"Organizations Don't Change, People Do," Part II

Just when you thought it was safe to think otherwise, Shell announced it’s laying people off. 

Royal Dutch Shell will use measures including voluntary severance for staff to bolster its finances as the coronavirus pandemic batters profits, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

and

BP Plc promised its employees their jobs were safe at least until the end of June, but companies including Chevron Corp., Marathon Oil Corp. and Halliburton Corp. are laying off employees.

That is more than a whole month of extra job security if you work for BP. Such are the benefits of working in oil and gas these days. If we’re expecting a change from this behavior then who would technically be the fool? What producers have set as precedent, that it’s ok to blame the people for their difficulties, then they’ll find it difficult to make any changes from that in this “coronavirus pandemic” environment. Our sample of producers recorded 2.9% G&A costs in the first quarter of 2020. Exactly the same 2.9% for the entire 2019 year. Odd isn’t it that oil prices ranged from $53.36 to $63.47 for 2019 and only $20.10 to $51.01 in the first quarter of 2020 yet the percentage of G&A remains the same? I think what this proves more than anything is that overhead costs are much higher than what bureaucrats want us to believe. The amount I’m familiar with is 85% of overhead is capitalized, which would make the 2.9% really 19.3%. An amount that would be more consistent with my understanding. Throughout the time that I’ve been writing here I’ve found no argument or disagreement when I make that assertion. If the overhead burden for oil and gas operations was only 2.9% why lay off people? Accepting that our sample producers’ losses on revenues of $52.3 billion in the first quarter of 2020 was $33.6 billion. Would a reduction of the 2.9% in overhead, or the $1.53 billion in reported overhead costs for the first quarter of 2020 make any difference? At some point producers have to come clean with their numbers. If however overhead was 20% of revenue then cutting these costs would make a material change to the losses that were incurred. 

I’m pleased that producers have / are / will be learning how best to manage their organizations by better managing their production volumes and inventories, based on commodities prices. Proving People, Ideas & Objects hypothesis that oil and gas commodities are price makers would have been easier if they just read how the Preliminary Specifications price maker strategy operates. Tearing the place down wasn’t necessary in order to learn this, and the extent of the damage is now well beyond what can be remediated at any point. Creative destruction is a powerful force in the marketplace. Despite today’s dancing in the street by the bureaucrats who feel they’ve solved all their problems. (We noted how that’s not the case in last Thursday’s post.) Commodity pricing issues, in addition to their second quarter 2020 financial issues, should have them asking what is it that OPEC+ will be doing in the short to medium term. Or, what is OPEC’s long term strategy? With oil prices near $35, OPEC+ are in good shape, and North American producers hopefully better understanding what their role as swing producers involves. What will the expectation be in the marketplace? I think it will prompt OPEC+ to maintain production volumes at 100% of their capacity. As the low cost producers that is what the economic theory would dictate, and that would be my suggestion of what will be happening. One thing for certain is that these producer bureaucrats could blame OPEC+ for putting them out of business. A world class excuse and scapegoat.

https://knoema.com/vyronoe/cost-of-oil-production-by-country

What will be needed is a more dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer and industry throughout North America. This is the objective of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification and to do so we need to rely on nothing from the current organizations in the industry. Ours is a new industry organization that is the creative aspect of the creative destruction principle. If you believe these producers have a chance with their current financial position then you won't be interested in our offerings. I just don’t see the capabilities and capacities in senior management to make the appropriate decisions. Besides organizations don’t change, people do. The demand for change in the industry on a wholesale basis is a necessity and I’m sure we’re all grateful that we’re dealing with an abundance of energy at the moment. This new industry configuration will be dependent upon the people that make up the industry. You will never generate a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable industry from what exists in these organizations. But you most certainly can with the people who know intuitively what the situation is. This change begins with the People, Ideas & Objects user community. Who we see taking a leadership role in this industry transformation.

Our user community involves the understanding and knowledge that usable software is only developed with user input. Users are critical to software quality, usability, user experience and accuracy. People, Ideas & Objects will not develop software without user community involvement and has listed our user community as one of our three competitive advantages. Intellectual Property and research are the other two. With the scope and scale of an industry wide implementation and comprehensive functionality of an ERP system we believe that our user community will consist of approximately 3,000 individuals. This is in order to cover off the expected number of processes in the Preliminary Specification. Each user community member will contribute to the overall success of the software by contributing what they know and understand about the industry and how it operates. It will then be determined through an Artificial Intelligence algorithm developed by the user community themselves, which assesses the contribution of each individual user community member throughout the softwares development, and assigns an individual process within the software to be the domain of the user community members assigned service provider organization. Their service provider organizations are where they will provide their assigned processes management of the software and services to the entire population of industries producers, as their clients. The service providers bring the critical change to the industry structure that enables the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production model to turn all of the producers property costs variable. The process domain that is assigned to the service provider is the exclusive domain of that organization, supported by our Intellectual Property. There will be no competition based on price within the service providers. Competition will be based on specialization, division of labor, quality, automation, innovation, leadership and integration as their critical competitive advantages. To name just the highlights. Using our Intellectual Property that is generated in the User Community Vision as the basis of that competitive structure. 

As we’ve mentioned, service providers are a new sub-industry that will provide the accounting and administrative aspects of the oil and gas industry. These organizations will also be the change leaders that make the industry more responsive to the opportunities and issues that it faces. Due to the fact that the user community members are the only people that People, Ideas & Objects developers will look to for direction on the development of the software, it is the user community that controls the direction the industry will move towards. People, Ideas & Objects, are a permanent software development capability and capacity that will be available to the industry through the user community. Only user community members have exclusive access to our developers through our user community vision, and oil and gas producers seeking to have their wants and needs provided can have those attained through the user community. There will be no one else that will be able to solve the producers issues. As we’ve always suggested, who do you see today about making a change to the software that you use? What we’ve learned is that organizations are defined and supported, but also constrained by the software that the organization uses. Without a change enabled capability built into the new oil and gas industry, we would be cementing these organizations in a constant state. 

These user community member positions are new to anything that has existed before. They will earn a contract fee for the part-time work they do with the People, Ideas & Objects developers. And have their service provider organizations as their primary means of earning a living. When we understand the size of the administrative and accounting costs of the industry today, not the G&A that is recorded by producers, and then allocate the real overhead costs of the industry across the 3,000 service providers we see that these organizations will be substantial in terms of their size and revenue base. 

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 587-735-2302 in Calgary or 713-965-6720 in Houston or email here.

"Organizations Don't Change, People Do" Part I

We’ve noted before how Chesapeake Energy had to pay an upfront $25 million bonus for its bureaucrats to stay motivated during this next year. The announcement for this was dropped on a late Friday night with the companies first quarter 2020 financial statements. This courageous act has not been well received by the individual investors who may have had to recall their stock was once worth $12,635.76 vs. the $12.49 at the time of this writing. Say one thing about Chesapeake, they've kept the math simple. We’ve all sat and watched in amazement these past few years while the industry circled the drain. No action, not even any discussion, has been taken by any of the producers to remedy their situation, only excuses, scapegoats and “they’d been through this before.” Negative $40.32 oil had a somewhat temporary motivating effect for the bureaucrats to start rolling off the couch and do something. Shutting in production which we’ve heard nothing but howling about for the whole time People, Ideas & Objects suggested it was necessary. Unfortunately now negative prices also appear to be the motivating factor for people involved in North American oil and gas to give up on the industry and look elsewhere. Or was it the absurd $25 million Chesapeake bonus. Either one or both, with the coronavirus also providing an opportunity for people to make their personal changes, change seems to be catching on throughout the oil and gas industrial complex. Which proves the well established rule that organizations don’t change, but people do.

There is no other industry that I can think of that treats its people in the manner that oil and gas producer bureaucrats do. They believe they’re “disposable, temporary and costly units that sometimes are needed.” What description would bureaucrats use? They love to claim they’re the most sophisticated technical industry in the world yet they treat their people the worst compared to all other industries. Producers will claim that they pay the best, however, now that these people’s education has been exclusively oriented to the industry, they have a small family and a mortgage, they can see when they take their compensation from the good years and spread those dollars out over the good and bad years, their compensation has been below minimum wage. The risk, the anxiety and the fear of another downturn looming on the horizon is not something anyone grows familiar with as their career advances. Resilience in the general population of an industry is a limited resource. The amount of that resiliency or goodwill which the oil and gas producers have consumed from its people, is beyond what is tolerable and / or acceptable. People are done. 

I thought that the producers had until August 31, 2020 to move towards a new strategy and vision. Clearly I’ve miscalculated the timing here, the actual time may have passed as early as April 20, 2020 when oil prices went negative. I’ve also miscalculated the full impact of the coronavirus’ and how that’s being seen as an opportunity for people to make some changes. If the producer bureaucrats are claiming that they’ve incurred all this damage as a result of the coronavirus why can’t others use that excuse too. This phenomenon that I’m seeing is not limited to the oil and gas industry. It affects all of the people that are involved in the oil and gas complex. Including the service industry and general economy, but also the cities in which the industry is operating in. Whether that is a head office or field areas. What is it that they have to lose if they made the career move to another region, another industry and worked there for their remaining 20 - 40 productive years?

One of the reasons that August 31, 2020 was the point in which I felt the industry had to make a determination of its future strategy and vision was their June 30, 2020 financial statements were going to be a surprise to everyone concerned. Everyone can understand that half way through the quarter we see prices have now broken through $30, that just isn’t doing anyone any good. Add to this looming disaster the financial consequences of shutting in production, or reduced production volumes and you’ll have an even more dramatic effect on the producers. People, Ideas & Objects have always been proponents of shutting in production in order to remove the marginal production from the marketplace. And that is being done through today’s industries actions. However there are many other attributes that the Preliminary Specification provides which include changing all of the producers' costs to variable, based on production. The real kicker therefore in the second quarter of 2020 is going to be the costs of the producers remaining fixed and that is going to be devastating to the producers financial performance. Bureaucrats are giddy at the moment thinking they may have solved the problem of overproduction by shutting in production, which they always claimed they could not do. This has and will have an effect on the prices of the commodities. What the Preliminary Specification also provides is profitability as the method of production allocation and most importantly a method of production discipline, profitability based on an actual accounting, and determining which properties to shut-in based on that actual accounting performance. Producing only profitable production. Today it may be that only the profitable properties are being shut-in as the producers, I can assure you with 100% confidence, currently have no idea where they earn their money. Look for the operating and net losses to hit new records, and working capital to be consumed as never before.

One of the distinguishing capabilities of the U.S. economy is that anyone can uproot themselves and move to the place where the jobs are. No other place in the world is as dynamic as the U.S. economy. Concentrations of industries are able to aggregate in specific geographical areas and leverage like minded people from throughout the U.S. People then gravitate towards those industries and towns where their jobs and interests are. Europe tries to do this with their labor mobility between countries but it just doesn’t offer the economic dynamism that is the inherent part of the creative destruction that is a feature of the U.S. economy. Also, to make the change within the megacities of Houston and Dallas most people only have to walk across the street in order to change the industry they’re involved in. The one thing that these people know and understand better than anyone is that there’ll be no bonuses for them to perform or stay this next year. But they do have high probabilities of being laid off or terminated the more experience they gain. There is no capacity within the current oil and gas bureaucracy for them to make or consider the necessary changes, therefore the people are now making their own changes. We know that organizations don’t change, people do. 

And that point in time has come where the extent of the damage that has been caused by the current producer organization, is incapable of making the necessary changes to correct what is killing the industry. What more proof do we need to determine this? It’s therefore time to replace it with a new method of organization that deals with the issues of the industry but also provides a vision and strategy for the future. The Preliminary Specification for example. That way the industry can be rebuilt stick by stick, and brick by brick while what exists today falls to the wayside. We should all be grateful that the issue we’re dealing with is an abundance of oil and gas. 

Next Tuesday in Part II of this series we’ll be discussing how People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification provides the organizational change necessary for industry to deal with its issues, provide profitable production everywhere and always, but also a place for these people to grow and prosper by participating in the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 587-735-2302 in Calgary or 713-965-6720 in Houston or email here.

User Community Developments, Part XXXIV

I’ve yet to hear a valid argument against People, Ideas & Objects (PI&O’s) assertion that oil or gas should only ever be produced profitably. No one’s been able to provide a reasonable explanation as to why we would ever produce oil and gas unprofitably. These are commodities that are unlike any other in that they’re not replaceable; you can’t grow a new crop next year or melt them down for reuse. What other commodities meet those criteria? Continuing to produce unprofitably, I believe, is the equivalent of robbing future generations of the use of their energy in ways that are wasteful. If the products were produced profitably, then we can assert consumers used them effectively and efficiently and were therefore not wasted. Are we able to say that about the production of hydrocarbons in the past decades?

We have frequently discussed the Preliminary Specifications standardization of accounting and administration that will be undertaken in oil and gas by our user communities service provider organizations. Every property would be subject to the same objective and standard treatment that is applied to any other property in North America. Natural gas is much more costly to account and administer for, due to its byproducts. Some properties are significantly more complex than others. These will be reflected in the unique cost structures of each and every property. In addition the administrative and accounting costs are all variable under the Preliminary Specification. Making all of the costs of the producers variable based on production. Enabling the implementation of our price maker strategy and ensuring the profitability of each and every producing property.

It will be the role and responsibility of our user community to ensure that the accounting and administrative aspects of each property are both timely and accurate. As well as the method of accounting that is applied is both objective and standardized throughout the North American producer base. As a result producers will know that their profitable production is profitable in direct comparison to all other production across the continent. (There will need to be some special consideration for the consistent full production of heavy oil as its scalability is not economic or viable under any circumstance.) It should be noted that included in those profitability calculations will be the actual prices that were received at the property. Any differentials would be applied however there would be no consideration for any hedging. That is a corporate activity that is something the producer may consider continuing if they so desire. It does not affect the criteria of whether or not to produce a property. The property will be the only basis of evaluation in terms of profitability.

In a world of ever increasing costs due to the advancing difficulty in producing each incremental barrel of oil and gas. The need to remain active and proactive on a costing methodology for how the capital is recaptured and its cash reused by the producer is of concern. Conventional oil and gas will be treated differently than what shale would or should be. With its flush production, steep decline curves and costly reworks this will take a more precise accounting than what has taken place to date. Our user community will need to apply their most advanced thinking in terms of what and how the costs of oil and gas exploration and production are realized. As we’ve also mentioned the recognition of capital provides a return of the cash that was previously invested. Providing a ready source of capital for the producer to reinvest for the future. With the capital expenditures that are forecast the need to source adequate levels of capital are necessary. The only source of capital available to the industry is the recycling of their capital costs on a higher frequency than the multi-decade basis they’ve done in this “build a balance sheet” era. Our user community will need to ensure that adequate capital resources are provided to the producers for this purpose.

Bureaucrats have been intoxicated with the cash flow from oil and gas production in the past decades. The industry is a capital intensive industry and therefore the return of capital that was previously invested has always been strong. The deferral of capital recognition for decades has been a result of the levels of cash they’ve been able to generate in these producer organizations. It has taken them significant effort to understand and develop unique and innovative ways in which to divert these funds into their own pockets. The issue that we have today is that with the Preliminary Specification the volume of cash coming into these organizations is going to be an exponential increase from the bureaucrats' days. Luckily we’re disintermediating them and won’t have to concern ourselves with their hands sliding back into the cookie jar. Where did all that value go? Nonetheless the cash that is generated will be substantial and the need to have better control over this will need to be instilled within the industry, producers and larger oil and gas dependent economies. We should build some software like the Financial Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification that deals with this!

We’ve seen some discussion recently about production quotas with OPEC+ and Texas, and also some discussion about government imposed production allocations. Our White Paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale” discusses these in addition to our price maker strategy. These discussions are consistent with the Alberta government's production allocations that reduced the province's production by 350,000 boe / day since January 1, 2019. These are not the remedies we’re looking for. They are ineffective as they are unable to impose the production discipline that is needed in the marketplace. Producers shut-in the production to meet the quota and then begin to figure out how to get around the quota. In Alberta there are several ways of doing so. None of the production is evaluated as to whether it is profitable or not, and therefore it is all detrimental to the producers bottom line. Currently the Alberta based production is receiving single digit oil prices. Low prices as a result of continued overproduction as the government mandate has done little to solve the problem they were created for. The only method in which the market will institute any production discipline is through the use of profitability as the means in which a producer is evaluated upon. Then they are motivated by the value enhancement of doing so. The increases in value from implementation of the Preliminary Specification includes saving the reserves for a time in which they can be produced profitably, ensuring that the costs of the reserves don’t have to carry the additional burden of the successive losses that would be incurred if the property continued to produced unprofitably, the producer only produces profitable operations and no longer dilutes their earnings with unprofitable operations and the commodity markets have the marginal production removed from the market and hence the prices will find the market price. Our user community will be the critical resource to enhancing the profitability of the energy industry. Our methodology or price maker strategy has been known in oil and gas since at least 2007. If it were able to be implemented within the current configuration of producers, would it not have been done so by now? The fact is producers and the industry are not configured in any way to provide this information or this mechanism, it is impossible for them to do so. Only the Preliminary Specification can.

Global oil inventories are alleged to be at around 750 million barrels as of Monday March 23, 2020. Oil storage capacity is believed to be about 1 billion barrels. If the demand for oil has dropped by 20 million boe / day and overproduction is at 2 million boe / day. The remaining 250 million barrels of storage may be filled in as little as ten days, or the day after April fools. When storage is full will it be the coronavirus or overproduction and oversupply that occupies the minds of the producer bureaucrats? Will President Trump have time to hear the producers concerns then? What we will know is that oil prices will go negative, the differentiated prices are not that far from zero today, single digits and falling. Maybe producers will understand the best form of storage is the reserves themselves. For example, don’t produce unprofitable production. Maybe the North American producers will wake up to the fact that they’ve been unprofitable all these decades. Maybe they’ll realize they’ve been so unprofitable that they’ve consumed value and cash with each barrel produced. They were only viable when someone else was providing consistent cash infusions. Maybe they’ll realize that investors saw this a few years ago and got out. Maybe they’ll realize that OPEC is still making money as the low cost producers, and will continue to do so. Maybe they’ll realize with all the doors slammed in their face, that blaming everyone, cutting everything and everyone the time for a reckoning will be at hand? That having the ability to withhold unprofitable production is not market manipulation as they have always claimed but just plain business sense.

In summary what’s it going to take to make the transition from the current oil and gas industry to the one we’ve described in the Preliminary Specification. First of all there has to be a continental wide destruction of any and all value contained within the oil and gas industry. Check, complete and good job bureaucrats. There is development of the Preliminary Specification with its highly capable, dynamic, innovative, accountable and profit oriented user community and service providers with the software and software development capabilities that facilitate change. Ones with the power, control, Intellectual Property, budget, leadership, people, revenue sources, licensing, distinct and comprehensive competitive advantages, timing and accuracy of the costs of exploration and production, quality of service, objectivity and standardization of administrative and accounting services and lets not forget the responsibility and authority to get it done. This is a new capacity, capability and functionality in the oil and gas industry. It is not available today and needs to be purpose built to deal with today’s issues and tomorrow’s future.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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.

User Community Developments, Part XXXIII

The one upside that our user community and service providers will be able to count on when they commit to People, Ideas & Objects is that we’ve eliminated all of the business risk associated with their move from oil and gas to this new industry configuration. We need people to be involved in this initiative and we need large numbers of people in order to ensure that we complete the task from all areas of administration and accounting in the industry. The only way this can be done is to secure the budget for People, Ideas & Objects in advance of any work being started. And that is exactly what we’re doing. The time spent fooling around by bureaucrats has taken us into a situation where the industry and service industry, as well as the general economy, have been put in dire need of help. Much as we would like to trust our alleged customers we know they hold the attention span of mosquitoes. We would just be getting started and they would see an entire weeks uptick, that’s five consecutive days, in the oil price and cancel these software developments as they would deem them to be unnecessary. As a result effectively killing this initiative permanently. We documented the treatment of ERP software developers over the past three decades by oil and gas producers. This is listed on page 18 of our White Paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” And lastly with the scope and scale of this project we are unable to fund the project ourselves, however need to since the majority of the producers are on a greater than 18 month accounts payable schedules. Therefore once we have our full budget in hand the user community member will be able to transition with reduced business risk and can then provide their full commitment to the project.

We have seen the extent of our good friends the bureaucrats' apparent need to destroy everything that’s in front of them. We have also seen their inability to deal with People, Ideas & Objects since 2003. They’re not interested in building profitable businesses as we are. They would conspire to derail our initiative in the many ways that they’re familiar with value destruction. Just as they’ve derailed and devastated the landscape in oil and gas. We can not afford to risk the user community to this well documented bureaucratic tendency in a naive or trusting manner. They will not be the ones who are forwarding the funds to People, Ideas & Objects. People have ceased to believe, care or take the time to listen or understand those that are and have been in power in the oil and gas industry. It may now seem that all the doors that were once open to producers at one point in time have been slammed shut. The reality is that their opportunities have been closing down since the decline in natural gas prices, as a result of shale, over a decade ago. Investors, bankers and others have seen enough on the natural gas side over this past decade, they didn’t need to know more. It just takes a while for the bureaucrats to run around and test each door for any lingering opportunities. Last week when Occidental turned to investors to step in and help them with the debt they’ve committed to, I thought that this was the height of hypocrisy, boldness and obtuseness. And maybe the end.

Producers will need to become used to this form of transaction very quickly. It won’t be just ourselves that demand cash upfront before any work gets done. After destroying the industry, and the service industry in an even more comprehensive manner, no one will be coming to their financial rescue either. The key difference is that none of their decline was anything to do with their management. To conduct any field operations or get anything done the producers will need to be paying in advance until they can reestablish their trust and good governance with those that they conduct business with. Give it a decade or so before you even try I would suggest. The abuse and destruction of the service industry is the legacy of the existing producers and they will need to deal with this very soon. $18 / barrel of oil should help out tremendously here.

Switching topics now from our budget funding dynamics to communications throughout the user community. We find during this time of self isolation, advantages to the methods of organization that People, Ideas & Objects our user community and their service provider organizations are building. There will be a diverse and dynamic community represented in our user community and service providers. Each bringing their own understanding and knowledge of how their corner of the oil and gas industry operates. Collectively the full scope and scale of the industry's knowledge will be captured. Application of this knowledge in a focused direction, toward building the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, will be achieved through the communication facilities we’re bringing to our users. We are using Google Docs with the variety of tools that are available for the purpose of enhanced communication. If you’ve not had the opportunity to use these I would suggest you give them a try as the more familiar you are with them the more valuable they become.

The nature of remote work will be a feature of the developments of the Preliminary Specification and not as a result of any virus, or bug. Access by the authorized user using the appropriate device reviewing the data and information that they require is what we’ve set out to develop within our Security & Access Control module. Augmenting these features and capabilities will be Oracle’s security applications that are comprehensive and state of the art in the Information Technology and business communities. This will apply to not only our user community but also their service provider operations and extend further to almost everyone in oil and gas that needs access to financial information.

These requirements will place new demands on the skill requirements of those who are user community members and working within their service provider organizations. Information Technologies are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and will continue to demand more from users. However, People, Ideas & Objects are expecting much more from our user community. First and foremost it is important to note that the priority that we are looking for is the knowledge and understanding of the oil and gas industry. That is paramount. However the need to be able to be active in a high technological environment during development, implementation and operations will demand that these skills be of a higher grade than what may be seen as adequate today. This will be what is required to operate in our environment but also, as we noted within the user community vision, the ability to communicate with our developers.

Secondly your ability to communicate with the People, Ideas & Objects developers in their primary skill set will be necessary to enhance the communications between yourself and our developers. It is easier for you to understand the elements of these concepts in relational theory and Java then it is for them to comprehend the full understanding of the oil and gas industry as represented in the entire user community. Therefore to enhance the communications between the developers and the user community it is by far the easiest for the user community to be able to speak generally the language of the developers. As there is no way in which the developers are ever going to fully understand the full scope and scale of the oil and gas industry that is contained within the entire user community. 

A reasonable approach to the task at hand I believe. The connection between these two otherwise disparate points, funding and communication, are important in that the job that is falling to the user community is becoming more critical each and every day. Our user communities leadership will be needed to provide the industry with the future and profitability that it needs. The means in which you will do that is through these enhanced communication with our developers who are well versed in the language and understanding of their own world. Our enhanced understanding of that world would facilitate better communications and in the long run a prosperous oil and gas industry. However, for our user community to be looking over their shoulders concerned about the business risks of this initiative, if the bureaucrats were going to regain control of the producers after a rally in oil and gas prices etc. etc. is unacceptable. We have to eliminate the business risk for our users in order for them to concentrate on this difficult task they have ahead of them. I don’t want to add any additional unnecessary stress or concern but after four decades of mismanagement by these bureaucrats, what other choice is there, or will there be, for industry to choose in the foreseeable future?

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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.

User Community Developments, Part XXXII

As much as the producers would like us to believe that all of the damage has been done by the coronavirus, we know different. The long term destruction of the industry at the hands of the bureaucrats has been the cause, and will remain so long after everyone is healthy again. Occidental may still be rated as junk with its stock now trading at 13% of what it was before their dreams of Anadarko began. They’re now appealing to investors to help them deal with their secured debts of $39 billion, $75 billion in total debt, and a market capitalization of less than $10 billion. Such is the way of the oil and gas bureaucrat, it’s not their fault. They are trying as hard as they can, don't you know. That they’ve destroyed 87% of their shareholders value is inconsequential. It’s time for the investors to step up and deal with the debt that their dumb decisions created. That’s right it’s the investors turn to bail them out. After turning to everyone including the Easter Bunny they’ve found no support that will sustain their antics. So it’s back to the investors who were never listened to three and a half years ago. The coronavirus based bailouts and the Saudi / Russian tariffs didn’t happen either. Who will help these poor helpless and hopeless souls.

“The search for data, big data being the key, Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning will show the way of the oil and gas industry.” Hogwash, garbage and ridiculous. This is the theme that has guided producer bureaucrats for many decades. Building huge IT playgrounds for the bureaucrats to play in. During the course of this activity it is reasonable to suggest that they’ve lost the script. Which of course they have. There are a variety of software applications, Artificial Intelligence and all wonder of applications of widgets that go whirr in the industry. Just in the area of inventories what is it that you want to know? Bureaucrats can tell you with extreme precision. They have applications using Artificial Intelligence which review satellite imagery for known crude oil storage tanks. Taking measurements of the size of the shadow cast by the tank at the time of the day and year, and GPS coordinate to determine the volumetric size of the tank. They then calculate the size of the shadow cast by the floating roof to determine the volume stored in that tank. Then they aggregate these volumes across the globe or region of interest to determine the storage of oil. Fantastic, spectacular and fascinating what one can do with one's technology today. The problem is what use is this information? The question that they should have asked and obviously never was. Well, the bureaucrats claim to get a better understanding of the markets. Well, bunk. If they have such a good understanding of the market why do they continue to produce unprofitably? The market is sending them the one signal that is necessary for them to understand, the one signal that imputes the production, inventory and demand, all in one, and that is the price of the commodity. Yet bureaucrats continue to ignore the commodity price at great jeopardy to themselves as they pour over these tank inventory readings. Creating more paper reports and processes of untold value destruction that generates nothing discernible. Unable to determine if the property they’re producing is profitable within plus or minus 25% of the range of its revenues. But that’s accounting and accounting isn’t exciting.

The point of course is the need to have users define the software that is developed. Otherwise you end up with science experiments and activities that take a lot of time, energy and money and flush them down the big drainage ditch of value that is oil and gas. In terms of how oil and gas is run is clearly reflected here. It’s a big science experiment. If you're not using the most bleeding edge science then you're not “winning.” It’s not just the software, it’s also the business that the user community keeps focused on. What People, Ideas & Objects user community does is implement common sense into the process of building software. Give the users what it is they want. Forget about what the technology can do and have the business prevail in terms of what is needed to be done. Review the Preliminary Specification, the user community vision and determine what aspect of the technology is driving this initiative. None. Technology for technology's sake is the great misdirection that has clouded and confused the user into either stating its useless or not understanding it. Little has been accomplished after 50 years of technological innovation at this point, in my opinion. Yet we stand on the shoulders of Information Technology giants and are capable of delivering real results if we just focus on the business principles and user communities, and not the shazam.

Cost control and shuffling data between the multitudes of software applications in order to determine that nothing has changed is the art and science of bureaucracy. I was told, when People, Ideas & Objects began our by-line of providing the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. That no one cared about profits, I was called crazy and kicked out of the industry for our dedicated focus on profits, among other things. It is easy to see that the same attitude applies to market prices. Basic business principles are not used, appreciated, understood or accepted in oil and gas. Proponents of these principles are ridiculed and belittled because the bureaucrats know far better, they have the satellite imagery to prove it.

Yet all of this Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, brilliance of those that are the top of the producers still have not determined what the issues are in their firm. Is it the coronavirus, too warm of winters, global warming, is it the pipeline companies fault, or governments, OPEC’s or their employing “capital discipline” to deal with low prices and unprofitability? Can everyone see the disconnect that has developed in the culture of the industry as it has moved away from basic business principles into what I really don’t know what to call this. Soviet era bureaucratic makeshift? I would also say it’s delusion however there has been a decided and violent response by these people towards People, Ideas & Objects and our Preliminary Specification. There has been a highly deceptive reporting of the activities going on here for four decades. And all the while it is these principle (the C suite and direct charges) bureaucrats who are the only, and I repeat the only ones who have benefited from their involvement in oil and gas. If it’s naive or deliberate, either way they don’t deserve our attention anymore and need to be removed.

And replaced by those of our user community that will be individually and collectively able to build the software that holds to business principles and user needs. Building software that users need, not what technologists and bureaucrats want. The life cycle of the hierarchy has been exhausted and is now exposed as a non-functioning, counterproductive and value destroying beast. Distributed, decentralized markets such as those contained in the Preliminary Specifications Resource Marketplace, Petroleum Lease Marketplace and Financial Marketplace modules. In combination with the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational structure of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer are the future of this industry. But only in the hands of its users to ensure that it never falls into the hands of bureaucrats where it only becomes the space invaders of a new generation.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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.

User Community Developments, Part XXXI

The three competitive advantages that People, Ideas & Objects pursue are our user community, our Intellectual Property and the research that we do to ensure that the North American oil and gas industry is profitable everywhere and always. That consumers are provided with the lowest cost commodities through a dynamic and innovative industry that ensures them an abundance of affordable products and services. We have outsourced the software development of the Preliminary Specification, and all software development that makes up our Intellectual Property, to Oracle Corporation. It is our user community that will be the source and means in which the oil and gas industry obtains, maintains and deals with the difficult future this industry faces. They will be a key part of the dynamic nature of the industry and producer firms. Anticipating, accommodating and capitalizing on the changes that are needed to avoid the difficulties and realize the opportunities over the next 30 years. Ensuring that the industry never falls into the hands of bureaucrats who create nothing but destruction again. This is the role and responsibility that I see this user community filling. What we can all be certain of is the gaping hole that exists throughout the industry today and our user community members are the only competitive means to change oil and gas’ performance trajectory.

Leadership from the user community will be at the forefront of this capability. Leadership from an individual point of view, but also from an overall community perspective. If elements of the current business model of the Preliminary Specification ceased to perform for the industry, it would be incumbent upon the user community to design and implement the changes that are needed to replace it. Independently, based on their knowledge and understanding of what is required and the prospective demands they see. Through the user community vision they have the power and control of the Intellectual Property that makes up the business models and markets of the Preliminary Specification and what it will ultimately become. Only the user community will be licensed to provide the producer firms with the means in which they can solve their issues and opportunities. Making them the sole point of contact for everyone in the industry for resolution of their issues. To whom do you go to today to have your software and process management changed? Secondly our developers only take instruction from the user community. They are blind, deaf and dumb to all others. User community members are the foundation of the value proposition that they, their service providers organizations and People, Ideas & Objects provide the oil and gas producers. To do so they must have the capability to define and be provided with the budget they need to undertake the above. This is provided as People, Ideas & Objects license raises the revenues from the oil and gas producers to pay for those that provide them with the software and services that ensure they achieve the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Our user community will not be “blind sleep-walking agents of whomever will feed them.” Habermas

As mentioned, the user community members are individually the principles who head up the service provider organizations that will be providing the oil and gas producers with the administration and accounting from People, Ideas & Objects et al software and services. Each service provider is granted an exclusive license to conduct the full management of one individual or sub process of our application. Each service provider will have the entire oil and gas industry as their client base and will use their unique competitive advantages of quality, specialization and the division of labor, automation, innovation, integration and implementation as well as leadership, to name just the highlights. Having control of the service provider gives the user community member the understanding of the situation in the industry and what needs to be done in order to enhance it and or resolve it. They’ll then have the tools through the People, Ideas & Objects developers to be able to make the changes in the processes that they manage.

The user community members will earn as a result of these activities the part-time hourly income they receive as user community members conducting the analysis and design of the software with our developers. They’ll also have their service provider generating their own unique revenue stream as a result of attaching a fee to each transaction they process. Earning an income and profit as a result of managing their organization. Combined these revenue streams will be significant and provide them with a substantial business opportunity. In terms of their competitive advantages we did not mention price. Each service provider is granted a license to provide software and services on an exclusive basis. We feel the value of this community is in its value proposition which is in the trillions of dollars. For producers to continue to nickel and dime, playing one competitor off another does not provide the value that will be needed for the long run. Competing with other users in the community in terms of how they divide their labor, enhance their specialization and increase their quality will be collaborative. And the oil and gas industry will benefit as a result. There is also an unqualified and unquantified element of our value proposition in that the enhanced specialization and division of labor, as contemplated just in the Preliminary Specification, will be substantial enough for oil and gas to be able to increase their productive throughput with the same resources. Competing on price will ultimately destroy the potential of what this community can provide.

The user community members are derivative of the people who now occupy these roles in the producer firms today. Those that are involved in the administrative and accounting functions of the producer. Under the Preliminary Specification, in order to achieve every cost of the producer becoming variable, the administrative and accounting resources of the producer are reallocated to the service providers. That way the producer will be able to shut-in unprofitable production and through the People, Ideas & Objects system, the service providers will not receive any data from those properties. Hence no work will be done and no billing will be rendered there. Therefore the producers will incur no overhead for any property that is shut-in. The service providers will have the entire industry as their client base and could be faced with losing up to 15% of their revenues due to shut-in production. Something that they can budget and plan for.

The number of user community members that we’ll need is approximately equivalent to the number of processes that will be managed in the People, Ideas & Objects application. Three thousand is the number we have been working on since we began the development of this community in early 2014. There was always time in which to contemplate the opportunity of becoming a user community member. Now the sense of urgency may be different. I can say at this point we are no closer to our budget than at any other point in time, however, things have changed. The discretion of the potential user community member needs to consider this timing issue and conduct themselves accordingly. We have much to do.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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.

Updated User Community Vision...

And we’re back, 2020 has a nice ring to it and I look forward to what should be the most interesting year we’ve had so far in the history of our project. To all those that have read People, Ideas & Objects user community vision, you have my apologies. I’ve now rewritten the document to be more readable, if you made sense of it before there will be no need for you to reread it. There are no content changes as the vision stands as it was when I first published the document. I originally completed the writing of the user community vision in early 2014, soon after writing the Preliminary Specification. I had not read it since, I reread it over the holidays and I found it to be of poor quality and needing to be heavily edited, which has now been done. The three key points that provide the user community with the power necessary to ensure that producers and industry are provided with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations are;

• People, Ideas & Objects developers only look to the user community for their input. We are deaf, dumb and blind to all others. 
• Only user community members are licensed to make changes to the underlying Intellectual Property of the Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. 
• The user community have their own budget. “They are not blind sleepwalking agents of whomever will feed them.” Habermas

It is these three attributes that provide the power to the user community to affect the changes that are necessary in the oil and gas industry. This is not the typical user community that has been established to make it appear like an ERP system has adopted some buy-in from its users. This is an effective user community that will form the basis of how the industry will operate when the Preliminary Specification is implemented and for the next several decades as it is expected that the developments of the systems and business models necessary to ensure that the oil and gas industry remains dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable will fall permanently within the user communities domain. User community members are provided with their part-time revenues from People, Ideas & Objects and will generate most of their value through their service provider operations which they will earn through our initial software development. Ensuring that not only is the software but also the services are provided to the industry.

It was during my review that I also undertook to rewrite parts of the following pages.

• Service Providers
• How to Join
• Budget

Once again nothing needed to be changed from a content point of view. Only readability was addressed.

To say that I’m looking forward to 2020 would be an understatement. The issues we identified many decades ago have manifest themselves into an industry that is worthless. The demand for cash to support this long term destruction of the industry continues and fewer sources of financial support are being realized each passing day. The time when serious action will be required is upon the producer firms. People, Ideas & Objects expect that these bureaucrats will do what their history has shown them to be quite competent at. Leaving, of which we began to see the initial exits of some key figures in the fourth quarter of 2019.

A cashless and valueless industry does not need to have its leadership walk out on it. But that is what we’ll be faced with as the solution to the problem is beyond the scope of what the current bureaucrats can accomplish. The situation is untenable for them and therefore they’re only holding on for what additional compensation they can personally prosper from. I would suggest one of the dynamic changes as a result of the shale era will be that the leadership of the industry will not be sourced from the engineering and earth science disciplines. But form in the hands of those leaders that can make the industry profitable. The future oil and gas industry's leadership will therefore be regenerated and exercised through this user community. This will be the means in which the industry regenerates itself, profitably, not as an out of control spending machine. If this appeals to you then you should act, as actions based on individuals working in collaborative fashion, driven by an overall vision such as the Preliminary Specification is how we’ll solve this.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Telegram @piobiz or Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXIX(a) (PA Part XL)

I am pleased to announce a revision to the Preliminary Specification. It involves the Partnership Accounting and Accounting Voucher Modules and more specifically our implementation of our Material Balance Report. One of the features of the Partnership Accounting module in combination with our Accounting Voucher is that we have undertaken the objective of automating the production process from field data capture to the financial statements. We were limited in how we were going to achieve this lofty objective outside of detailing the Material Balance Report in our two modules. Our user community will show the way. Today we have a development in this area that I think will provide our user community with the means to implement an effective and innovative solution for producers and industry for the 21st century. It will involve the real time capture and use of the field data, in the many forms that it can take. What we are noting here is defining more of the physical infrastructure and overall vision of how we resolve this difficult area of the industry. And make it a contributing factor to how a producer achieves their most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always.

This has now become an area where People, Ideas & Objects overall vision will be able to achieve the significant innovations we’ve set out for ourselves and our user community. The ability to approach this area has been beyond the scope and scale of individual producers IT capability and budget. It will continue to be well beyond the resources of any individual producer. However, our approach of engineering this solution on behalf of the entire industry, to develop, implement and manage, by way of our user community and their associated service provider organizations, makes the possibility not only real, but a definitive task that we must complete successfully. Significant value can be generated in this area of the industry by eliminating highly redundant and excessive costs associated with what are current borderline manual systems in place today.

So what’s changing in the Material Balance Report, the Partnership Accounting and Accounting Voucher Modules and the Preliminary Specification that makes the opportunity all the more real. One word, Starlink. Starlink is in essence Elon Musk’s plan to make all his SpaceX dreams come true. It will be the source of the funds he needs to make reusable rockets, voyages to Mars and so many other ideas of his commercially viable. So what does this have to do with oil and gas? Starlink is a network of 30,000 satellites, almost 500 have already been deployed, that provide an always on and available anywhere Internet service. Situated in low orbit across the globe they will provide Internet availability almost everywhere. The limit is the southern and northern pole regions which cannot be well serviced. The service area extends to the top of the Canadian provinces such as Alberta. Therefore anything that is situated anywhere in Alberta, or the lower 49 states will be able to be serviced by Starlinks satellite Internet service.

General availability of the Internet everywhere and always will be a substantial increase in the viability of the commercial Internet of Things (IoT). Monitoring and controlling the industry's facilities will be enabled in a matter that is far more integrated and comprehensive than what is available today. All oil and gas facilities will be able to be connected, except for those in the Arctic, Northern Territories and Alaska. The physical requirement will be a “pizza box” sized receiver that will communicate with the satellites. What will the role of SCADA in the future of the Internet of Things be? Our user community will be provided with a blank slate in which the vision of these two modules will guide them as to what they are to achieve. The possibility is significant and could resolve many of the issues that are inherent in these processes. Working these out and engineering a solution for the 21st century is the opportunity here and we should look at this in that manner.

People, Ideas & Objects and our user communities solution will need to be engineered from the ground up. I mean that from both perspectives. Sticking with what drives the industry today is inadequate when the costs of the system as conceived here in the Preliminary Specification will reduce much of the producers and industries high monthly incurred costs. Our user community will be able to undertake the design of the systems, develop the software based on the needs of the industry and producers, integrate and implement them with their service provider organizations and support them throughout the various product life cycles involved in the overall solution. This is the future and where the industry needs to go. The current producers are stuck in their self inflicted financial destruction and therefore the need to rebuild the industry is upon us. Our user community will lead us through this difficult time and task. If as a potential user community member you’re interested in this specific area, or in other areas of the Preliminary Specification, and you’re not working on your application to the community, I think the state of the industry should inform your sense of urgency.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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.

User Community Developments, Part XXX

Since the publication of the Preliminary Specification we have worked on the development of the user community as our first priority. This continues today and I’m happy to say that it will always be our first priority. High quality software begins with the user and that is where we are, the beginning. Building something today with the scope and scale of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification without an empowered user community would be futile and wasteful. The issues and opportunities in the oil and gas marketplace at this time are too critical to be wasting time on approaches that we know will never work. It is the user community that will provide the speed of development and quality of software that are necessary at this time to deliver the software product and services the producers and industry require.

During this series discussion we have taken the time to highlight the competitive advantages that the user community and their associated service provider organizations will be providing the oil and gas producer and industry. They are significant and substantial. To simply list them is the most effective way to capture their level of competitiveness in the industry. These advantages include;

• The quality of the software and services they build. Cost is not a competitive differentiator when producers are losing so much and are facing an existential crisis.
• Specialization and the Division of Labor being applied consistently in the areas of administration and accounting. All economic value has been, and will always be generated by these two tools.
• Automation of business process. The capabilities and capacities of the user community and service providers to effect the change required within the industry. To expand oil and gas profitability and reduce costs through automation is a competitive advantage.
• Innovation based on the users accounting and administrative expertise. The Preliminary Specification lays the foundation for an innovative oil and gas industry, they will have an innovative accounting and administrative capability as well.
• Application of the new technologies as they become commercial and are proven to generate value or reduce costs. New technologies such as;
• The application of Artificial Intelligence.
• 5/G or the Internet of Things.
• Focusing the efforts on what computers do well. Storage and processing. Leaving the things to the user community that humans do well. Such as leadership, issue resolution, decision making, creativity, collaboration, research, ideas, design, planning, thinking, negotiating, compromising, innovating, sensing emotions and financing. To name a few.
• Integration of our software and services within the oil and gas, and support industries. 
• Leadership. More on this below. 

Members of the user community will hold an active and dynamic position within oil and gas and will be driven to ensure that producers achieve the most profitable means of oil and gas operations everywhere and always. Only they have control of the decentralized production models price maker strategies Intellectual Property through their user community license. Only they can solve what ails the industry today.

We see the user community is configured differently with competitive advantages and tools like the Intellectual Property that make it capable of undertaking the tasks ahead. As I’ve described, the work that will be done on behalf of the oil and gas industry will be different than anything else the user community member may have approached before. It will be a dynamic and exciting role in a very difficult period for the industry. The key attribute of the user community member will be their leadership capabilities. Dispatching 3,000 leaders to solve the many areas at issue is the only way this will be done. Leadership has been defined as simply as the readiness, willingness and ability. Joseph Schumpeter said of leadership “Fixers and troubleshooters rather than production man.” Four specific behaviours are responsible for 89% of the effectiveness of leaders. These four are 1) being supportive, 2) operating with a strong results orientation, 3) seek different perspectives, 4) solve problems effectively. If you find this work as I’ve described in this series interesting the industry needs you. The issues don’t seem to be going away on their own do they.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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.

User Community Developments, Part XIX

As a user community member you may already know and understand that People, Ideas & Objects will be using Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Fusion Applications as the base of the ERP system we will be providing to the oil and gas producers. These Oracle products have now been conveniently repackaged within a new offering called Oracle ERP Cloud. It will be this base of functionality that Oracle provides in which we will build the Preliminary Specification modules off of. Everyone being clearly aware of these applications and are good at seeing what the Preliminary Specification vision is as it is expressed today will be able to imagine in their own minds what it is they’re building. I’m being facetious of course. Nothing of the sort is expected, it would be a fundamental failure from the word go. What the user community must have from the first day of their development is a useable demonstration of the People, Ideas & Objects software in its initial development stage of being only the Oracle ERP Cloud. And each and every iteration of the development of the software. Then they can see the areas that they can use to bring about their ideas and weave their needs into the Oracle ERP Cloud and Preliminary Specification through our software developers. A constant, iterative approach.

As I mentioned this demonstration facility will be provided on the first day of development and be available to all of the users within the user community 7/24. Users will be able to generate generic data that can be used and reused to test the features that are being developed while the user is working to get the software right. As mentioned earlier, the use of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) will allow user interaction with the software developer, review of the code, the ability to implement changes and run the code. Choosing an IDE is more of a personal preference. Google “Integrated Development Environment” and you’ll be provided with a wealth of information, videos and offerings. As an enterprise builder we would be somewhat limited to the Netbeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ and Oracle JDeveloper offerings.

Software development has changed from what most people understand. There will be times when a user community member may experience changes to the software their working with on a daily basis or even more frequently. Software is no longer released once a year based on a long list of changes that are opaque to the users. Small changes done incrementally over time is the superior method of building software today. When the user is driving those changes and is able to check the results of those changes against a working demo of the application there are few bugs that see the light of day in a commercial release of software. When we are discussing the development of the Preliminary Specifications on top of Oracle ERP Cloud we are discussing a well defined application scope and scale with an overall vision that is understood by each and every user member. There is no reason for People, Ideas & Objects to be releasing a buggy, poorly defined and slapped together hodge podge of an oil and gas application. We will have the resources, tools and methods to overcome the niggling details that the devil puts in our way.

Since People, Ideas & Objects will be a cloud provider of its software. And Oracle is providing their software on the cloud today. Members of our user community during our initial software developments will be able to access the work they’re doing and have done on most devices. Therefore demonstrating the work that they’ve done will be able to be presented to the producers as soon as the first week of our developments. The producers would then be able to participate through the user community member and have their specific needs and desires met in that way. Although it would be logistically difficult to have 3,000 user community members participating in this way, with 200 or so producers, more efficient ways of doing the same will be able to be discovered.

I’ve mentioned this next point a few times before and it’s just as valid today as it was then. I can’t necessarily peg the work that we’re doing here at People, Ideas & Objects as exclusively software development. That is our role and that is what we are focusing on. My point is that the cross between a software development / custom Integration will be hard to discern at times. Particularly for the user community member who will be undertaking the integration of the software through their service provider offering at some point in time. This is a result of the high levels of participation of the user community, possibly the producers tagging along too, and the developers all working to solve the issues the oil and gas industry is facing. To say that one day we will move from a decidedly software development phase to an integration phase in my mind will never happen. Integration should be one of the key issues that the user community member should be considering at all times and asking themselves, how can I speed up the implementation / integration of this feature within industry? Which raises the question when is it that the user community member begins the development of their service provider offering? Even without an assigned service provider process is there work that can and should be done by the producers in anticipation of the integration.

It’s within this post that we see the dynamic and critical role that is undertaken by the user community member. Without them nothing is going to happen, and nothing will happen unless its an idea or thought of the users first. Such is the interesting nature of this work and this time we find ourselves in. It should be clear that this is not your grandfather's user community.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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.

User Community Developments, Part XXVIII

When we understand the power of Intellectual Property (IP) and the means in which to deploy it competitively we begin to see new opportunities in the marketplace. Publishing the Preliminary Specification has been an effective competitive weapon for People, Ideas & Objects. It has helped to recruit and establish the user community, and through our user community vision, secure their foundation with the power and control to make the needed changes in the oil and gas industry. These competitive advantages will soon be in the hands of the user community. IP is the only means of competitive value that I feel is worth having in the 21st century. You either own IP, you have a license to IP or you will work for a firm that has access to IP. These will be the only manner in which people will be able to work in the future. Software, which is one of the strongest forms of IP is in my opinion the only business that will exist in 2050. No other industry will still be around. Such as it’s not enough to own the oil and gas asset any longer, it's also necessary to have access to the software that makes the oil and gas asset profitable. Therefore as a potential user community participant with a license to this IP you have a choice to invest in the user community or you could buy a producing oil well. Where’s the value? It’s your choice to determine how you’ll operate in this century. Our user community will need to learn and understand how to effectively use this new tool they will soon have.

We have three general methods in which to organize the user community. The work will initially be highly collaborative between other users within the community. Then in addition to collaborating within the community it will also be collaborative with our software developers. Users will at times need to be physically in front of our developers to ensure that their needs are met. They will need to be speaking to producers to relate what they’re doing and what the producers needs are. And they will be collaborating amongst themselves all over the continent. Therefore do we establish office space in Houston and designate private offices for each user community participant? Or we could do the open area concept and crowd everyone into a third of the space. The final method that we could use is to have the user community participant do this critical work in distributed teams. In any one of these three methods the use of video conferencing and one to one video communications would be more than adequate for the majority of the work that needs to be done.

I read an interesting article the other day in TechCrunch regarding the use of distributed teams. The key finding was that in order to make up for the lack of face-to-face communications the demand falls to each participant having to use their writing skills to overcome the distance. Therefore reading and writing become the primary means and mode of communication. Alleviating the office politics and increasing the documentary value of the users contributions. What we need to do, as I stated earlier, is capture the ideas that have already formed in people's subconscious, verify it, codify it, collaborate with others to validate its authenticity and merge with the other ideas from other users. Doing this in text is more precise and thoughtful, is easily searched and reviewed. Capturing ideas and who specifically contributed the ideas within conversations in an open office area becomes much less efficient in contrast. To house people in individual offices in order to write these submissions seems contrary to efficiency and redundant when the Internet is at least 24 years of age. Therefore distributed teams is the method that we will be employing throughout the user community on a permanent basis.

In terms of how People, Ideas & Objects will determine the allocation of specific service provider licenses to which member of the user community. The contributions that are made during the development process will be the determining factor. No one is going to go through all the submissions and be able to allocate the appropriate license to the right individual. That would be a superhuman exercise and not possible. It is however well within the scope of what Artificial Intelligence is able to determine. The AI algorithm would review the Final Specification and determine the key attributes of the system. This may involve some help from us humanoids. It would then be able to go back and determine the first mention of these key ideas and the individual who originated it. It would then review the sum of all of the users contributions, compare those with the other users and their areas of specific idea generation. Then apply the known processes under management within the Final Specification and award the licenses for the management of those processes to the highest contributor of each individual process in terms of the ideas and contributions that were made. It sounds easy when I put it like this, however, we will have a budget set aside for the development of this algorithm the moment we are funded. That way by the time we have to apply the AI to the situation it will be tested and the bugs worked out. These AI recommendations would also be subject to the final approval of the user community.

We are capturing the user communities contributions in Google Docs and a Wiki based on Google Sites. We are using Google GSuite for our collaborative environment. It is by far the best in terms of determining who generated what idea when. All that users will have to do to secure their thoughts is to prepare their initial submission in a Google Doc (Word) document and then copy and paste that to the Wiki. The AI algorithm will be able to see the Google Doc was where the original thought came from, who wrote it and at what time. If we used Microsoft Office Word and Excel these applications are still unable to consolidate the contributions of many contributors to a document into one file. Usually someone has to babysit the consolidation to ensure everything is captured and hence losing the originators time stamp and contributions. In this sense Google is light years ahead of Microsoft. People, Ideas & Objects software code itself will be stored in GitLabs and be available for the user community member to review through an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This will be read only access and will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. Review of the code is something that will be expected of the user community member as a final verification that what they are expecting is what in fact being conducted.

Establishing the development environment in this manner provides significant value to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. The desire to get things down quickly will be the motivation of the user community member initially. Providing a base for discussion and collaboration within the community in a short period of time. It will also provide somewhat of a competitive spirit between user community participants that will keep the pace of contributions high. Competitive, yet each user community members license guarantees each user community member will be provided with a service provider organization, after all that is the grand prize in this process. Therefore collaborative, competitive and civil all at the same time. With AI providing the recommendations of which user community member to be assigned to which process the user community member knows that the work that they do, the area that they know the best will lead to their recognition in terms of the allocation of service providers. Enabling them to specialize on a process and work hard to earn it. The last point to make is that user community members may have an interest in one service provider or in many service providers. Their total interest in many service providers not exceeding, or falling below 100%. (For example if the user had an interest in three service providers they may have 40%, 40% and 20% interests.)

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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.