With the preparation of this next years fiscal budget. I made the call to recruit 100 individuals to be involved in this first phase of development. These people will be involved in taking the Draft Specification and adding many of the necessary details for when the developers begin the job of the applications development. The deliverable will be the Preliminary Specification which will have rounded out many of the missing details in the Draft Specification and seek to provide creative solutions to the problems they discover.
Who are these people? They are the ones that are currently employed in the oil and gas industry, or have retired and have many years experience. They are the people that have worked for an oil and gas firm in all the different capacities and professions. Landman, accountants, geologists, engineers, field staff and many who were employed in the traditional energy service industry. People who understand and can articulate their point of view on the differences in using the JOC as the key organizational construct.
What exactly will they be doing. Building off the Draft Specification and taking it to the "Preliminary Specification" stage. This may include gathering the details of the various regulatory and compliance requirements of an application, working within the scope of the oil and gas marketplace as they define it. Adding their creative ideas of how an application should provide support to an oil and gas firm. I think it is only reasonable to establish a minimum scope of operations being North America and the maximum is any energy jurisdiction. The one advantage here is the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) is culturally systemic the world over.
These people will also be the critical first group that will join People, Ideas & Objects. What I expect is that they will be the first, or in on the ground floor of the opportunities that will develop for themselves and others. What I expect will happen is they will also be charged with developing the "Community of Independent Service Providers". Who will develop within their own businesses the service capabilities that will work with the software in the oil and gas firms. This first and foremost should be looked at as a business opportunity they can build in the new economy.
One hundred people sounds like a lot, and in many ways it is. However, they are all not going to be full-time. Recall as I have mentioned in the budget I expect this time to be invested by them in establishing their "Service Provider" operations. (In subsequent years work on the software will be fully compensated.) The broad diversity of the service offerings that have to be developed to augment the software is their domain of operation. By signing the license and registering with this community is how to get started. Recall all participants (users, developers, project managers and oil and gas investors) are entitled to leverage off this software applications intellectual property in their own service based offerings. The first 100 that participate in developing the Preliminary Specification will naturally have a significant head start in starting their service operations. People, Ideas & Objects provides the software and the developers, the Users provide the problems and our clients needs.
Where these people will be located is anywhere they are needed. Based on the scope that they decide they will be able to establish Service Providers in their region as they see fit. None of these licenses are exclusive, and therefore being first has substantial advantage. They are also the ones that will establish initial contact with the producers in preparing them to move to the system when it is operational. This marketing will be done jointly by People, Ideas & Objects and the Service Provider. We will be using some form of Salesforce.com applications to ensure that the oil and gas firms are managed by one Service Provider who will sub-contract the work for that oil and gas firm. I will reiterate, being first has substantial advantages.
When should they sign up? What's wrong with now? Follow the process as described here, please note that we need senior oil and gas individuals, this is not something I don't think anyone should attempt that does not have 10 years of oil and gas experience. Not to discourage anyone, but the detail in the Preliminary Specification will be somewhat high level but detailed, if that makes any sense. So please follow the process and sign up as soon as you can. In a lot of ways I think this opportunity fits the somewhat tech savvy early or soon to be retiree of the industry.
If I have not mentioned this next item on the blog before I would not be surprised. It is in the private wiki as one of the project policies. Users, Developers, Project Managers are compensated for their time, however, People, Ideas & Objects will only contract for 110 days out of each calendar year. The reason for this is to increase our scope of understanding of the industry by essentially doubling the number of people in the project. And ensuring that the individual is also actively engaged with the oil and gas firms through their Independent Service Offerings. Learning, anticipating their needs and guiding the developers in the development of the solution to those needs.
I have talked about the response that I have received from the oil and gas companies. I would certainly not wish this treatment on anyone else. Therefore I should state that all of the operations in the wiki and this work of the first 100 will be in complete confidence. Access to the wiki is through the People, Ideas & Objects account that will be provided. The communications are all encrypted in https. Therefore if you were to be using the wiki in your office your boss would never know. (Not that I would encourage that, but I would certainly endorse it.) The only way that your "boss" may find you are involved in this project is if s/he is a participant in this project. There is no need for anyone to be associated with this project and as such be affected by the companies apparent insistence that it not be built.
If you know of an investor in oil and gas that this project may appeal to. Please forward the URL to their attention and encourage them to commence the financial support of this project. And please, join me here.
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