Colorado Well Spot: Putting Colorado Oil and Gas Regulations on the Map
I was honored to be part of a group of computer coders, oil and gas professionals, engineers and entrepreneurs that competed in “Go Code Colorado” in Fort Collins April 1-3, 2016. This was a contest sponsored by the Office of the Colorado Secretary of State, Wayne W. Williams. The purpose of the contest was to create wider use of the many databases that are maintained by the State of Colorado. The idea was to provide a prize ($25,000) to the top three, commercially viable, computer applications that would be developed during this contest.
The Energy Tech Team consisted of:
Emily Hueni Visionary & GIS Expert
Danielle Leighton Founder/CEO, Earth Index
Kelly Wilson Petroleum Engineer
Janel Guerrero Energy Policy Professional
Ron Stites MBA Finance, Fmr. O&G Operator
Sam Richard Full Stack Software Engineer
Wojciech Magda Back End Dev & Computer Engineer
Teams met in five cities in Colorado starting on Friday night, April 1. The five cities were Denver, Colorado Springs, Ft. Collins, Durango and Grand Junction. Two winning teams from each venue were announced Sunday evening. These ten teams will move on to a final competition on May 26 in Denver, CO.
Judging was based roughly on 50% technology and 50% business criteria in the following categories:
- Innovation
- Implementation
- Quality & Utility
- Presentation
- Potential Impact
- Relevance
- Use of Existing Colorado Data Sets
Each team had to put together a 5 minute presentation and then answer questions from three judges for 5 minutes.
Energy Tech selected a GIS application for the Oil and Gas Industry. Our problem statement was, “How can we help solve the natural conflict between surface owners and users; and mineral right owners and developers?” This has become an important problem for the Oil and Gas Industry in Colorado. Mineral resources are often found in fairly densely populated areas. Unless effective ways can be found to balance these needs, either surface users or mineral interests will suffer.
Enter “Colorado Well Spot,” the brainchild of Oil and Gas GIS expert and visionary, Emily Hueni. Emily had been toying around with the problem of taking surface use regulations and translating them into spatial relationships that could be plotted on maps that had connections to oil and gas resources and operations, along with existing roads, buildings, schools, utility lines and etc. If this could be done in a convenient and useful way, then many different users would be able to evaluate potential conflicts, speed up permit processing, reduce costs and even avoid embarrassment, rework and fines.
Emily took the idea to Danielle Leighton, an Entrepreneur and CEO of her own company doing computer applications in the Oil and Gas Industry. Danielle was aware of the Go Code Colorado program and immediately recognized this as an excellent potential project. She began assembling a team of experts. One of the first to join this growing entourage was Kelly Wilson a Reservoir Engineer (expert in sub-surface resources and equipment to produce those resources). Seeing the need for such an application, Kelly was instrumental in encouraging Emily to press on. Soon to be added was Janel Guerrero, an oil and gas professional well versed in compliance with Oil and Gas Regulations. And finally, I tagged along more out of general interest than any specific thought on how I might contribute. As it turned out, my experience in Oil and Gas Operations and background in Finance and Accounting seemed to help.
This was the team that committed going to the competition in Fort Collins. We knew that we had some weaknesses in our Team, but a couple of lucky strokes and some determined “recruiting” by Kelly and me resulted in the addition of two extremely important Team members on Friday night at the competition. We were fortunate enough to get Sam Richards and Wojciech Magda, both Computer Scientists and excellent coders, to join our little band. The result was an explosion of creative activity.
We quickly realized that we needed to divide up the tasks to have any hope of something substantive in roughly 24 hours. The first night we honed the problem statement and roughed out the value proposition so that the coders could focus on the most important features. Their task was daunting. They were to create a realistic demonstration of the product for a presentation that had to be given in a little less than 24 hours. By stating their task pretty specifically Sam and Wojciech were able to create a 20 second killer demonstration with time to spare.
By having a clear problem statement, Emily, Danielle and Janel were able to draft out the basic message of how this application would solve a very complex problem. This was no easy task. This is a complex issue that can take years to comprehend. We had about 2 minutes to explain this to the judges. Every word and every image was crucial. This was an all-day task that took most of Saturday to complete.
The last piece was an outline of a business plan. This had to make some business sense. The basics were pretty clear, but convincing 3 judges that someone would buy the product was not as simple as one might think. This was not an application that the general public would buy from a pop-up ad on Facebook. It would be sold to a much smaller market that the judges probably didn’t even knew existed. Furthermore, there had to be very high value to cover the costs of a rather complex application. This turned out to be my major task. I would do this early Sunday morning after we had the honed the problem statement, the value proposition and the basic features of the program that we were going to present.
We also applied a generalized “Red Team” approach to the entire process. The contributors made their initial stabs at their topic with their primary focus on content. It was up to their peers to review, edit, distill and improve on the results. In this Kelly was outstanding. Beginning mid-morning on Sunday she doggedly edited, questioned and condensed the whole presentation package.
We decided to do something that was quite dangerous but also innovative. We decided to have two different people give the presentation. Emily would give the “overview” or “visionary” pieces (about half the presentation) and I would give the business portion. There were a number of reasons for this. Some of it was just optics. A gray hair might be more believed on business issues and a young professional might be more convincing on a computer application. Part of it was the wide variety of information that we were presenting. Having two people up front could be a big plus – especially during Q&A. But probably the deciding factor was just the intensity of what we were trying to do. We really were trying to do a 20 minute talk in 5 minutes. The sheer volume of information we were trying to cram into 300 seconds was astounding. Emily and I were both exhausted at the end. It was like a high school wrestling match where 5 minutes is forever.
Well, we managed to pull it off. At the end of the day on Sunday the Energy Tech Team was selected to move on to the next level of competition. We are now in the top 10 with 3 chances to win. Will we do it? Maybe so. We certainly have a good, high impact product and a great Team. But who knows in such things? In any case, it was great fun and a great learning experience. So what did we learn?
We could talk about business knowledge, oil and gas knowledge, computer coding knowledge and a host of other things, but I don’t think these were learned. They actually existed long before the competition. They existed in the individuals who were coming to the table. This did not mean that they were known, in any practical sense, by the Team. That could only happen if the Team was able to tap into the individual knowledge bases and coordinate them in effective ways. What we learned that was most important to our success was how to quickly function as a Team. How and why we did this is curious. This was not a bunch of old friends or classmates or colleagues collaborating. This was a bunch of almost strangers pulling together as a Team for the first time.
How did this happen? How did this not degenerate into petty sniping, hurt feelings and snide comments? You know, all the things you see at work or at Church or on Fox News. Was it the venue? Was this caused by the pressure to perform specific tasks with significant danger of failure and embarrassment? Now that some of the pressure is off, will the Team begin to fall apart? Was it the wisdom of Danielle in forming the nucleus of the Team? If so, how did Sam and Wojciech fit in so quickly? Was it because, for the most part, women and not men were “in charge?” Was it just luck? Maybe it was all of these. Maybe it was none of these. Maybe, just maybe, we are starting to learn the joy and success of working together.
Ron Stites holds a BS in Chemistry and an MBA in Finance and Accounting. Stites & Associates, LLC, is a group of technical professionals who work with clients to improve laboratory performance and evaluate and improve technology by applying good management judgment based on objective evidence and sound scientific thinking. For more information see: www.tek-dev.net.
Comments