Showing posts with label Technical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technical. Show all posts

Monday, May 12, 2014

The Value in Technology

I have spoken many times here on this blog about the maturation of the Information Technologies that we are using at People, Ideas & Objects. It is that maturity of the technology that enables us to undertake the large scope and scale of our project. And many of the technologies and companies that appear to be generating a lot of interest in the capital markets are focused around the development of social networks and big data. These two areas are calling into question whether or not the technological industry is getting itself into another bubble where valuations and perceptions of value are getting out of sync with the real opportunities. These are my thoughts in terms of what I see.

I think the real value in technology is in the application of Information Technologies infrastructure to the business model of an industry. Much in the way we are doing it here in People, Ideas & Objects, the user community and service providers. This has been done in other industries and will happen in every industry as time passes. This trend, known more or less as disintermediation is the updating of the business model to include the Internet and remove the bureaucracy. Both are good things and provide value for the industry for all concerned. This is where the value in the technology business resides. It is in the “old” technology companies that provide the mature Information Technologies that will see their involvement in this business. The Oracle’s, the IBM’s, Cisco’s, and Intel’s.

In terms of the social networks they are probably here to stay. Some like Twitter and LinkedIn have been able to establish themselves in the business arena. And therefore will be able to build value outside of the “social” space. As for the rest, as it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s to show home movies as a fad, companies like FaceBook may be wholly dependent on a fad of exchanging useless bits of information with other people. Professor Herbert Simon coined the phrase “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” FaceBook may want to adopt the byline “A wealth of FaceBook friends creates a poverty of friendship.” More innovation comes from FaceBook everyday and that keeps the masses interested. At some point there will need to be some point to the exercise and I think that day is coming soon.

If someone approaches you with a product that is in the “Big Data” field, run. Like Y2K they both have three syllables. I don't think thats a coincidence. There is something about naming conventions and three syllable product names are code for those in the know, to stay away. If anyone finds a bit of information that provides value for a business from “Big Data” then I will be the first to be surprised. In the Preliminary Specification there are the Performance Evaluation and the Statistics & Analytics modules to apply analytical thinking to the data set in a Joint Operating Committee or a producer firm. This is not “Big Data,” this is only the practical application of the tools to the data streams that have always existed in oil and gas. Don't let anyone sell you on the concept of “Big Data” becoming a force for generating value in the oil and gas industry. Its not going to happen and the need to spend any money on this initiative is approximately equivalent to what you should have spent on Y2K, nothing.

So that is how I see the Information Technology business. The real money is in the traditional industries that will use the mature technologies in new business models that disintermediate the bureaucracy. And the real money will be made in the area of higher profitability in these traditional businesses. The old school technology companies will come out alright as well. Just don't look for too much excitement from your investments in them.

The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Your Personal Information Systems

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon.

I have had some disturbing conversations with some people lately that I think reflect they are heading in the wrong direction. They say they are too overwhelmed by the volumes of information that they are receiving. And as a result they are opting out and focusing only on the relevant things that affect them. “Forget about the fire hose and chose only to look at what I am interested in.” I think this is a dangerous and unnecessary step towards being precluded from what happens in the technology and particularly the economic field. This to me is like saying you will no longer participate in the human race. Creating a secondary class of citizens who are unable, and lack the will to participate in an advanced economy that is soon to be upon us.

I think they have misdiagnosed their problem. I think that instead of being tired of the effort necessary to keep up on all of the necessary information required to participate today, their personal Information Systems are failing. The data and information that they are sorting through is too broad and unorganized. Too basic and requires too much manual effort to discern any value from it. What they need is to use their computers to control the flow of information in a way that they can select what is relevant from a variety of sources and choose the most pertinent and highest quality. What I am saying is not simple, and the effort necessary to “build” such a system takes time and effort, but it desperately needs to be done.

In terms of time I have worked to control the flow of information that I need to keep on top of. My Information System has taken me the better part of ten years to put together and it is quite sophisticated. The range of topics that I need to keep on top of include the oil and gas business, the technology marketplace, Oracle’s technologies, the economy, politics, societies demands to name just a few. And we all know the devil is in the details. The amazing thing is I can maintain this domain of knowledge with as little as one and a half hours per day, and no more than two and a half hours per day. Including weekends. I generally know one to two days before the headlines show up on the nightly news. The value of this in my business is immeasurable. In a few years it will be challenged by the flows of informations growth and the importance of it.

So how is it done. Quality is the first criteria in selection. The problem with quality sources is they don't publish regularly so you need a high volume of quality sources. Secondly seek out people who you generally agree with and have a good understanding of their positions. These can be anybody in the public domain. Like minded people are easily found and easily listened to. The next is take an equal amount of people that you have selected that are like minded, and select people who are those that you are diametrically opposed to. People, that you can't stand to listen to or think they are crazy. And listen to them carefully. Understand their point of view. Subscribe to a diverse source of news agencies on a local, national, continental and international basis. Understand your sources, you’ll be receiving the same information from multiple sources. Video is a priority. Will someone have a video presentation of that story then wait for that video. Otherwise select the source that will give you the best perspective on the story.

There are a variety of tools that are available today. Everyone will have their favorites. I use upwards of ten. I never access this on my iPhone, I can’t fit my world into a four inch screen. Some of it can be used on my iPad but most of it comes through my computer. In fact all of can be run through there the easiest.

I think its important that we keep up to date in the world as we progress in what is going to be an important time for mankind. The Internet Age will be the same as the Industrial Revolution in terms of the impact on people. But we have to participate. Opting out now could have consequences that affect your capabilities in the very near future.

The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here

Friday, July 29, 2011

Budgets, Technology and Leverage


In businesses such as People, Ideas & Objects we have three main risk categories to deal with. We have financial, market and technical risks that must be addressed in order to succeed. This post is going to briefly address some of the technical risk that we face and how that risk impacts our budget needs. Embarking on a multi-billion dollar project without addressing these technical risks would be like bungee-jumping without the rope.

Firstly we should point out a decision that we made a few years ago that mitigates much of our technical risk. That is, the use of Oracle Fusion as the base ERP application at the core of People, Ideas & Objects (PI&O) applications. Our products will be built on Oracle's RDBMS, Java and Fusion Middleware which provide us with further ability to mitigate our technical risk by using best of breed in those product categories. The costs of these Oracle products are incremental to the software development budget we have been discussing in this and recent posts.

People, Ideas & Objects is based on a Technical Vision that uses existing technologies in ways that the oil and gas industry will need to implement them. One that sees technology being ubiquitous, always on, secure, asynchronous and dynamic. An environment where the oil and gas industry is supported by a software development capability in addition to the People, Ideas & Objects applications that will be provided. This environment has to be purpose built and that is what PI&O is setting out to do. The technical risks of bringing this environment to the producers that subscribe to this community are mitigated through the ability of controlling the various technical, financial and market risks through the Intellectual Property that holds these disparate parts together.

At the same time we are not pushing the technical envelope. All of the technologies and their proposed deployment are proven time and again capable of the job that we are asking of them. There is a maturation of the technologies in the past ten years that provides an assurance that they are up to the task. I also expect that in the next ten years they will continue to provide greater levels of confidence and assurance of their capabilities.

What can only be described as a revolution in development tools and methodologies has occurred in the past decade. These tools and methodologies have reduced the time and budget requirements of software development projects, while at the same time increased the quality of the deliverables. People, Ideas & Objects have adopted these tools and methodologies and will implement them to reduce the time required for developments, the budget for developments and increase the quality of our developments. Ten years ago when compilers had to be purchased for several thousands of dollars per developer; have now been replaced by free IDE’s that exponentially accelerate the developers productivity. Methodologies who’s user focus is a religion. And build on frameworks and middleware (like Oracle Fusion Middleware) that provide an architecture and building block of work already done. Developers today are far more productive which reduces our risk.

Our approach to developments also mitigates much of the technical risks associated with a project of this size and type. The Draft Specifications use of the Joint Operating Committee imputes a scope of operations that involves the entire producer firm. Little of the unique characteristics of the applications Marketplaces and MCCM exist in current legacy systems. Therefore we are limiting the involvement of legacy system requirements to data only. As such we are unconstrained by existing requirements of systems limitations based on prior technologies. Ours is more of an engineering approach of identifying and resolving problems.

Transitions, accounting integrations, training, and the variety of tasks related to software’s use are not part of People, Ideas & Objects business model. We are focused on software development. We defer the remaining businesses and opportunities to the Community of Independent Service Providers to fulfill the needs of the producers in these areas. This is the only reasonable means in which to approach the hands-on and large scale necessary to complete these activities.

It is these opportunities that I see mitigating the technical risks that we face in this software development project. Although our budget is large, it would have been impossible only a few short years ago. The technologies are sound and capable, ready to carry the load. We have only our imaginations holding us back in terms of how this industry could be managed more efficiently.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Perez, The New Technologies Part I

Professor Carlota Perez recently republished a paper that was originally published in 1986. This paper was originally published only in Spanish, and was translated last year to English by Professor Perez herself. Reviewing this paper shows many of the ideas that started her down the road to where she is today. I found the paper to be timely and applicable to the work we are doing here at People, Ideas & Objects, entitled "The New Technologies: An Integrated View" The paper can be downloaded from here.

Lets begin our review with a concept Professor Perez picks up with her "Techno-Economic Paradigm as Common Sense." Using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer has that "common-sense" ring to it. Lets begin our review.

II. Techno-economic paradigm as “common sense” models in the productive sphere

Applying her common sense paradigm to the JOC, we find the definition of what she considers to be required to qualify as "common-sense".

In order for a technological revolution to spread from branch to branch and on a world scale, more than word about a new technical potential is required. Coherent diffusion demands a simple vehicle of propagation, accessible to millions of individual decision makers. I have suggested that the organizing principle of the selection and structuring mechanism of each paradigm can be found in an input—or set of inputs—capable of exercising a determining influence on the behavior of the relative cost structure. This would be the vector carrying the new paradigm into the common sense thinking of engineers and managers.
This input or “key factor”—as we shall call it—comes to play such a steering role by fulfilling the following conditions:
a) Its relative cost must be obviously low and with a clearly decreasing trend;
b) Supply must appear as unlimited, for all practical purposes, regardless of the growth in demand
c) Its potential for all-pervasiveness in production must be massive and obvious; and
d) It must be at the center of a system of technical and organizational innovations, clearly recognized as capable of changing the profile and reducing the costs of equipment, labor and products. pp. 9 - 10

Clearly use of the Joint Operating Committee provides strong evidence of each of these requirements. Addressing each point on its merits it soon becomes "common-sense" to those within the industry.

A) Its relative costs must be obviously low and with a clearly decreasing trend;

Reviewing People, Ideas & Objects business model shows that the costs of development plus an element of profit provides significant cost reductions to what producers are paying the SAP "Juggernaut". Although industry wide total expenditures on ERP systems can not be defined, I would estimate them to be as high as one quarter of one percent of revenue, or up to $8.75 billion per year. Certainly we can effectively reduce these costs by developing the Draft Specification and the associated costs of the Community of Independent Service Providers.

This also needs to be put in the proper perspective with respect to the anticipated technical changes. Particularly those that are detailed in the People, Ideas & Objects Technical Vision. If these technological changes occur, what will the costs associated with the status-quo be? Will the costs remain as they are, escalate, or will the real costs be borne by a further erosion in the efficiency of the industry.

B) Supply must appear as unlimited, for all practical purposes, regardless of the growth in demand

The costs associated with increasing the number of users on the system is limited to the additional electricity consumed. These cost metrics continue throughout the life of the applications life cycle. Additional costs involved in changes, enhancements and innovations are allocated to the entire subscribing base of producers. 

Moving the associated technological costs from the individual producers to the industry provides substantially cost savings benefits. The key benefit is that the producer firm is able to focus on developing their earth science and engineering capabilities and applying these in developing their physical assets and productive capacity.

C) Its potential for all-pervasiveness in production must be massive and obvious;

Oil and gas is a complex and difficult business. Without the requisite overall understanding of how the industry operates and the influence of the Joint Operating Committee, it is difficult to see the overall picture clearly. The JOC is used systemically the world over. Used to mitigate risk, JOC's are formed to manage the joint assets. And as the aerial extent of areas of operations and facilities grow, more producers with financial interests in those properties are added to the complex of ownership interests in oil and gas.

This is the origin of the JOC and it has been established as the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural and communication frameworks of the industry. Moving the compliance and governance of the hierarchy to be in alignment with the five frameworks of the JOC provides an organizational common sense of what and how the producers operations will be conducted.

Its not that moving to the JOC as the key organizational construct will provide the potential for all pervasiveness in production as Professor Perez states as necessary. It's that the JOC is all pervasive in production.

D) It must be at the center of a system of technical and organizational innovations, clearly recognized as capable of changing the profile and reducing the costs of equipment, labor and products.

People, Ideas & Objects isn't about the technology. It's about the business and how it is organized. What is the most efficient way to continue forward is dependent on aligning the many frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee to the various compliance and governance frameworks of the current bureaucracy.

Adam Smith's division of labor and specialization determined long ago that all economic value is generated through progressively more efficient means of organization. As we discovered in the Preliminary Research Report, organizations are defined and supported by the software tools they use. To change the organization therefore requires that we build the software first. The bureaucracy is constrained and this fact is reflected in the current performance of the producers.

March 31, 2010 is the deadline for raising our 2010 operating budget. After which a variety of consequences, such as financial penalties and a loss of one years time will occur. Our appeal should be based on the 21 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are.

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Tuesday, March 02, 2010

McKinsey Internet of Things

We have another McKinsey document that provides a keen insight on how the Information & Communication Technology Revolution will affect everyone. This paper entitled "The Internet of Things" is very much on topic. I highly recommend reviewing it.

Of particular interest is the fact that this article dove tails with the People, Ideas & Objects Technical Vision. Recall this vision suggests that since the oil and gas industry is comprised of sciences around heat and pressure, the use of sensors to monitor and control elements of the production cycle is possible. This monitoring and control would help in making the industry more productive and enhance the business decisions made, if, firms were able to deal with the volumes of data.

The four cornerstones of the Technical Vision are as follows.

  • IPv6 - Providing unlimited addressing for those sensors to be accessed and controlled.
  • Java - Strong Static Typing providing assurance that the sensor your controlling is really the one that you want, and not a mistake.
  • Wireless - Ubiquitous networks anywhere, anytime.
  • Asynchronous Process Management - The ability to deal with data and information in a more controlled fashion.

A couple of interesting points that McKinsey suggest the "Internet of Things" could provide are as follows.
Automation and control
Making data the basis for automation and control means converting the data and analysis collected through the Internet of Things into instructions that feed back through the network to actuators that in turn modify processes. Closing the loop from data to automated applications can raise productivity, as systems that adjust automatically to complex situations make many human interventions unnecessary. Early adopters are ushering in relatively basic applications that provide a fairly immediate payoff. Advanced automated systems will be adopted by organizations as these technologies develop further.
The impact within oil and gas could be much higher productivity and greater value. The scenario that I have detailed on this blog is that of a pricing model that provides the producer with price-maker characteristics. The scenario has the Joint Operating Committee deciding that their production costs of $50 / barrel require that production begin to be scaled back 25% at $80, 50% at $70, 75% at $60 and shut-in at $50.00. The input being the market price would drive control systems to shut the well down to the correct level of production. Otherwise producers may find they continue to produce at a loss and the price drops to $25.00. This being a predetermined and agreed to threshold where the operational decision making authority resides - The Joint Operating Committee - and as a result can be operated in an automated fashion.
Software to aggregate and analyze data, as well as graphic display techniques, must improve to the point where huge volumes of data can be absorbed by human decision makers or synthesized to guide automated systems more appropriately.
McKinsey go on to suggest that these types of systems will require new organizational models be adopted by firms.
Within companies, big changes in information patterns will have implications for organizational structures, as well as for the way decisions are made, operations are managed, and processes are conceived. Product development, for example, will need to reflect far greater possibilities for capturing and analyzing information.
And a dedicated software development capability, like that which is discussed here at People, Ideas & Objects.
Companies can begin taking steps now to position themselves for these changes by using the new technologies to optimize business processes in which traditional approaches have not brought satisfactory returns. Energy consumption efficiency and process optimization are good early targets. Experiments with the emerging technologies should be conducted in development labs and in small-scale pilot trials, and established companies can seek partnerships with innovative technology suppliers creating Internet-of-Things capabilities for target industries.
March 31, 2010 is the deadline for raising our 2010 operating budget. After which a variety of consequences, such as financial penalties and a loss of one years time will occur. Our appeal should be based on the 21 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are.

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas director, investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Saturday, January 23, 2010

Keep an eye on the...

First, I continue to have difficulties with rendering individual pages. This occurs when any other post is selected from the text within a post, the blog archive to the left and through a reader. I continue to work on this problem and please excuse the bug. To access the content on the blog you'll need to go to http://innovation-in-oil-and-gas.blogspot.com. (I also want to highlight yesterday's post of McKinsey video of Jim Wallis again, as I don't think it rendered properly within the feed readers.)

This next week we are moving into the busiest part of the technological companies 2009 full year earnings. Keep an eye on the leaders in the Information Technology space, Apple, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft and Google. All of these firms, due to the industry that they are in will be reporting spectacular earnings. Google reported on Thursday that their advertising revenues were up and earnings were up at spectacular levels for the quarter. Not bad for an economy that barely functions otherwise.

These earnings are important to show the Users, Producers and members of the Community of Independent Service Providers (CISP) that People, Ideas & Objects is the real growth area of the economy. Last year Professor Carlota Perez published a number of papers that I am in the middle of reviewing. Clearly she has been exactly right in terms of where we are in this economic transformation. Everything that she has been saying for many years is in play and these will be highlighted in my review of her papers.

People don't want to change if there is no need to. The times today show that the industries that benefited from the last 70 years, the era of energy, are challenged not by there demise. Oil and gas will be around for hundreds of years. They are being challenged on the basis of their organizational structure which must change in order to compete. Those that don't follow on with the necessary changes will be left behind. What Perez is showing here is that there are two types of firms in today's economy. The Apples, Google's and Cisco's in new industries that are necessary to bring on the new technologies. And the old industry businesses that need to re-organize in order to become more competitive based on the new Information & Communication Technologies.

National Public Radio published a graph that shows where the future jobs, and in which industries, growth will occur. The graph is based on data from U.S. Bureau of labor Statistics. Although it is difficult to predict what the future will be in these fast changing times. The contrasts are stark. What Professor Perez has shown us is that good data in the hands of a very good researcher can provide a strong road map. Society owes much to Professor Perez.

Professional & Business Service                           +23.3%

Impressive jobs growth but looking into the subcategories of Professional & Business Service shows where and how the Users and CISP will find their skills in high, very high demand.

Scientific Research & Development Services           +25.3%
Computer Systems Design & Related Services         +45.3%
Management Scientific &
                    Technical Consulting Services             +82.8%

Conversely the Natural Resources,
                    Construction & Utilities                     +11.9%

People, Ideas & Objects has followed Professor Perez since 2005. We are in the mode of providing the oil and gas producers with the new way to organize around the Joint Operating COmmitte, the natural form of organization of all producers. If your a Producer that wants to participate in this new era of oil and gas, please join us here. And if your a user who would like to participate, please join us here.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

Professor Wanda Orlikowski's Technology in Management

A recent post suggested that there was a hesitancy in detailing too much about the user interface to be used in the People, Ideas & Objects application modules. Firstly, this design process that we are undertaking in the Preliminary Specification is about the oil and gas business, not about the new(er) technologies that have been developed. And this post is not so much about the technologies but how the user will interact with the modules being developed here. The interface, as Apple & Google have shown us time and again, is the critical piece in how people use their technologies. [Please stay with me for the full post as this requires some reader faith.]

Back in the dot com bubble much was made of the "Exchanges" that were being built. The market cap for these companies were in the billions and they would prosper through building the technology to facilitate exchanges of documents etc. Thankfully that era ended and we never saw these technologies get picked up. However, today the concept of exchanges is developing again. And they will fail. That is why they do not appear anywhere in the Draft Specification. What does appear are Marketplaces. Places where the people and technology live together in perfect harmony. Creative license is a treasure.

The hesitancy in posting about this is due to the fact that I see the People, Ideas & Objects user interface being exactly like the World ofWarcraft (WoW) user interface. Now that the non-believers have left we can speak to the advantages of this. If you've never seen WoW ask a teenager, actually any teenager, to look at their version of the game. It's brilliant. Note how the environmental variables, and pretty much anything can be accessed through small groupings of control panels. Each provides the user with the control needed to operate the game.



and



Just search YouTube for World of Warcraft and you'll be able to see the analogy I am trying to make here. Professor Wanda Orlikowski defines a term in her paper "Synthetic Worlds". In the Draft Specification there are at least four "Synthetic Worlds" that I want to quickly mention.

  1. Any and all Joint Operating Committees oil and gas assets.
  2. Petroleum Lease Marketplace Module
  3. Financial Marketplace Module
  4. Resource Marketplace Module

Each of these are Synthetic Worlds populated with the User defined environment. Each facility or oil and gas property is populated with a virtual representation. If a rig was drilling a new well, then the Synthetic World would emulate the actual activities on the rig. [Look to the Technical Vision of this project to understand how that happens.] Importantly, the interactions between people and their avatars, and other avatars, are supported by the design elements that can negotiate a contract, and design a transaction to have a fracing company come in and double the number of horizontal fracs based on what was discovered down hole.

The Petroleum Lease Marketplace might appear like an old "exchange" [bad word] where people are buying and selling. But in this instance it's oil and gas leases. And maybe their not buying or selling but pooling their interests with their neighbors to ensure they get approved for the gas plant they want to build. A producer may be selling off it's none core assets. A young engineer is looking for support to fund his dream of turning the Basal Quartz into the most prolific zone ever. These, all being in real time with people in the marketplace.

The Financial Marketplace module will handle the financial resources of the producers. If you don't like the billing you received from the previously mentionedfracing company, engage them in a virtual private meeting regarding resolution. Interestingly so, since were emulating real life virtually, we are also recording it, making it easy for the producer to show why thefracing costs are incorrectly billed.

The Resource Marketplace module where an oil and gas producer can find any type of service operation from the Community of Independent Service Providers, the service sector vendors like the fracing company mentioned, the employees the firms want to hire. All provided in a Synthetic World. 

Now that I have provided full and complete certainty to my detractors, is this possible? Here we have Dr. Eric Schmidt who was the president of Sun Microsystems at one time, also CEO ofNovell at one time and has been the CEO of Google for the past 10 years has to say about Synthetic Worlds.
Everything in the future online is going to look like a multi-player game,” said Schmidt to this international audience. “If I were 15 years old, that’s what I would be doing right now.
In answer to those questions is it possible? Please refer back to the videos earlier. That rich of an environment has been in the game players world for the past number of years. Critically here is where Professor WandaOrlikowski pick up her research. Note that her discussion is based on the Sun Microsystems "Java" (imagine that) environment known as Project Wonderland. An "Open Source" (imagine that) development framework for business' to implement these technologies. Please see the Sun research documents here, here and here. And watch this video of Project Wonderland.



Before we get to Professor Orlikowski research I want to put one more critical aspect of the Draft Specification into play. The Military Command & Control Metaphor is a critical aspect of the Compliance & Governance Module and how things can work in the appropriate business sense. To suggest that anyone and everyone have access to a game players type of situation is ridiculous. The need to implement a key part of the organizations compliance and governance needs to be available. When we add that the JOC is representative of many producers we add an element that makes this scenario of a Synthetic World impossible. Add the layering of the Security & Access Control Module and the Military Command & Control Module in the Draft Specification, the problem is solved. The only requirement that I think we need to add is a means to visually identify the appropriate role and rank of each individual in the Synthetic World. [I'm thinking Star Trek Shirts with different colors and badges, oops there's my detractors again.] So that the representative from the fracing company can see that the avatar of the individual he is negotiating the contract with does have the authority to execute on behalf of the producer and the JOC.

One more paragraph and were at Professor Orlikowski's research. John Hagel posted an entry on how relationships and dynamics in the work place. His comments add another perspective to the discussion.

Professor Orlikowski's Abstract states;
Drawing on a specific scenario from a contemporary workplace, I review some of the dominant ways that management scholars have addressed technology over the past five decades. I will demonstrate that while materiality is an integral aspect of organizational actively, it has either been ignored by management research or investigated through an ontology of separateness that cannot account for the multiple and dynamic ways in which the social and the material areconstitutively entangled in everyday life. I will end by pointing to some possible alternative perspectives that may have the potential to help management scholars take seriously the distributed and complexsociomaterial configurations that form and perform contemporary organizations.
Commenting on the scenario that is best represented in the last YouTube video above, Orlikowski states:
A normal day at the office for a software development team? Not quite. I have omitted an important detail. The Project Wonderland rooms, offices screens, and documents are part of an online, three-dimensional,immersive environment for workplace collaboration within Sun Microsystems, known as MPK 20. Within this graphically intensive virtual workplace, users interact in real time using audio, text and images, and they share applications and content from a variety of online sources.
In answer to the many of Professor Orlikowski's questions; people use marketplaces for everything. The marketplace is the boiling pot of research into the capitalist system. A system of organization and activity that everyone subscribes to.
The use of synthetic worlds for organizational activities such as distributed collaboration raises interesting questions for scholars --  how to make sense of a study of these in management research? What are some existing perspectives that might usefully be drawn on to do so? What new or alternative perspectives might be more relevant? What are the implications of choosing certain perspectives over others in accounting for and articulating particular issues and insights?
2. Established perspectives on technology in management research

Professor Anthony Giddens Structuration Theory was used in the preliminary research report. His theory identifies that People, Organizations and Society move in lock step with one another. If there is a difference in the pace of change of these three elements, a failure occurs. As I indicated in a recent post, ProfessorOrlikowski "Structurational Model of Technology" was used in the Preliminary Research Report to determine that society and technology are linked by "the duality of technology" and the "interpretive flexibility of technology". Please see the Preliminary Research Report for further application to the energy industry. The majority of Professor Orlikowski's work has been in these areas.
Three distinctive conceptual positions on technology are clearly evident in the management literature of the past few decades. In the first perspective, which I will characterize as absent presence, technology is essentially unacknowledged by organizational researchers and thus unaccounted for in their studies. In the second perspective, technology is posited to be an exogenous force -- a powerful driver of history having determinate impacts on organizational life. The third perspective, that of emergent process, technology is positioned as a product of ongoing human interpretations and interactions, and thus as contextually and historically contingent.
The value she has created with her ideas is in this fourth perspective of technology. What she in essence says is that dealing with organizations and technologies as separates, management research has to deal with them as one. This is the area of research that the Preliminary Research Report was able to determine that to change organizations, the technology or ERP system should be designed and built to identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. It is also the area where the management of the oil and gas companies, my detractors if you will, have used these ideas against themselves. Suggesting that they would not be challenged in their positions if the technology never changed. These ideas and their implication provide the support I need to appeal to the shareholders and investors in oil and gas to take thisperversion of Professor Orlikowski's work away from the management and eliminate them.
Recently, a fourth perspective of technology -- that of entanglement in practice -- has attracted interest within management research, largely influenced by longer-standing development in sociology and science and technology studies (Barad, 2003; Latour, 2005; Suchman, 2007). As I will describe below, this alternative perspective entails a commitment to a relational ontology that undercuts the dualism that has characterized but also limited much of the prior technology research in management studies. In particular, this perspective offers the potential to radically re-conceptualize our notions of technology and reconfigure our understandings of contemporary organizational life.
I believe it is very clear that the threat to management by technology has been significant and it is human nature for them to resist. I think the Project Wonderland, People, Ideas & Objects marketplace models and the many other supporting conditions prove that the technology will eliminate management. And it is the responsibility of people and society to ensure that organizations change to ensure they do not continue to hold everything back.

5. Conclusion

Professor Orlikowski sees the aberrant way in which management have approached technology. In her conclusion she intimates that management will continue to forestall the adoption of further research.
Confronted with synthetic worlds, these researchers will in all probability focus their attention elsewhere. And this choice has consequences for the value of organizational scholarship: "to the extent that the management literature continues to overlook the ways in which organizing is critically bound up with material forms and spaces, our understanding of organizational life will remain limited at best, and misleading at worst' (Orlikowski and Scott, 2008, p. 466).

Orlikowski shows us the way's and means to implement these technologies.
They will conclude, as I do here, by suggesting that the perspective of entanglement may be particularly useful for management research going forward. As contemporary forms of technology and organizing are increasingly understood to be multiple, fluid, temporary, interconnected and dispersed (Ciborra, 1996; Stark, 1999; Child and McGrath, 2001; Law and Urry, 2004), a perspective that renounces the categorical presumption of separateness is likely to offer a more useful conceptual lens with which to think about the temporally emergentsociomaterial realities that form and perform contemporary organizations.
Multiple, fluid, temporary, interconnected and dispersed. I wonder if this type of environment would make the average oil and gas worker more productive? I wonder if the producer would be more profitable here vs. say SAP or through Oracle Fusion? This is how I see the oil and gas industry being able to raise it's productivity to the level necessary to fuel the worlds demand for energy. If you are a producer that sees this as a reasonable way in which to proceed, then please support these software developments and the Community of Independent Service Providers here. And if you're a user that sees the benefits of logging into this environment as opposed to spending the two and a half hour ritual needed to get to work. Please, sell short the commercial real estate stocks you own and join us here.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

McKinsey on Enterprise 2.0

We have an interesting video of Professor Andrew McAfee talking about technologies under the label of Enterprise 2.0. This will be the fourth time that I have highlighted McAfee's work and the sixty third McKinsey article. All I can say is I'm glad this body of work is behind me. I still have many McKinsey articles that I want to write about, just not enough time in the day.

Professor Andrew McAfee coined the phrase and defined what "Enterprise 2.0" is and means. Particularly from the point of view of how organizations will be affected by these technologies. Like the recent discussion of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, McAfee is not talking about the technologies for the sake of the technologies but the massive impact that the Information Technology revolution is having on business.

Last time I highlighted the work of Professor McAfee and his Enterprise 2.0 concepts he was at Harvard. He seems to have escaped and moved closer to the river by joining MIT and is now the principal research scientist at the "Center for Digital Business" at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also has a book coming out called "Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges". Lastly the McKinsey article has this video presentation of this paper. (Video is available here.)

McKinsey ask a number of pertinent questions. McAfee's answers provide real value for this community in terms of what and how "Enterprise 2.0" and People, Ideas & Objects application modules will affect today's work place. The following is how I see it for oil and gas.

McKinsey: How is Enterprise 2.0 changing the way we work?

McAfee's answer to this question is in line with the collaborative developments of WikiPedia. How the initial start attempted to control the contributions of people, and only after scrapping the process and leaving it to self organized teams did the value, quality and quantity increase.

I see a much larger change. The 7 / 24 clock will be the time people are available to work. Asynchronous Process Management, a cornerstone of the People, Ideas & Objects Technical Vision will permit people to work when and where they want. The office will not be used even half as much as they are today, and the quality of life will be substantially higher. When the computer screen looks the same at home or in the coffee shop as it does at the office, an office will become a place to go to concentrate. The rest of the day will be interspersed with personal and work related activities completed as required.

McKinsey: How do you get this started in an organization?

McAfee comments;
There’s a lot of debate about that question right now. And the debate is typically between people who advocate [a top-down approach and those who advocate] almost a purely bottom-up approach—in other words, deploy the tools, stop worrying about what’s going to happen, and get out of the way as the management of the company and let it percolate up from down below. Or, if you hear about a grassroots effort, encourage it, support it financially, but, again, get out of the way, let the bottom-up energy happen.
People, Ideas & Objects has chosen the bottom-up grassroots method of solving these problems and building the software based on the Draft Specification. I like McAfee's comment that if you hear of a grassroots effort, encourage it, support it financially. Music to my ears so start spreading the news.

This software development can not be a sustained and quality effort unless the users are compensated financially for their time. This is a big part of our budget and defines why our approach is different from the rest of the marketplace. As McAfee states in this document, developing the community takes time and effort.

McKinsey: What else can undermine adoption?

McAfee notes the unreasonable time frames put on by management. People, Ideas & Object software developments, or any collaborative project, will not be zipping along before the end of the quarter. Such expectations are how the hierarchy greases the wheels with the consumption of human energy and spirit.
Another failure mode is to be too concerned about the possible risks and the downsides. If we get wrapped up in those, we’re not going to take the plunge and actually deploy any of these new tools and turn them on and encourage people to go ahead.
I don't see the downside here. Collaboration brings many risks to the bureaucracy. However their risks are the result of the collaboration out performing the bureaucracy. I can live with those risks, and I think that McAfeee's audience is different to those of this blog. He is preaching to the unconverted and as such has to hedge his comments while he moves the Trojan horse into place.

McKinsey: What is the CIO’s role in encouraging Enterprise 2.0 and managing the risk?

McAfee notes;
A lot of them see their roles as essentially conservative, though. In other words, “My job is to not increase the risk profile of this organization before everything else.” That’s a legitimate concern, it’s a legitimate job for the CIO, but all my experience so far tells me that Enterprise 2.0 doesn’t increase the risk profile of an organization.
This is probably why I get in so much difficulty with companies. I ask sarcastically what's a CIO? I don't see them surviving in the long run. Much like secretaries and draftsmen these positions may disappear rather quickly. These types of comments should be directed to the CEO or the CFO as they have the proper authority and responsibility to make the decision.

In my presentations to the industry I noticed something that I had never learned or considered before. When I talk to CEO's or CFO's I feel there desire to pick up People, Ideas & Objects software developments. Why they haven't is that they would do serious damage to their firms by changing direction to quickly, without the urgent need and support for the change. They therefore pass on the opportunity until such time as we proceed to a point where they can make the change.

McKinsey: What does this mean for middle managers?

McAfee notes;
If you’re a middle manager who essentially views your job as one of gate keeping or refereeing information flows, you should be pretty frightened by these technologies, because they’re going to greatly reduce your ability to do that. They’re going to reduce your ability to filter what goes up in the organization and what comes down in the organization. And they’re going to greatly reduce your ability to curtail who your people can interact with, talk with, and receive information from. So if you’re inherently a gatekeeper, this is a real problem for you.
In my presentations to the industry it is this group of people that feel challenged by these technologies and the People, Ideas & Objects application. The class of workers known as middle managers career and position are toast. I don't foresee many of these people continuing to be effective in the very near future. If this is news to anyone in middle management, good morning.

McKinsey: How should companies measure the success of Enterprise 2.0?

McAfee notes;
Again, you see a lot of energy, you see a lot of people very willing to take a few seconds to answer a colleague’s question—even if it’s a colleague they don’t know. So when I see successful companies tackling this tool kit, I see them doing a little bit of thinking upfront about what problem or opportunity they’re trying to address, then deploying an appropriate technology in response to that. They then measure progress: How much uptake are we getting? What’s the traffic look like on this? Which is very different than measuring ROI, I think.
In the Preliminary Research Report I suggested that companies use the revenue per employee as a measure of an oil and gas firms performance. Revenue per employee can vary significantly from company to company based on the unique attributes of its asset base. It has direct application between producers and is an accurate measure of the firms current and future capabilities. This is particularly the case as those producers with low revenue per employee will have difficulty increasing the revenue factor without having to address a possible over staffing issue.

The purpose, or competitive advantage, for the Community of Independent Service Providers and People, Ideas & Objects software applications. Is to provide the innovative producer with the most effective and profitable means of oil and gas operations. Revenue per employee will be a critical method of how the community advances the science of management and business for the oil and gas clients using this software and community. Please join us here.

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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Eric Schmidt's Google IO Keynote

Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google presented the keynote at the Google IO conference. Many of the things that he says are consistent and applicable to work being done by this community. What I want to highlight in this post is the maturation of the underlying Information technologies. We entered this decade with the misguided belief that IT systems would collapse due to some storage related issues with the date. The final nail in the coffin of tech careers came with the 2001 dot com meltdown. The one constant throughout these issues was the focus on technology. Technology fails when its presented as the reason for change. In many ways as a result of the fallout of these technical failures, the belief that technologies day had ended became the standard thinking of people outside of technology companies.

This software development project focuses on the business issues inherent in the oil and gas industry as the justification for change. In addition, are the structural economic changes in play during this time of renewal. Schmidt agrees;
And let me tell you that it's time, it's time for us to take advantage of the amazing opportunity that is before us.
Yes now is the time when all the planet's line up. The technology, the business environment and society demand a greater efficiency. Schmidt notes in terms of the maturity of technology.
Why is it time? Because people are frustrated. They're tired of the complexity of all the systems that have been built up over the last 20 years. They do not work.
Schmidt then talks about an interesting characteristic of innovation. That innovation always happens elsewhere. Great ideas come from everywhere. That confirms what we have learned about innovation in the Preliminary Research Reports findings. Professor Giovanni Dosi notes the endogenous and exogenous forces of a firms innovativeness. The role of science and its development need to be the focus of the oil and gas producer. In an iterative loop scientific capability enables the innovations, and in turn those innovations advance the science. Major impacts to the science, as Dr Schmidt notes, usually happen elsewhere. The need for the scientific capability of the producer firm has to be mirrored through the industry and the service suppliers.

In a fast moving and innovation driven oil and gas industry the necessary resources need to work together. With the escalating demand of the sciences in each barrel of oil equivalent, and the retirement of much of the industry brain-trust. Building separate and mutually exclusive capabilities in each oil and gas company has to cease. The Resource Marketplace Module deals with these and other issues, such as who owns the Intellectual Property (IP) of the science and innovation.
Scalability and Power is just at the beginning of getting this right. The message is that this is the real beginning of the real win of cloud computing. Of the real win of applications. Of the real win of the Internet. Which is changing the computing paradigm - the one we have all grown up with - so it just works. It works no matter what device you are using, whatever operating system your using, as long as your connected - even if you are not connected - your online and have everything you need.
I'm not one to highlight the technological aspects of this software development project. The focus of People, Ideas & Objects is on the business attributes of changing to the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct. However, Users need to know that the time and technologies maturity is now. Voices like Eric Schmidt, who has also been the CEO of Novell Networks and Sun Microsystems, is able to provide the necessary credibility for the users to join me here.

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Friday, October 30, 2009

New Feed Address

Please change your "Innovation in oil and gas" feed from whatever you are using now, to this new feed address.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/kuLF

Thanks

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Another step closer.

We live in a world where the communicative ability of each individual is, for lack of a better word, unlimited. What I can do with the technology available to me is truely remarkable. Voice, text and video are all being captured, transmitted, and understood by their recipients. What are they talking about, ideas. It use to be that if you wanted to make a personal phone call at work, use of the telephone for non business purposes was not permitted. As ridiculous as that sounds, and it is ridiculous, it is not too different today. The majority of use of the computer at work is limited to the business areas that you are involved in. Browse to a "not approved" site and you could be called on it. This doesn't turn us into the nanny state, it gives the IT Manager something to do.

What we are doing is spending upwards of two to two and half hours a day to travel downtown to use the computer at the office. Not to much difference to the way that phones used to be regulated. Why wake up to spend all that traveling time for your managers mandatory attendance. When you can be productive as soon as you make a cup of coffee. It doesn't make to much sense other then the ability to so, doesn't exist, because the bureaucracy is unable to change.

The BBC is reporting today that Wifi, which is a cornerstone of the People, Ideas & Objects Technical Vision, is going through another specification called Wifi Direct. Enabling point to point network creation. 

It will let wi-fi devices like phones and laptops connect to one another without joining a traditional network.
The future that I see, and the one the Technical Vision provides, is that people will work in much the same way they are communicating today. Gripes that people were concerned with of working, where ever and when ever, big brother watching, or never get a moments rest, have been replaced with the freedom of not being at the behest of the phone ringing, somewhere they are not. With video being recorded of your every move the belief was this would be an invasion of privacy. These concerns are mitigated by the knowledge that you are being recorded, and the freedom these devices otherwise provide.

People, Ideas & Objects would extend these freedoms to having the opportunity to do your work in the future in the same manner that you live your life today. One in which you the User has a direct influence on. If data security is really the concern of the management then they had better get on board with this software development project. The issue I see is that the bureaucracy doesn't want to give up control of the access to the data.

In the past, many times I would think there is a better way to do the job I was tasked with. Many times I thought this would be so much easier if I could get a new report, or other information to make the job easier. This was easier to do twenty years ago then it is today. How many times have users thought that If I had the authority and access to the data and developers, I could make this job much easier or more timely. People, Ideas & Objects is the opportunity to have these types of interactions available to the users. Please join me here.

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