The Petroleum Data Manager website, www.oilit.com, received its 500,000th hit last month. I thought that this would be a good time to tell you about how business is going here at Petroleum Data Manager.
Sponsors
First we have signed up our sponsors for 2001. The following companies have lent their support to the Petroleum Data Manager website, CD-ROM and intranet editions:-
CGG
Exprodat Ltd.
Georex AT
Kelman Technologies
Landmark Graphics Corp.
Petris Technology
Schlumberger-GeoQuest
Silicon Graphics
T-Surf.
Our thanks to them for their sponsorship, especially to the four founder sponsors, who have supported the PDM electronic editions for the last three years.
Intranet
When we started, out way back in 1996, PDM was talking about high-tech but was low-tech in format. We rectified this situation in 1999 with the first edition of the CD, and the website went online about the same time. In 2000, in response to demand from some larger corporate readers, we began providing an Intranet edition. This is now emailed monthly to a dozen or so major clients throughout the world. Why an intranet edition? It’s all about Knowledge Management! If you are reading this, you are probably already convinced by the usefulness of a monthly update on E&P software technology, news and views. We hope that, as a knowledge worker (that’s what we all are these days!) this helps you keep up to speed with technology, and gives you a feeling for what the leaders of our industry are thinking (see especially the interview with Schlumberger Information Systems president Satish Pai on the opposite page.)
Content provider
But why have PDM on your intranet? Well it really is all about Knowledge Management. Sitting in on all those conferences about leveraging the Intranet to provide instant access, through full text search, linguistic analysis and all the wonderful tools that are emerging for supplying ‘just-in-time’ knowledge. With the move to digital text, we realized that Petroleum Data Manager has two functions. It is an information source first time around. But once you have the 1,000 plus articles on line, they become a valuable resource for software users and developers. We have, in short, become content providers.
Technology watch
So what’s next for PDM? We have one new product in the pipeline, and a vision. The new product, our technology watch reports, are published about ten times a year. They are a more detailed report on events attended by PDM staff. Whereas PDM offers a succinct overview of highlights, the Technology Watch reports provide a 10 page report on conferences and trade shows, often with illustrations of the latest software in action. We intend to dovetail the Technology Watch digital content with the PDM electronic editions to offer a high-end information source to corporate clients.
Community
But in the longer term, what we really want to develop is a community of folks who are involved in upstream software. We sense a real need out there for something but we are not sure what. Somehow we want to group software users, knowledge workers and the development community in a way that transgresses the traditional boundaries. Thing is we are not sure how. So let’s hear your voice. What do you expect of PDM in the next few years? What directions should we take the oilit.com? Discussion groups? List server? Let your voice be heard! Write us at pdm@oilit.com - and at the same time, if you haven’t done so already, sign up for our free monthly emailed headlines service.
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