the potentially 100 users. This policy is amended for year 6 only. The first 100 participants will have the advantage of establishing their own service based offering in their geographical location, and therefore will not be compensated until the beginning of year 7.) To initiate your involvement in this community please review the following.

- Review the Preliminary Research Report, the archives of the innovation in oil and gas web-log and Draft Specification. Gain a strong understanding of the differences of using the Joint Operating Committee. How the nature of the differences of this system contrast to traditional ERP systems. How these differences are captured in the module specification of which the Performance Evaluation™, Analytics & Statistics ™, Research & Capabilities Module™, Knowledge & Learning ™, Compliance & Governance ™ Financial Marketplace ™, Resource Marketplace ™, Accounting Voucher ™, Partnership Accounting ™, Petroleum Lease Marketplace ™ and Security & Access Control ™ Modules. How the division, or boundaries, of the firm and market definitions allocate roles and responsibilities. How the JOC provides the ideal "Market" solution to the oil and gas industry. And the changes in the firm definition and its somewhat expanded role and focus. Additional focus on the way that people interact through these systems and how accountants capture the changes in the business through the Accounting Voucher™ Module. Ideally reading the papers of Dosi, Langlois, Winters, Baldwin and Williamson (on the innovation blog) should be reviewed by Users in this application.This would only help in better understanding what needs to be done in this applications modules.

- Sign the Copyright License. (E-mail me paul.cox@people-ideas-objects.com ) I am the beneficial owner of the copyright of the ideas expressed in the blog, wiki, and software development. This intellectual property must be maintained and held in pristine condition for these ideas to help the industry, and be available to all the participants in this community. Therefore it is necessary that everyone involved in this software development project have unencumbered access to all of these concepts. Both for software development purposes and their own service operation. The Copyright or End User License Agreement provides for this, and, assigns the copyright for the work done by each User back to me where it remains available to everyone. As mentioned earlier in this specification, the users are compensated for their time and should consider this software development project as a cornerstone of their future revenue and income. And to particularly those Users that wish to generate their service businesses based on this software offering! Please consult a lawyer if you have any questions.

- Submit up to 2,500 words on how and what you could provide to this developing community. What are your experiences in oil and gas, where do you think the industry could be more innovative if it had the software to enable it. What would that software look like and how you could contribute to its making. These User and Developer summaries will be posted in the People's wiki and enable user search and discovery of like minded people and resources.

Ideally having 100 people sourced from Texas, Aberdeen and Alberta would provide the coverage to take the Draft Specification to the Preliminary Specification stage. If you have an interest in this software please start this process today.

This project has to find new sources of money and leadership to fill-in the many voids of the overall vision. If you know of someone who could help to financially support this project please do what you can to bring their attention to this. Ninety-five percent of the ownership of the oil and gas industry is held by individuals. Individuals who are the investors, users and developers of the People, Ideas & Object application. Join me here and lets build this software.

The PayPal button on this website will gladly take donations that can further us along in the road we are headed. Even if you can only contribute $10.00 we will be that much further ahead.

Technorati Tags: People's Development User Specification Call-to-action

The brilliance of Google's G:Drive

Regular readers will know that I have waited for Google's mythic G:Drive service to arrive. Well the good news is its here. And apparently, I have been using it for a number of years. This product launch shows me that Google remains innovative, and how it is able to keep ahead of the competition.

Google's G:Drive provides not only the hardware storage, but also the applications the user wants. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, .pdf's, and standard forms and templates. Recall that Google Docs is the standard collaborative environment for this software development project. The method that Google uses here makes a lot of sense to me, but that is only the beginning.

When using Google Docs, the user is provided with one version of a document located in the "cloud" as the only copy that you need. You can access it from anywhere that you have an Internet connection. Collaborators contributions and content readers are easily added through a simple interface. There are also multiple opportunities to publish the content on the web. For example I use Google Docs in my @people-ideas-objects.com account to post to this blog. 

Why is this important to this software development project.

We use Vouchers as has been described in the Accounting Voucher Module's Draft Specification. Vouchers are the catch-all phrase of accounting to represent an accounting document. Processed by the systems, these documents are a critical part of any organizations accounting records. The treatment of these Vouchers in People, Ideas & Objects applications are essentially the same things as documents in Google Docs. People collaborating on one version of the Voucher with multiple versions being recorded as the voucher develops. Multiple versions that can be used to establish an audit trail.

Recall that each voucher is access enabled to the authorized personnel in each producer company represented in the JOC. Stored in the cloud, the people with authorized access have only one place to look for the right, or most current, version of the Voucher document. And that one version is not bound in the physical world, many people can view and edit it at the same time. One major difference is the act of closing a voucher to further changes is something that will be built within the standard general ledger interface.

This also applies to for A.F.E.'s, Agreements, Leases, Mail Ballots, Truck Tickets etc. Any and all documents that oil and gas producers' use to document their business transactions will be included as documents within the People, Ideas & Objects applications. This functionality is based on the Security & Access Control Module that ensures no one has access to documents they are not authorized to have access to.

There are three applications in the People, Ideas & Objects specification. One each for the People, the producer companies and the JOC's. I can see the interface for the Peoples application emulating many of the characteristics of the Google Docs interface. I will therefore be adding components of this post into the Accounting Voucher Draft Specification.

The last bit of brilliance from Google shows us the way in which their developers provide value to their users. Through innovative uses of fairly common digital storage medium, and other technologies, users are provided with interfaces that satisfy their needs.

This has been a hard learned lesson for me. To expect the user to better understand the technologies that are involved in this application is never going to happen. A point that I have tried to make here many times before. What Google has taught me is that users and developers need to work together, more then they ever have in the past. Why this is so innovative is that they have been purposely separated through a variety of management layers that will no longer exist in this software development project. And that is how the systems are developed appropriately. Innovative users and developers working together to solve the industries problems.

I wish to appeal to those that have an interest in making this software development project real. If you know of a producing company, or an oil and gas investor that is interested in sponsoring this project, please email the URL of the web log to them and join me here.

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But can this project scale?

Many people look at a start-up such as this project and say, it'll never work, they can't scale. I look at the existing infrastructure of SAP and Oracle and say, it'll never work, too much code and too many customers. How's that for different points of view.

The constraints of organizations are quickly becoming the impediment to growth. That is by removing the constraints, growth will accelerate. Look at what has happened in the technology marketplace in the last ten years. Apple reacquainted itself with Steve Jobs and restarted the organization essentially from scratch. New designs, new processors, new operating system with 5 major upgrades, invented the iPod, iPhone and who knows what else exists in the man's mind. It's now 3 times the size of Dell.

Google has started as two PhD students with some fancy search algorithms. Ten years later they have built one of the most prolific cloud based product producers. And Microsoft continues to spawn vaporware in every product category as a means to sew Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). The performance of the start-ups in the last ten years vs. the industry behemoths has created more value then the behemoths have lost.

Sun Microsystems have two projects Project Hydrazine and Project Caroline. There is a very informative (technical) podcast that you can listen to on Project Hydrazine here. These two projects provide People, Ideas & Objects with the ability to scale better then SAP and Oracle.

Lets look at the Draft Specification - Security & Access Control Module of the People, Ideas & Objects application. This module uses the Federated Identity products of Sun Microsystems. (I recommend you watch the four minute video with the perspective of a JOC in the forefront of your mind.) I take these tried and true applications and implement them in what I believe to be the greatest level of security and user friendliness. I do this development on Project Hydrazine and then deploy it their as well. Suddenly the users of this application have a state of the art Security & Access Control module capability. I provide the major accounting firms with the necessary access for compliance and boom, the job is done.

Well maybe not that easy, but far easier then the two ERP vendors I mentioned earlier. They have a lot invested in their code. They can't, and won't, throw that code where it belongs, even it is not up to the quality necessary for compliance. The reason they don't want to change is that it will take them the better part of this century to change the user base over to the better product. Constraints of code and customers for a software firm are the impediments of growth. I'm certainly pleased that I have neither code or customers at this point in time.

And that is the point. When I do commit to the code, it will have to be in such a fashion that I am not undertaking a huge infrastructure that needs to be built to support it. I hire Sun through Project Hydrazine to deploy the application and run it on their servers. I think they know a few things about that, and they sure are motivated to be the best.

So can this project scale? You tell me. And don't tell anyone but I feel like I'm cheating.

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The Draft Specification has moved.

I have moved the Draft Specification from the old wiki to two Knol pages. The Draft Specification is no longer accessible from the wiki. The first part is here and the second part is here. Knol makes it much easier to read and navigate.

Most of the text has been edited, Modules like the Security & Access Control are being rewritten and / or heavily edited so check back frequently for new information.

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Langlois on Dosi and Lazonick

An interesting debate has begun between Professor Giovanni Dosi and Professor Richard N. Langlois. Dosi's 1988 "Sources, Procedures and Micro-economic Effects of Innovation" was the key document I used in the preliminary research report. Professor Richard N. Langlois has taken up the majority of writing and thinking on changes in business' organizational structure which was used in defining the Draft Specification.

Professor Dosi, Alfonso Gambardella, Marco Grazzi, and Luigi Orsonigo submitted a new paper a few weeks ago entitled Capitalism and Society. I have reviewed the paper and found nothing of real interest in it. It suggests that the large organizations have not been impacted by Information Technologies. A very provocative research topic but one that I think is limited in its scope. The research is based on a review of Italian and French firms. I am certain that there is not a substantial amount that can be related to the rest of the world. Old Europe doesn't change, they have the same firms occupying the top wrung of the corporate latter for over 50 years. Nothing changes much there.

Nonetheless much of the underlying premise for Dosi et al's research was based on Professor Langlois research, and specifically his paper entitled "The Vanishing Hand". This was a document that I reviewed here. Professor Langlois writes a response to Dosi et al that helps to clarify his position in writing about the boundaries of the firm and organizational change. Here is the focus of the discussion.

The Dosi et al. paper takes issue with the Langloisian point of view. The authors adduce statistical evidence on changes in the size‐distribution of firms and industrial concentration in the advanced economies over the past few decades that contradicts the notion that there has been a significant movement toward market coordination of the advanced economies. They argue that, if anything, organizational complexity has become greater in the ICT age, requiring industrial enterprises to engage in more, not less, organizational interactions, as distinct from market interactions. Indeed, they raise the possibility that organizational complexity, and hence the challenges for the visible hand of managerial coordination, may be greater across vertically specialized firms in the New Economy than it was within the vertically integrated firms of the Old Economy. (Lazonick 2008, p. 1.) p. 1

Nonetheless this is a finding that challenges Langlois' theory and the core underlying thinking of this software development project. I have suggested, and the Draft Specification reflects, that the "market" definition is the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) which imputes the volumes of suppliers and contractors involved in the service businesses, and the producer represents the firm.

Lanlgois cites IBM as his example of how Dosi et al misinterpret him. In the 1960's IBM was able to provide the soup to nuts type of computing experience that purchasers appreciated then. The majority of components were manufactured in-house by IBM. Today the situation has changed significantly as a result of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Yes there are large businesses just as there always will be. However, the methods used to develop products and build them have changed substantially.

As an example I would select Apple which considers themselves to be a software development company. Their competitive advantage is in developing software that is substantially more "user friendly" and functional then other software. When it comes to hardware, Apple has not manufactured a computer for many years. They involve themselves in the design and secure manufacturing capability from other firms that specialize in chips, hard-drives, assembly etc. The iPod and iPhone are similar in that Apple notes on the product that it is designed in California, assembled in China and uses mostly Japanese parts. Therefore Dosi et al's argument that ICT has not changed the make up of firms is incorrect. They are predominately organized around the contract, which denotes clearly that the firm uses the market to attain their competitive advantage.

Charles Sabel and his collaborators have begun looking into the nature of the relationships that characterize the New Economy (Gilson, Sabel and Scott 2008; Jenne john 2007; Sabel and Zeitlin 2004). And what they find is not common ownership or hierarchy but rather a “form of contracting [that] supports iterative collaboration between firms by interweaving explicit and implicit terms that respond to the uncertainty inherent in the innovation process” (Gilson, Sabel and Scott 2008, p. 3). The New Economy may be highly organized. But it is fundamentally contractual, in a way that large Chandlerian multi‐unit enterprises are not. These latter, properly understood, are indeed fading away in a world of extensive, capable, diversified markets.

The Draft Specification uses much of Langlois thinking in its overall architecture. The best example I can think of is the use of the producers five year Capital Expenditure budgets. These budgets are aggregated by region and displayed in a fashion that enables the "market" of suppliers, the Schlumbergers, Halliburtons and Joes' Welding to peruse and determine what the producers may need in terms of their future spending. This information in the hands of the market will then enable innovative solutions to be proposed to the producer when the contract is sent out for bidding. Bringing a new capability to the firm with a perspective that is not limited to the firms current quarter.

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The last 2 Draft Specifications!

Draft Specification - Performance Evaluation
Draft Specification - Analytics & Statistics

Two plus nine equal's eleven. These specifications are now the communities to take and build upon. The draft specifications are in a way a codification of my vision of what could be, and the research that I have conducted on the organizationally constrained producer companies.

I can not tell you how good it feels to have completed these.

Technorati Tags: People's Specification Development Research

Interesting research at Intel

We are all heading towards cloud based computing. Billions are being invested in centralized processing and storage facilities to offer processing and storage on demand. For Google to run their services requires them to own the most processing and storage power in the world. And has anyone stood up and asked if this an effective way to conduct computer based functions? Well Intel has and the results are surprising.

In a document released yesterday, Intel documents the research they did on the processing and network bandwidth demands of the two prominent methods of computing. Comparing "Virtual Hosted Desktop" with "Embedded Application" which relies on remote processing on a virtual server, to "Stream OS" with "Stream Application" which relies on streaming of operating system software to hardware client platforms.

The results show that streaming the operating system and application to the client platform for user based actions was, from a server perspective, far more efficient. 20 clients accessing the server for these services used only 1% of the servers performance. Whereas the "Virtual Hosted Desktop" solution took up to 45% of the server processing requirements for the same 20 clients. Intel even crippled the script of the test for the Virtual Hosted Desktops to remove the high processing required for graphics. I assume that the network bandwidth of data would be small and therefore incidental to the performance of either method.

Sun Microsystems has moved in this direction with their SPARC based offerings, Solaris and Java products. Using the "Stream OS and Application" method provides us with a reduction in processing requirements, and, an increase in performance on the client desktop. The only caveat that Intel mentioned was the initialization of operating systems on the client side could cause momentary increases in processing and network demands. Suggesting that "if" all 20 clients logged on at the same time, the systems may have performance issues.

This "Streaming" architecture provides the People, Ideas & Objects application with the performance and reliability that is necessary for the users. This architecture also allows us to control all the required software necessary for the user to do their jobs. Such that if there were a bug in the systems we would know about it, and who to fix it.

Technorati Tags: People's, Development, Research, Sun, Specification,

Uh, actually it's three applications.

I was running through the options in how the People, Ideas & Objects application modules can be implemented with Solaris 10 and Java. What has quickly become obvious is that the application that we are building is actually three different applications. Categorized on the basis of either a Producer, a Person or a Joint Operating Committee (JOC). Each category having access to the eleven modules of the People, Ideas & Objects through different interfaces.

The Solaris operating system provides containerized virtual instances of the operating system. For all intents and purposes these virtual instances of Solaris are as separate and distinct to the two operating systems running applications in ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco. A virtual instance of Solaris is created for each person, JOC and producer company. This provides the separation and access of resources to only those who are authorized. Interactions between instances is through the Java enabled transaction management capabilities.

This provides enhanced security flexibility to each person, JOC or producer company. With each virtual instance of Solaris accessible by the owner they can grant access privileges based on Solaris' 50 user definable roles. Root access is available to be granted to a variety of people who need that access, yet it only provides root access to those areas. Audit, compliance and others will be able to access what they need to do their jobs without the risk of granting global root access to people who need it.

Each of these virtual instance will provide a server side MySQL database that manges the data model for their type of user, a person, JOC or producer. I believe this helps in avoiding much of the complexity and confusion that "might" occur if we ran this application as one monolithic instance. One might assume that the hardware requirements would explode in terms of cost and complexity, and this is where Sun has obviously spent some engineering time. And why this will be run on Sun's network.com or cloud computing platform. Each processor could handle 16 virtual instances, and, are able to scale dynamically to use the number of processors any application may demand. Making the decision to use Sun's cloud computing the equivalent of a "doh!" as Homer Simpson would say.

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Two More Draft Specifications

I am pleased to submit to the community the Knowledge & Learning and, Research & Capability Draft Specifications. (Please note these modules are very similar and therefore each file contains both specifications). These are the eighth and ninth Draft - Specifications and I will complete the last two Performance Evaluation and Analytics & Statistics Modules before the end of July 2008.

• Security & Access Control
• Petroleum Lease Marketplace
• Partnership Accounting
• Accounting Voucher
• Resource Marketplace
• Financial Marketplace
• Compliance & Governance
• Research & Capabilities
• Knowledge & Learning

Technorati Tags: People's, Specification, Research, Knowledge, Learning, Capabilities,

Draft Specification - Compliance & Governance™ Module

Compliance & Governance™ provides the methods that the firm deals with the investment community and its associated regulators. (SEC, Tax and Royalty). The unique attribute of how the People, Ideas & Objects™ application provides the compliance, is by using the advanced technologies available to automate as much of the processes as possible. Technologies that the industry inherits in this software development capability and the regulators embrace of technology through their published API's (Application Programming Interface) and Frameworks. The best example of which is the SEC's XBRL initiative.

In this module we are ensuring that the policies and procedures of the People, Ideas & Objects™ application and its users are in compliance with the various regulations and requirements of an organization. In essence, through building this application we are moving the compliance and governance framework of the firm to be in alignment with the four other frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee. Maintenance of the producer in compliance to the frameworks of the SEC, tax and royalty regimes is this applications compliance goals. The governance aspect of the application assigns the role and responsibilities of the People to their tasks based on the Military Command & Control Metaphor.

A key to the resolution of the industries ability to find and produce the energy the market demands is through the efficient application of capital. This point has been dealt with in the Financial Marketplace™ module and other modules in this specification. Raising money requires access to public funds. The size of the innovative oil and gas producer should not be an impediment or constraint of access to the markets of oil and gas activity, and, capital access. If a firm is a small partner in a few projects, their ability to raise capital will be dependent upon their level of compliance capability.

Copies of the specification with the other six module drafts can be downloaded from the old wiki .

• Compliance & Governance™
• Security & Access Control™
• Petroleum Lease Marketplace™
• Partnership Accounting™
• Accounting Voucher™
• Resource Marketplace™
• Financial Marketplace™

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Draft Specification - Financial Marketplace Module

I am pleased to submit to the community the draft specification of the Financial Marketplace Module. This is the sixth of eleven modules, and last of the three marketplace modules in the specification.

What may not be obvious at first glance of this specification is the Marketplace makeup of the module. Financial resources are critical to the energy industry because of the intense capital nature of the business. This marketplace therefore provides a number of means for the innovative producer to manage the cash resources of the firm and apply the budget discipline at a finer level of focus, the Joint Operating Committee.

One thing that is very obvious about this module is the radical nature of how the nuance of committing capital amoungst the partnership is handled. Offering a multitude of options for the innovative oil and gas producer and eliminating many of the issues associated with raising money.

I have purposely provided a very light sketch of the Financial Marketplace Module. This is not my area of expertise, and many of the users in this community will better understand the open opportunity the module provides. I think the seventh module to be published will be the Compliance & Governance Module.

• Security & Access Control Module
• Petroleum Lease Marketplace Module
• Partnership Accounting Module
• Accounting Voucher Module
• Resource Marketplace Module
• Financial Marketplace Module

Technorati Tags: People's, Specification, Market, Change,

Draft Specification - Resource Marketplace Module

“For every serious challenge facing the world. There is someone with a big idea. That big idea needs to be nurtured. It needs to be explored and analyzed in order to bring it to life.

And design is at the core of that innovation. There isn’t a problem in the world that a great designer can’t solve.” Quotation from an Autodesk commercial.

The Resource Marketplace module is the second of three marketplace modules in the People, Ideas & Objects specification and the fifth of eleven. The key focus of this module is on providing a forum for electronic commerce. The Resource Marketplace works with the Accounting Voucher Module to optimize the contract, division of labor and mitigation of transaction costs.

A summary list of the published modules.

Draft Specification - Security & Access Control Module

Draft Specification - Petroleum Lease Marketplace Module

Draft Specification - Partnership Accounting Module

Draft Specification - Accounting Voucher Module

Draft Specification - Resource Marketplace Module.

Possibly the largest impact of this module is the management, with the Research & Capabilities Module, of People's Intellectual Property (IP). If we are to succeed in finding larger volumes of energy to meet the worlds demands we are going to need to solve a variety of difficult problems. Whether those problems are in engineering, science or business the individuals that will ultimately prevail need to be motivated to do this difficult work. The motivation is the ability to earn the rights to the expression of the idea, the patent or trademark.

For more then 25 years the oil and gas industry has ceased to conduct any research. Making today's environment ripe for research and development opportunities and making it a use it or loose it proposition. Since they chose to do nothing they won't miss out on any opportunities. In this module specification I also suggest that companies have become too comfortable with using People's IP as if it was free like the oxygen that we breathe. The "Ideas" in People, Ideas & Objects is explained in fair detail in the specification. It is necessary to build a system where people can develop, secure, license, contract and manage their intellectual property. This application is the place where that will happen, have a look.

The next Module to be published will be the Financial Resource Marketplace.

Technorati Tags: People's, Specification, Development, IP, Modularity,