In these troubled times.

We need to better understand where we are and where we are headed. Professor Carlota Perez has provided excellent analysis regarding the economic cycles of the last 300 years. Professor Perez wrote this paper in 2005 and she provides new ideas to her theories. These theories have been a major contributor to both the Draft Specification and the understanding and predictive nature of what she has described as the economic "turning". And in so doing specified much of our current economies antics and a clear road for us to follow in building this software for the next Information & Communication Technology driven world we are to experience soon. This will be the fourteenth article / blog post that I have written on Professor Perez. 

"Respecialisation and the Deployment of the ICT Paradigm - an essay on the present challenges of globalization". I can not seem to find where I pulled the full document from. I have however, found a much smaller document that is available from the Cisco website. I am publishing this paper in two sections. This first section contains some valuable information that builds on her theories and adds to them. The second section will be published on Monday and contain new ideas that are directly pertinent to the work we have proposed in the Draft Specification.

Professor Perez picks up elements of, indirectly it seems, Professor Anthony Giddens Theory of Structuration and Professor Wanda Orlikowski Model of Structuration in this first quotation.

But the relationship is mutual. Technology shapes the economy as well as society and these, in turn, are constantly shaping technology, guiding its development and selecting within the potential it offers. The space of the technologically feasible will be filtered by the economically profitable and the socially and culturally acceptable as well as modified by market and policy developments (including inaction, as much as action, by the various social agents). p. 4

Well put Professor. I have been struggling with the "markets have failed" claim that seems to be made by any and all western governments in these past few months. Taking the management of the issue into the governments to me is setting us up for an even greater fall. The markets may have failed, but I am certain the governments will fail, and very quickly. The point I think they are making is that the markets are not sophisticated enough to have figured things out for itself. In a globalized system the optimal division of labor and specialization are not going to spontaneously order themselves as Hayek (1945) once stated. In this limited instance I can concur that the future methods of organization will need to take these points into consideration. I have incorporated many of these components into the Draft Specification and they were based on the work of Giddens and Orlikowski. Essentially saying that society and technology are self reinforcing and iterative. Denoting the enhanced role of software in our future economies. Professor Perez states a similar conclusion.

On the basis of that framework, it will argue that, though the role of free markets was crucial in the early decades of diffusion of the ICT revolution, their continued unrestrained and unguided operation can only aggravate the tensions inherited from the casino economy and the income polarization of the 1980s and 1990s. It will propose that a conscious, policy-facilitated and consensus-driven process of re-specialization in the developed economies can be the most effective way to overcome those tensions as well as the instabilities generated by the present uneven globalization of production.

The intention is to share some of the concerns and ideas for action that emerge from observing the present circumstances with the aid of a historical model of recurrence. As such it is a personal contribution to a debate about shaping the future, the need for which is becoming more acute as globalization proceeds. p. 5

The recurring diffusion patterns of revolutionary technologies.

Noting that history has provided four prior examples of the duality of the technologies definition and support of societal benefits, Professor Perez analyzes the current Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) and notes.

When the potential of that surge is exhausted, the new one [ICT] is articulated in circumstances that are unfavorable to it, because they have become over-adapted to the previous paradigm. That is why, it takes two or three decades of Schumpeterian creative destruction to demolish those obstacles and to prove the superiority of the new technologies and their capability to modernize the whole economy and increase its wealth creating capacities. p. 9

This time has past and we only need to deal with the difficulty of whom is to drive the car. As the old economy and its ways that are steeped in the history of the previous sixty years. Begin to collapse as they are today. Then and only then will the new technologies (ICT) take the lead position in new and innovative ways in the economy. SAP is the bureaucracy was what I suggested was the situation in the Preliminary Research Report. SAP began as a firm in the late 1970's proving the accuracy of Professor Perez' analysis that "decades of Schumpeterian creative destruction is required."

These changed conditions for the deployment period, will also modify the direction of innovation. Once the paradigm is established and the styles of life and main business models are more or less known, the core industries begin to make the transition from “supply push” innovation, of the sort that needs to create new markets by educating consumers and producers to a completely new way of functioning, to more of a “demand pull” model, where attention moves towards trying to fulfill consumer and producer’s needs by completing the new life and production styles with interlinking innovations or improving the ease of use of the existing products through complementary services and so on. p. 12

Doesn't this sound like the situation we are in today? Please check out the recently published Business Model for the People, Ideas & Objects software development application. What else may be in store for us is the following comment from Professor Perez.

Deployment, by contrast, sees investment become more sober and rational. The companies that emerged successful from the installation period invest to expand their scale of production and markets and to increase their productivity. The larger ones are likely to pursue mergers and acquisitions to stabilize markets in their industry and to occupy strategic territories to strengthen their competitive positions. There is a clear long-term view among decision-makers and innovation becomes a complement of such strategies. p. 14

The Turning Point as the space for role shift.

Once again we are seeing the accuracy of Professor Perez' research. Her analysis of the last 300 years brings to mind phenomenally prescient predictions. This next one in my mind, recall this being written in 2005, is as follows. It is also clear in reading the document that Professor Perez believes the dot com meltdown in 2001 was the beginning of the "turning".

It is precisely the tensions and instabilities that are the legacy of the frenzied bubble years that create the conditions for a shifting of roles, usually with the intervention of State regulation to control the excesses of finance, to counter its short-termism and to favor demand expansion and stable long term investment in production. That is the reason for the term Turning Point, referring to the tilting of the field away from favoring paper assets and towards favoring the flourishing of the real economy. p. 15

I can certify this software development project is 100% oriented to the "flourishing of the real economy." Professor Perez has more.

The first tension is the very essence of the bubble: a process of asset inflation in which the stock market (paper) values decouple from the real value of the companies they represent. Thus, rather than from dividends, profit gains come from reselling the assets or from participating in the many instruments (futures, derivatives, hedge funds or others) that are created in the casino economy that builds up during Installation.

Once the bubble collapses, this tension should disappear and the values should come back into line. The major losses bring the investors back to reality and the losers are likely to press for regulation. However, if the collapse is not big enough (as the author believes was the case with the NASDAQ in relation to the whole stock market) and/or if a healthy investment climate is not re-established after the bubble by an exemplary combination of punishment of fraud and “remedial” regulation, then the distorting influence of the financial world’s short-termism will weigh upon the economy and against growth.

At present, the CEOs of production companies find it extremely difficult and risky to embark upon long-term projects, not because of competition but because of the continued short-term profit pressures of the finance world. p. 16

A disconcerting comment made by Professor Perez is in relation to the democratic process. Noting that the divisions between rich and poor are most extreme at the point we are at now. This next quote brings on an eerie feeling with respect to the American election in general, and Barack Obama specifically.

What Installation leaves in its wake is the resentment stemming from downward mobility in the face of affluence. The conviction that “my children will be worse off than I have been”, confronted with the conspicuous consumption at the other end, results in loss of hope and breeds anger, violence, problems of governance and an increase in the attraction power of messianic leaders who thrive precisely on intensifying that resentment. There are also migratory pressures, as the most positive among the excluded run unimaginable risks to reach a place where –often accepting unacceptable conditions– they can hope for a better future. p. 18

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Carl Icahn 's United Shareholders.

I have argued here that the management in oil and gas has failed in their duties. (Running an ongoing series that I have termed the piggies.) Irrespective of the fact that management's grab bag of cash has dwindled to nothing, they have betrayed the shareholders of the companies that employ them. These people have damaged much of our lives, and we will pay dearly for their greed and myopic focus on themselves.

But we are not alone. While we are legitimately concerned about what the oil and gas industry will be able to do in the future, the extent of the damages to the capability of the industry is unknown. We are also seeing a similar wholesale management failure throughout the developed world. Currently the banking and financial communities, whose antics have been despicable, are the ones that have started us down this road of forced renewal. I am so pleased to see that people like Carl Icahn , an activist shareholder with a long history. Has established a "United Shareholders" organization to begin dealing with this systemic virus of managements lack of accountability. Icahn could be the spark plug that is needed to address this issue. (Click on the title of this entry to be taken to his blog.)

Management's use of regulations like Sarbane's Oxeley have been used to entrench their activities. In my opinion the regular frameworks adopting compliance and governance are required but are not the solution, nor are they the tools or organizational bodies that need to be employed. I see this as a civil framework that the shareholders can implement themselves. This also implies the separation of management and ownership will narrow decisively. And for oil and gas I have suggested that it is the shareholders or their representatives that are the people that participate at the Joint Operating Committee level in the People, Ideas & Objects application. 

Many of the excellent comments of Carl Icahn 's recent blog post include these points that in retrospect, are almost laughable that they were ever deemed acceptable behavior. Talking about the U.S. $700 billion bailout of the banks.

One reason that Paulson may have gotten the banks to agree to the restrictions is that they do very little to actually restrict compensation. It only covers the CEO, the CFO and the next three most highly compensated executive officers. This means that other highly paid executives aren't covered, such as Joseph Cassano, the head of AIG’s Financial Products unit who made $280 million in the last eight years writing credit default swaps that caused AIG's collapse, according to Congressional testimony this month.

This next quotation shows the possibility of a broad base of support for Ichan's initiative.

In my view, it was the boards of directors at institutions like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, AIG and others that failed to stop management from pursuing risky strategies that crippled their firms. In his latest book "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?," retired auto executive Lee Iacocca writes, "Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder!"

and

"Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing," wrote Iacocca, adding, "The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs." I’m not saying I totally agree with Iacocca, because we do have some great business leaders in this country. But there is definitely too little shareholder outrage over self-serving executives who get massive paychecks for deeply flawed performances.

Sarbanes-Oxley was aimed at making corporate board oversight stronger in the wake of the collapse of Enron, WorldCom and others. But when we see the kind of debacles that occurred over the last year, obviously that legislation is only part of the solution. What we need is millions of shareholders to rise up and demand more accountability on the parts of boards and managements of the companies they hold.

Subscribing to Ichan's blog can be done here, and if your a resident of the U.S. please sign up for his United Shareholders of America campaign. And lets start dealing with this problem from a constructive point of view. Join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Management Failure Pig Governance

From transaction processing to transaction design.

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

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

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


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

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

Technorati Tags: People's Specification Research Knowledge

Google Health, and it's user interface.

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

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

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

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

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

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No one's fault but our own.

On this blog I have documented many of the possible scenarios we may be faced with. Not that these have created a sense of calm, but more to fully explore where we are, and what we should be doing.

We are also not moving forward. The Preliminary Specification needs to define what the scope of the application is. Recruiting of the 100 individuals for this task continues. And by all means, particularly if you have some good ideas, use this process to join me here.

We have specified our alternatives as consisting of 1) Regressing to barbarism with manual systems, 2) Motivating SAP and Oracle to accept our never ending stream of big cheques, or 3) Follow the vision as defined in the Draft Specification and based on a fundamentally more affordable business model.

Not to belabor the point, but it has taken me since September 2003 to produce the Draft Specification. It is a compelling solution that offers a vision that reconciles many of the conflicts & contradictions inherent in the oil and gas industry. The time that it will take for some one to offer a fourth alternative is a time frame that society can not afford.

So our time to consider alternatives has passed. We are now in the full force of the crisis or turning as Professor Carlota Perez calls this time. The need for IT to begin to carry the weight of the economy on its own is our ticket to the very good times, as she so ably describes.

I have used the Intellectual Property (IP) built up in this project to achieve 2 different but critical objectives.

1. To establish that the users will have free and unencumbered access to the IP, and to prepare a derivative service offering to the oil and gas producer.
   
2. Focus the resources of the industry on this one solution.
   

I think it is reasonable to assume, that over many years of development, and even if our scope is determined in the Preliminary Specification as only North America, that our multi-year budget will most assuredly breach the $1 billion mark.

And with all of this there is a heightened sense of urgency. We must not fail.

To add insult to injury the current custodial management have done everything they could to eliminate any and all competitive choices to run the industry. Theirs has now failed and I suspect they will undertake 2 possible directions. They will either continue on in a lame duck fashion, irrespective of the consequences of more time wasted. Or abandon ship. Either way this further constricts our actions.

It has been my experience in the past 10 years that the management have abandoned ship far to often. The floor of "corporate responsibility" has been established by these managers. There seem to me that there is nothing left but the shouting and finger pointing to occupy management's so precious of time.

So what should we do. Our first priority is to establish the revenue streams that are necessary to support the users and developers in the Preliminary Specification. (See the proposed budget and charter.) For it is "different this time". The last great turning was 1929 to 1941. We were at war for much of this time, a war that mitigated the negative economic effects of the turning. It was also a time in which we had barely begun to leverage the use of oil. A leverage that stands at 18,000 man hours per barrel of oil today. And it was a time when businesses, industries and societies pace was dictated by the speed of which paper physically moved, we no longer share these luxuries of our past.

We therefore face two crisis.

1. The declining reserves and production of the oil and gas industry. (Peak Oil)
2. The credit crisis / turning.
   

Living through only one of these crisis has the capability of moving society within inches of hell. Two crisis provides us with a much higher probability of reaching that unwanted destination. Expecting anything from management to mitigate the potential of these crisis is foolhardy and dangerous.

Join me here, and lets restore this industry, brick by brick and stick by stick to its full potential, or face the consequences. If we expect anyone, or specifically management, to do this for us, we will have indeed failed. As of today, we now have no one to blame but ourselves. If you know of an investor or government representative to help establish our revenue streams, please send them the URL to this blog and encourage them to join us here.

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British PM Gordon Brown, gets it.

I have a quote from our local paper, The Calgary Herald, regarding British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's call on world leaders to create a new financial architecture to replace the Bretton Woods system.

Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be postponed, Brown said in a speech at the London offices of Thomson Reuters.

and

"I'm slightly less terrified today than I was on Friday," said Princeton University economist Paul Krugman, named as the winner of the Nobel prize in economics on Monday. "We're going to have a recession and perhaps a prolonged one but perhaps not a collapse."

What governments, in this current economic meltdown, seem unable to say is no to any request for funds. If they had learned to say "no" many years ago to the guy with no income no job or assets (ninja) who wanted a mortgage, then we wouldn't be in this state.

I first raised the issue of a credit crisis in a blog entry entitled Beyond the Red Horizon. In the entry I suggested that CNRL would have difficulty in getting their heavy oil production on line due to the looming credit crisis and severe credit levels that the company holds. Particularly the $3.2 Billion working capital deficiency. (What were they thinking?) The companies shares are down $41.76 since I wrote those comments. Trading at $40.47, a mere shadow of its former self. I think they should get prepared for the real hair cut that will soon affect the company. (Yes, even though we have lost $30 trillion globally.)

This firms management have placed the company in a situation where they have absolutely no options. They will soon be unable to meet payroll, unable to pay their field service providers and many other normal business operations that are now beyond the scope of the companies capabilities. No matter how you add it up, the situation is unworkable. Yet Murray Edwards, one of the many Vice Chairman of the firm, says absolutely nothing in this recent interview with Forbes. He has a responsibility to his shareholders to be a little clearer on this topic, don't you think? These kind of comments only let the credit crisis monsters get an eye on where to go next. If you have shares in CNRL get out before they are run into the ground. And thank Murray Edwards on your way out.

The preliminaries in the fowl winds of this credit crisis are now over. The bullets have all been fired and now the serious business of this meltdown will begin. I would expect the rolling and violent stock markets will continue with a strong downward trend. What will now begin to happen is the currencies and value of the countries will face the same types of horrendous devaluation forces. (Bankrupt countries like Iceland.) I don't like discussing these issues, it is however somewhat comforting to be knowing what will happen next, and I hope to be providing some forewarning.

In all of this calamity it is important to note that opportunities are opening up to everyone. This is a brand new clean slate with the wealthy people like Murray Edwards unable to save their money from destruction, and no time or energy to pursue these new opportunities. Get in and earn yourself a healthy position in some kind of assets that will eventually be sold or auctioned. We are going to need to re-build the industry brick by brick and stick by stick. Just as Gordon Brown stated, "Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to agree that
what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be
postponed."

Join me here in building this software to manage the oil and gas industry. We have limited choices, use manual systems, give SAP another try, or build this software and re-build the industry for those that are prepared to take these opportunities.

Technorati Tags: People's Pig Failure Management Trends

Capital vs. Talent, the Battle Rages On.

In the current Fall 2008 issue of the Rotman school magazine. They have another article that I think provides support for the work that we are doing in this software development project. Entitled "Capital vs. Talent, the Battle Rages On" it has some very sound ideas, so lets dig in.

The article argues through a quick review of some of the recent history of how industries have lost some of their value through a rise in the talent that makes the firm operate. Noting that capital has not been able to effectively deal with talent costs since Warren Buffets days at Salomon Brothers. A few decades ago Buffet removed $110 million from the bonus pool of the managers, and as a result created tension between the ownership and their management. This eventually led to the talent moving from Salomon Brothers and the rest as they say, is history.

Today similar issues are systemic throughout the business world. Warren Buffet's recent investment in Goldman Sachs came with agreement of the "C" class executives to limit sales of their shares to 10% of their holdings until 2011, or when Buffet realizes his investment.

The CEO and the Wall Street brokerages have received ever increasing pay and at the same time derision from most people. Why are they entitled to so much compensation? I have recently written about the Piggies consisting of the four mid sized oil and gas companies. These pigs have granted themselves up to $3.3 billion of "in the money" stock option compensation, which I calculated just before the down draft of our current markets took hold. These points go toward how I see the current systems, and particularly the financial systems, are failing in a manner that is somewhat consistent with the former Soviet Union's collapse.

That is to say, you get to a point where the efficiencies of the way things are done begin to breakdown. The speed of the bureaucracies are woefully incapable of addressing the issues and the pace of business. Particularly the market demands of an innovative oil and gas producer. Soon the volume of resources are not able to address the needs and the breakdown begins it's downward spiral.

This is what is happening to our systems today. The problem that is unique to this time and place is that economies are dependent on high levels of division of labor. Without the efficiencies of those systems available to us we are relegated to manual systems. And we can't replace the old systems with anything new, as those systems like this software development project, have not yet been built.

The article in Rotman writes;

From giant pension funds to small retail investors, capital has increasingly lost its patience with talent, whether it be CEOs, fund managers, lawyers, investment bankers, athletes or actors. Capital is particularly upset because it really liked the previous world – which crested for it in the 1960-to-1980 period and has headed downhill ever since. The truth is, capital is no longer the undisputed ‘scarce resource’ of the economy, and accordingly, its bargaining power has dramatically waned. p.5

This stating that management who controls the company has taken care of its own interests, and forgotten the other stakeholders in their decisions.

As a result, capital will increasingly find itself in a negotiation with a wide variety of its employees, with each dedicated to finding out exactly how much he or she can extract. Instead of feeling like it is getting a fabulous deal from its best customer service representative (CSR) – who currently earns the standard compensation package for CSR’s – capital will find itself paying top dollar to keep that fabulous CSR engaged. However, anyone from the talent side who has a desire to plum the depths of ‘how much’ rather than ‘enough’ needs to heed certain rules of value maximization. p. 6

Here we have in a nutshell the importance of this software development project. The talent to run the oil and gas industry is independent of the producers that engage them. Recall the competitive advantages that a producer firm is concerned with is their land base, and the capabilities in terms of its science and engineering. The administration, reporting and compliance attributes traditionally handled by an ERP system are a cost of business that does not serve to increase the producers competitive advantage.

However, the competitive advantage that People, Ideas & Objects has as its objective is to provide the oil and gas producer with the most profitable manner in which to operate their land base and capabilities. This point drives the fundamental nature of the changes that we are seeing. A move away from growth to capturing value, and from processing transactions to designing transactions to optimize that value. Please review the Accounting Voucher module to see how these attributes are implemented in People, Ideas & Objects.

The article then goes into a detailed description of how talent can maximize their value.

Achieve and Maintain Distinctiveness

Thus it is important for talent to thwart any attempts to simplify or codify the knowledge structures underlying the talent in question. The more the basis for talent development is heuristic in nature -- i.e. based on experience and judgment – and the less it is algorithmic i.e. “I studied the manual” – the better for talent. Putting up barriers to the replication of its distinctiveness is critical to the maintenance of talent differentiation. p. 6

Very difficult to do when the systems that exist today are set in concrete and not able to adapt. What is needed is the users of the People, Ideas & Objects software application have a dedicated software development capability available to capture the "experience and judgment" of the users. 

Establish the Clear Line of Sight to End Customers

The key is for the talent to make sure that the customer can see and appreciate its contribution to the value proposition, because then the customer will induce capital to acquire the requisite talent -- often with little regard for the cost. p. 7

As the head of People, Ideas & Objects I have the user clearly established as my customer. And I know that the user has the producer clearly identified in their sights.

Attach to Deep Pools of Capital

Talent positions itself as absolutely critical to all aspects of the business, and in doing so, it attaches itself irreversibly to the pool of capital that leverages its activities. p. 7

Capital, the difficult part. The oil and gas industry has several trillion dollars in annual revenue. It is an industry that will be learning more in the next few years then what it learned from the past 140. Having a dynamic capability to support this industry will provide value to those that are able to make the producers the most profitable. Work involved in developing the software for People, Ideas & Objects allows the users to earn some of their revenue from People, Ideas & Objects, but their revenue is also from the producers in which the users provide their services.

In terms of revenue I also assess the producers a fee for use of the system, in which goes to pay the developers, project managers, account managers and users.

Develop Creative Extraction Formulas

To specify what may be a creative solution for the users in extracting their value from the producers, I fear that I may limit the creative aspect in an area that is not my business. You can also see with my recent post where it is clear that I am going through the process of identifying the sources of revenues that I need to finance this development. The users should consider these same issues and develop their own service offerings and revenue solutions.

Defenses for Capital

After all they are our customers. And we don't want to repeat the same mistakes that the current management has done in killing their golden goose, the oil and gas investor. However it will also be worthwhile to see how investors may try to mitigate the effect of an environment that we are building in this community.

Maintain Closer Involvement

It will be the darkest of days that capital is completely uninvolved in the enterprise. p. 8

Well it certainly seems dark doesn't it. I have suggested a means to resolve this with my recent publication of what an oil and gas investor should do. This will accelerate management's demise forcing them to place the firms assets on the market for sale. Once there the investor can buy the actual property and actively manage it through the People, Ideas & Objects software and its Community of Independent Service Providers. 

Commoditize Classes of Talent

Sorry that train has left the station. The need to commoditize talent I think is understood to be in the best interest of investors in most other industries. But in a dynamic oil and gas environment the investor is going to want to have the talent that can roll with the punches. That is what is clearly being offered in the People, Ideas & Objects software and Community of Independent Service Providers.

Build Talent-Independent Assets

Here the authors are suggesting that investors dabble in other businesses that are capital intensive, and hence reduce the influence of talent. I don't understand this point, but I can assure you the oil and gas industry will remain dynamic for the next 100 years and the attitude of the investor needs to cooperate with the talent in order to A) make the transition from the bureaucracies and B) motivate them to build and deliver the systems and services that will accommodate innovative producers.

Collectivize to Fight Talent

I won't address this point as I think that the article captures the right spirit but may be tactically trying to optimize the relationship in the investors benefit. And although that has happened throughout the last century, I fail to see how it could be done today. We all need each other. Its management that we don't need. The attitude of the article appears focused on not allowing the same problems with the bureaucracy re-occurring.

If you are interested in this development please follow the process here to make application to participate in the Preliminary Specification. If you are aware of some investors in oil and gas that fit the description in this post, please forward the URL to them and encourage them to participate in making this development real. And please, join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Change Management User Funding

Access Management for Web Applications

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

Technorati Tags: People's Sun Specification Software

How does the oil and gas investor fit in?

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

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

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

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

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

Technorati Tags: People's Specification Management Failure

Easy Come, Easy Go.

Or is it.

I documented the $3.3 billion in stock options for the four little piggies, (Encana, CNRL, Nexen and Petro-Canada.) in a posting dated July 16, 2008. As of Friday's October 10, 2008 closing prices the value of those options now total $57.2 million. (Values based on 2007 weighted average options and prices.) The problem is that the investors in these companies have experienced a far more substantial haircut in their share holdings. (Piggies are down 53.4% to 65.5%).

From my point of view these alleged management types are better understanding the market and the scope of their greed. This provides justice to those who were so slovenly in the past. I wonder what Monday's trading will have in store for these wonder pigs. Recall they were in the forefront of rewarding and congratulating themselves for the higher stock valuations from commodity price increases. Therefore we should ensure that they are also compensated for the damage to these companies from the decline in commodity prices. These pigs brought that upon themselves, and in the future these management should understand that you reap what you sow.

But wait, not only are they incompetent, they have also lost their motivation. I wonder if they'll quit before anyone has the chance to be fire them? I've always believed a firm that loses greater then 53.4% of their market value is considered a non entity. That large of a loss in a firm is a reflection of the future of the firms opportunities. All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men. (Ricky Gervais provides some insight and comedic relief.) 

The investor class is now forced to act in recovering their assets and value. Kick these bastards to the curb and lets start building the oil and gas industry for the 21st century. As I said these managements are now unqualified, unmotivated and unproven to hold the offices they occupy. They have damaged the firms to the point where they will be walking corpses for the next several decades, and that is being optimistic. Fire the bunch, you certainly can't trust them. I don't trust them, as any group of companies that would attempt to steal ones Intellectual Property, as these firms attempted to take the idea of using the Joint Operating Committee, are crooks.

Pig courtesy of http://designedtoat.com/pig.htm

Technorati Tags: People's Pig Call-to-Action Management Failure

Evaluating SalesForce

For the past few months I have been seriously thinking about the manner in which all the people that may be involved in this project will communicate. And of particular concern how they will communicate to the oil and gas investor / producer that will be using the software and community of independent service providers.

As I may have mentioned, the collaborative environment provided by "Google Apps for our Domain" is the best solution in the marketplace today. It hasn't all the features that other applications have, but Google has been able to prove that everything is always in development. And therefore it will eventually get much better then the competitions. I have been using their service for this project for about a year. And the interface elements of Google's design are such that they are intuitive and clear. Much like the Apple interface.

A few months ago Google announced their "Apps" product was available and integrated into SalesForce.com a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program. I thought I would try the product on the free trial basis.

When it comes to management of customers and marketing, the oil and gas industry has no idea what these terms mean. After 30 years in oil and gas I can say, that as a producer, I have never seen a customer. So when we take a state of the art application such as SalesForce.com is in the CRM marketplace. I did a bit of scratching to figure it out.

It recently came to me how the application is integrated into People, Ideas & Objects. We need to create full time "Account Manager" positions that service the client producer with their needs. These individuals will need to be very familiar with how oil and gas operates and can see the substantial differences in the application being mirrored within the client producers firm. Attaining that mirroring should be the Account Manager's key objective. They will have the SalesForce.com application as their key resource in determining the needs, and marshaling the resources of the community of independent service providers. Providing the services and our software to the producer. That way the community can be coordinated in their approach to the producer firm. I don't want producers being inundated by the same query more then once. That is inefficient and costs the producer unnecessarily.

How this gets achieved is through the application and the Account Managers organizing the resources for the firm. SalesForce.com provides a comprehensive solution that is well built and capable of approaching the demands that we will eventually be expecting of it.

Naturally this imputes that the Users, Developers, Investor Sponsors and Project Managers that are active in the development of this software will also need a license to SalesForce.com. Or, alternatively can access the system through a Partner and other Portals. Their they can deal with the Account Manager, the development team, other users and producers as needed and be fully up to date as to the status of the software application and its integration within the producer firm.

A couple of things that I thought were interesting and of value was a way in which the producer (Through the Account Manager.) and users could post a suggestion and the rest of the community votes on the feature. If we had the ability to prioritize our developments in such a simple manner, it would help to maintain that our focus remains in the marketplace. The second interesting feature was the idea and solution features.

Therefore the need to have the services of Google Apps for our Domain ($50.00 / user) to deal with the "Office" type of applications, email, calendar, and most importantly the wiki. And have SalesForce.com ($1,500.00 / user) provide the glue that holds this community together throughout the regions we may find ourselves operating in.

Technorati Tags: People's Google Software Users

Google Chrome and Single Sign On (SSO)

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

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

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

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

Technorati Tags: People's Google Specification Development

10 Things to know when pitching to a VC

Being that we are developing a community of people that are in business, it is not unreasonable that the community based user, developer or project manager comes up with their own innovative way of providing services to the producers. I see this as a very likely occurrence. Many people may have a shortage of financial resources necessary to launch their service oriented enterprise. Acquiring financial resources and pitching to investors may be something that they are not familiar with.

Clicking on the title of this entry will take you to a TED conference video of David S. Rose. In this presentation he shows exactly what is needed to make a presentation to a Venture Capitalist.

First things first, your pitching people, your character, drive and enthusiasm.

Ten must haves in your presentation.

These 10 things should be presented in as little as one half hour, or ideally 18 minutes which is the length of people's attention.

1. Integrity
2. Passion
3. Experience
4. Knowledge
5. Skill
6. Leadership
7. Commitment
8. Vision
9. Realism
10. Coach-ability 
    

Your presentation style.

Do the following

Logical progression. In terms of time don't skip or return to different points. State the things you know or understand and provide validation that people can confirm. What's the upside if the venture capitalist invests. Make the assumption believable.

Avoid the following

Don't state things the VC knows are not true. Cover off each assumption with facts. Don't try to impress them with things you don't understand. Things that make the VC think. Keep the presentation rolling by answering the obvious questions for them. Avoid any internal inconsistencies, label facts so that they are clearly identifiable. Typos, errors or unpreparedness.

Things to put in the presentation.

1. Company logo
2. Business overview
3. Management team
4. Market
5. Product
6. Business Model
7. Strategic relationships
8. Competition
9. Barriers to entry
10. Financial overview
11. Use of proceeds.
12. Capital and Valuation
13. Then leave the presentation running with just the company logo displayed.
    

Top five rules of presentation.

1. Software being used is always in presentation mode.
2. Always use a remote
3. Handouts are not presentations.
4. Don't read your speech
5. Never look at the screen.

I would add the following. When developing the presentation think of your audience and strive to maintain their interest. And on behalf of People, Ideas & Objects, best of luck, and most importantly have some fun.

Technorati Tags: People's User Funding Learning

Don't touch "Mark to Market".

One of the strongest institutions that we have available to us is the U.S. regulatory environment. This includes the SEC, FASB and others that define what the accounting requirements are for companies operating in the U.S. Those that suggest "Mark to Market" accounting has brought the credit crisis to our door are correct. It has seen past the sham that is financial capital and exposed it for the failed system that it is. Changing the accounting rules now will be the wrong action.

I'm not saying that there won't be changes to the accounting rules. In the future the systems will have to be rebuilt based on sound ideas and principles. To alleviate the pain that we feel today by making "Mark to Market" less onerous will only hurt the U.S. and other jurisdictions that rise from these ashes. Leave it alone and the systems will be able to build on the principles and ideas that exist or will exist, like "Mark to Market" accounting.

As noted in Reuters.

One of the reasons that the United States has so far suffered less real economic damage from the financial turmoil to date is because mark-to-market accounting has forced the banking system to take write-offs, pursue new private capital, reveal which banks are more stable than others, and force the issue of toxic mortgage-backed securities. Fair value accounting is today sending a very powerful market signal. It may also signal that the US financial sector is under capitalized and needs to shrink. Bankers of course want to deny that, but wishing does not make it so. And removing mark-to-market is just wishing.

Also as noted in the Peterson Institute and Emac's Stock Watch.

Technorati Tags: People's Market Measurement

That's going to hurt.

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

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

The bureaucracy is dead, long live the producer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technorati Tags: People's Change Pig Perez Specification

The Future of Capital.

Bruce Nussbaum who writes the "Innovation Design" blog for BusinessWeek has a fascinating article on the effects of the soon to completely collapse Wall Street. Entitled "Congress Readies to Vote on the Financial Package -- Get Ready for the Post-Wall Street World." Of which I encourage that type of thinking, I also recommend subscribing to his blog as it is always rich and strong with content. The starting paragraph of the current Rotman school magazine frames his point of view quite nicely.

BY THE DAWN OF THE 21ST CENTURY, a revolutionary change had taken hold in the realm of value creation: physical and financial assets were no longer the key factors of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, leading companies like Dell, GE and Procter & Gamble depended on superior human and knowledge assets for their competitive edge. p.3

I have, and always will, assert that Intellectual Property (IP) is the only thing of value in the new 21st Century Organization. Either you own or have access to IP, is something that should be the first order of building a "new" business offering in your chosen field and industry. This is why my attitude regarding the Wall Street problems is to let them fail. As Professor Carolta Perez says, financial capital has done its job. It built the Information & Communication Technologies, now product capital has to rise out of the ashes of the financial capital industry. Financial capital is a badly over built industry that is primarily redundant to the needs of the world. When you see the panic that is occurring and understand that productivity in the U.S. is up in the second quarter by 4.3% on an annual basis. You see the dichotomy of the world in which we live. The old is collapsing like the former Soviet Union, and the new economy is now big enough and strong enough to lift all boats.

I’ve said it before: business people don’t need to understand designers better; they need to be designers, designing organizations in which capital of all types wants to congregate. As evidenced by the work of our own Richard Florida, their role is not unlike that of the mayor of a great city, who creates an environment in which multifaceted communities can all agree on one thing: that they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. p.3

The entire magazine is devoted to these concepts. I highly recommend downloading the magazines from the Rotman school. As I read these three latest issues I may find more valuable information that I will post up on this blog.

Technorati Tags: People's IP Community Trends Innovation

Project Charter - Preliminary Specification

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Project Deliverables

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

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

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

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

Technorati Tags: People's Algorithms Specification Development

A Community of Independent Service Providers.

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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