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Virtual Seminars are a cost effective distance learning methodology. Like teaching, they require an instructor (Mentor), a student (Learner), and a communication medium (Media). Teleconferencing, video conferencing, Intranets and the INTERNET allow motivated students and colleagues access to mentors with real and relevant answers. This essay summarizes how Virtual Seminars are being used in the oil industry, where the majority of the companies are already on-line, getting the right information to the right people at the right time.
Inexpensive electronic distribution of value adding knowledge reduces risk and still adds value to the system. Procedures to automate classification against work tasks create an electronic corporate memory and further enhances value. There is so much material available today that an information search often turns into a filtering exercise, an attempt to find patterns and classify retrieved material. Catalogued Benchmarks, Best Practices, or Knowledge Maps of experience, become the keystone for distributing knowledge using Virtual Seminars.
This essay summarizes methodologies developed and the experience gained in presenting the first Virtual Seminars to Academia and the Oil and Gas E&P business in mid-1996. Furthermore, in the spirit of the "school-boy's" emulation of Emerson's address of 1837 on "The American Scholar" (a); key paragraphs from Dr. Vanneavar Bush's July 1945 paper in The Atlantic Monthly "As We May Think" (b) have been included as section introductions. This paper is a subset of a larger essay (c) where the idealistic goal is to send a modern-day call (109 years after Emerson's call and 51 years after Bush's call) for the ongoing need of a new relationship between thinking people and the sum of our knowledge.
Activity modeling, Best Practices, classification, data, distance learning, information, Internet, Intranet, knowledge, Knowledge Backbone, learning, media, mentors, patterns, templates, virtual seminars, virtual reality, wisdom.
"Of what lasting benefit has been man's use of science and of the new instruments which his
research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material
environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his
security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him
increased knowledge of his own biological processes so he has had a progressive freedom from
disease, and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological
and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
Virtual Seminars fill knowledge gaps in modern organizations by:
"Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his
publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of
catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become
lost in the mass of the inconsequential."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
Learning will become independent of time and place, and available at all stages of a person's life. The learning context will be technologically rich. Learners will have access not only to a wide range of media, but also to a wide range of sources of education. (d) Distance Learning Media only works effectively when a person is actively involved. For one-on-one mentoring that person is the Mentor and the Learner. For one-to-many mentoring, the site administrator is located at the Learners site. For many-to-many collaborative teams, there are Media facilitators at each site. We are starting to approach the possibility of Learners learning what they want to know, when they want to know it, and from whom ever they want to learn it from. This type of learning builds bridges across the Knowledge Gaps.
MINI-CASE-HISTORY DISTANCE LEARNING FORUM 1
On Friday, December 28th, 1990 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM CST Walden 3-D, Inc. sponsored the first Lynk Teleconference. Prior to the teleconference phone call, each of the 14 participating sites received a Lynk unit, documentation, and a set of 35 mm slides. The presentation was mirrored at each site. Each site was responsible for having their own slide projector. The Lynk unit allowed control of the 14 slide projectors to be passed from one presenter to another. The slide projectors were advanced and backed up by sending a tone, which the Lynk unit translated into a control signal to advance the connected slide carousel.
The exciting result of this Distance Learning experiment turned out to be the synergism, interaction, and learning which occurred between the participants, rather than the presentation content. For instance, in the question and answer session following one portion of the presentation, a discussion started from San Francisco leading to a side conversation with a participant on his ranch in Navasota, Texas, resulting in a Purchase Order for Johnson Space Center's first Head-Mounted-Display Virtual Reality system. Two other participants (Los Angeles and Pittsburgh) learned they had both studied under Buckminster Fuller at approximately the same time. And we were told from an astute teacher in Maine, that our presentation would not be understandable to most folks, because of new words and words out of normal context. Presentation preparation, distribution, logistics, and site administration were the biggest issues. The cost was minimal, especially when compared to travel, living, and professional time costs involved in physically gathering this same group of people together for any similar seminar of common interest.
MINI-CASE-HISTORY DISTANCE LEARNING FORUM 2 (e)
On September 20th, 1995 from 8:15-8:45 AM CDT, the first demonstration of astronauts using a shared virtual environment across the Atlantic took place. Astronaut Bernard Harris was at NASA/Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas. Astronaut Ulf Merbold was at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Darmstadt, Germany. The same virtual environment was mirrored at both sites and connection was via a standard ISDN phone link. The virtual environment consisted of the Space Shuttle payload bay and the Hubble Space Telescope. The two astronauts cooperated in performing the major activities associated with the changeout of the Solar Array Drive Electronics (SADE). The activity included real-time hand-off of the replacement unit in exchange for the original SADE. Prior to the session neither astronaut had been exposed to head-mounted displays nor virtual training environments. At the conclusion of the task the two astronauts shook hands, waved good-bye, and each declared the performance to be acceptable.
"The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we
use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as
was used in the days of square-rigged ships."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
One of the biggest issues with Learning is getting access to the right material when it is needed. With significantly more access to electronic data and information, we must find new ways to extract that which is useful - the knowledge and the wisdom. In a sense what is needed is context. Pattern finding provides context and has a close relationship to the theory of problem solving and decision theory. In fact, almost any field of scientific activity can be described in terms of pattern finding. At first pattern finding recognizes objects and their context, such as a business situation. Finally, pattern finding recognizes changes in situations, or it recognizes events. This results in discoveries of the natural laws which control events. On the basis of such natural laws it is then possible to predict the course and development of events. (f) These patterns provide a natural basis for classification. Classified material becomes an extension to the mind of the Mentor, allowing presentation of solutions to Learners in context and without requiring traditional teaching techniques.
Industry often refers to this context as "Best Practices," or "Management practices and work process that lead to world-class, superior performance." (c) If you have two ways to accomplish something, the documented way is a Best Practice. The other might be quicker, cheaper, or better; but unless it is written down and part of the corporate memory it is not a "Best Practice." As Thoreau wrote in the 1840's: "A man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well." (g) The Best Practice converse to Ecclesiastics statement "there is no new thing under the sun" (1:9) is that "someone can learn from what I am doing if I document it for them and make that documentation available." Computer technology and networks knowledge encourage capture as Best Practice HyperJournals or ELDOs (ELectronic DOcuments). Benchmarking or Best Practice ELDOs are continuously updated repositories of project skills, project processes, case histories, and the resources which have worked within project time and budget limitations. Since ELDOs are digital, it is implied they take advantage of word or phrase indexing, and specific hypertext linking by association and classification.
The natural classification schema's derived from appropriate pattern finding algorithms provide a reliable way to store, retrieve, and update learning material. Using a single mathematical data type for database construction allows the various components traditionally needed for complex information based problem solving to be highly integrated: spatial or geographic information systems (GIS), data base systems, and modeling or analysis systems. Central to obtaining clear answers from this complex information is the concept of boundary. Boundary in Life-Cycle terms refers to the limits of a system. By extending the analysis of boundary to spatial information at all scales (from the factory floor to the world), an information system has been built showing the many relationships of products in all manufacturing processes (including relationship to source and re-source of raw material sites, to manufacturing site, to neighborhood, to city, to county, to state, to nation, and to Earth). (f) As this technology continues to mature, it will change the relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge, and thus the relationship between the Learner and the Mentor.
This ratio of cost improvement will occur whenever an integrated Best Practice methodology is implemented. Bob Peebler, President of Landmark Graphics, has stated that of the $60 billion industry exploration and production budget, there is $15-20 billion waste due to decision fat, or inefficient decision-making processes. (h) To quote from The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (see i): "Learning in organizations means the continuous testing of experience, and the transformation of that experience into knowledge - accessible to the whole organization, and relevant to its core purpose." Virtual Seminars allow knowledge in the form of Best Practices and Benchmarks which have been automatically classified via pattern finding to be made available to solve problems.
"The human mind . . . operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to
the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are
not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory.
Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring
beyond all else in nature. . . . Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be
mechanized. Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private
file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, 'Memex' will do. A memex is a
device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is
mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged
intimate supplement to his memory."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
The Knowledge Template provides an associative methodology for classification by task. When experience is captured by task it can be retrieved by function or discipline; i.e. people information by human resources; marketing information by sales; data by technical staff; organizational information by management; management information by stakeholders; and systems information by users. Structure is created by information about information, for instance, how data is classified, organized, related, and used. (j) This enterprise-wide structuring is what we call a Knowledge Backbone and provides a context for Virtual Seminars (Figure 1).
article" by Wire." (j) Virtual Seminars provide a mechanism to start this process of true integration.
This type of true integration allows a company to sense and respond to rapidly changing customer needs. (j) A Corporate Data Type is unique to each corporation, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses of the corporation as material is collected against a Knowledge Backbone. Large organizations have become too complex for any individual to keep all of the relationships in their mind at one time. Therefore, in the same way a fighter pilot uses computer systems to augment the ability to assimilate and react to rapidly changing environmental information, the ideal manage-by-wire corporate implementation uses an enterprise model to represent the operations of the entire business. Based on this model, expert systems, databases, software objects, and other technical components are integrated to allow a company to respond to threats in real time. (j) The Knowledge Backbone becomes the extensible information model of the enterprise. Each area within the organization is responsible for keeping their portion of the Knowledge Backbone current. This only works as it becomes part of the natural process of doing daily business. Most large oil and gas companies have installed the needed technology and are establishing procedures for optimal use. Many of these companies have done considerable work on developing work flows. By identifying where digital material is handed- off in these work flows, and indexing them against an appropriate Knowledge Backbone, it is straight forward to embed knowledge captured as an automatic process. Because electronic retrieval is virtually instantaneous, the resulting Knowledge Base soon becomes a useful decision tool, an electronic Mentor or a continuously on-line Virtual Seminar.
Knowledge Backbones are best implemented where one can take advantage of automatic or embedded data capture processes or where there is an opportunity to avoid expensive mistakes. Maintenance and extendibility can be an issue. If the Knowledge Backbone is not tied into the normal work flow of an organization, it is not economical. The process of teaching the organization this "new language" can also be cost prohibitive. There can quickly be a significant return on investment if (1) a base-line information model is available, if (2) this Knowledge Template is being updated and enhanced by domain experts, and if (3) Mentors can teach the modeling process to Learners in the organization. The process starts with integrating Virtual Seminars into the way the company does business and making sure the right knowledge is circulated with appropriate security throughout the information management system.
". . . Present-day mechanisms and gadgetry . . . affords an immediate step, however, to
associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at
will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.
When a user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on
his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing
positions. . . . Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be
instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover,
when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in
turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is
exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together to form a new book. It is more
than this, for any item can be jointed into numerous trails."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
The INTERNET, its World-Wide-Web (WWW), and internal company Intranets are electronic implementations of Vanneavar Bush's memex. What is the INTERNET? In one sense, there is no such thing as the INTERNET. There are many, many local and regional computer networks in the US and a large number in other countries around the world. Like local and regional telephone companies, these computer networks are linked to one another. The gigantic international system of linked networks is what we commonly refer to as the INTERNET. (k) The advantages of the INTERNET are both concrete (informational capabilities) and theoretical (the value of collaboration and the value of role change). (m) Intranets reside inside an enterprise as a local or regional computer network. Typically an Intranet is secure, limiting access by competitors. An Intranet can stand-alone or be connected to the INTERNET. The INTERNET has the potential of allowing us access to the extended memories we need in order to fully function in a rapidly changing world.
We have become so specialized in modern society we are too often no longer whole. Today is similar to the image from Emerson's 1837 lecture on The American Scholar, "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man." (a) The INTERNET acts as an integrator, allowing us to understand the relationship of the parts to the whole. However, it also, like books, television, and other media, has the potential of snaring us into the chains and shackles of humanity debasing pornography and worse. As with any medium, we individually eventually make the choice. We choose to seek light and truth, or we choose to seek darkness and bondage. Networking is typically concerned by a "flow culture." (d) Which stream to follow? Organizations can help direct our search and our choices by providing technical and business Knowledge Backbones to enable distribution of Knowledge useful to the organization using indexed Best Practices, or Knowledge Maps of experience.
INTERNET technology is exploding. The old concepts of "intertextuality" and "dialogueism" have something to see with the new one "dynamic hypertext." (d) As the technology matures, word processors, spread-sheets, and presentation software tools will be shared at multiple sites on an Intranet or using the INTERNET. Video and sound communication through ISDN and cable channel connections, will be supplemented by point-to-point and multicast video, and shared whiteboards. The technology allows a Mentor to broadcast from their home, similar to a radio station, but without the line-of-site antenna limitations. The technology will supplement and build on the experience of teachers who have taught through teleconferencing. Consultation of hypertext on a screen incites the reader to integrate reading and writing activity into one sole process. (d) The Mentor becomes the Learner. If a Learner is aware of a dialog or presentation of interest, they can listen in or become an active participant. However, availability of technology does not equal use. An INTERNET-based model of Learner, Media, and Mentor will allow 1:1 tutoring, 1:M Virtual Seminars, and even M:M collaborative teams.
Often in the oil and gas industry there are projects, like "reducing water flow from a reservoir development," requiring company experts who are unavailable locally, say in Nigeria. Experts from London and Houston can become members of an Intranet or INTERNET based Agile Virtual Team focused on solving these significant economic problems over a relatively short time-frame. It is not uncommon for team members to never actually meet each other face to face. The team might exist for a week, a month, or a quarter. Practical implementation of network technologies implies someone in a global company will always be working, 24-hours a day, on key time-sensitive projects. Solutions to management issues of motivation, performance, measurement, and monitoring still need to be translated into implementations of these new information technologies. Team members are not necessarily from the same company. Texaco refers to the concept of copetition (vs. competition), where sometimes it makes sense to collaborate with a company which is a major competitor in another market area. In addition, in the E&P industry (as well as many other right-sized industries), there have been numerous people with tremendous experience and specific technical expertise who have become independent consultants over the last decade. Many of these individuals have developed affiliations allowing their expertise and availability to be made known to potential customers. Intranets and the INTERNET are enabling and encouraging this kind of collaboration.
"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with the mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has
at his touch the associated options and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience
of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with
familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient's
reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly
through analogous case histories, with side references to the classical for the pertinent anatomy
and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the
chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of
compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior. The historian, with a vast
chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient
items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
A Virtual Seminar is a customized professional presentation between a Mentor and (a) Learner(s). The difference between this form of Distance Learning and traditional teaching environments is the Mentor and Learner(s) are not in the same room, nor necessarily in the same city. Virtual Seminars can be live or recorded presentations accessed via a WWW based teleconference, or they can be made available on a personal computer via a CD (Compact Disk) hypermedia presentation. Virtual Seminars are based on interactive presentation of ELDOs, which are mirrored at each participating location. Virtual Seminars are a way for Mentor to assist Learners without the cost and risk of travel, minimizing the barriers of time and space and reducing the risk of a travel related accident to zero. A Virtual Seminar is kept under control of the presenter, but encourages Learners to interact in on-line sessions via dialogue pages and the question and answer period following the presentation. Virtual Seminars are expandable through detail questioning of experts via the dialogue pages and the question and answer forum, allowing the presenter to share supplemental information from personal on-line libraries via the WWW, as well as from domain-expertise-based Knowledge Backbone hyperlinks. As Virtual Seminars are prepared and made publicly available, each page of material is indexed against the appropriate Knowledge Backbone. This allows an instantaneous search by task and retrieval of ELDO material related to a specific Activity and kept in context.
This task based cross-referencing opens doors for marketing and focus groups, product announcements, sales presentations, Benchmarking, Lookbacks, Best Practices, and other related data, experience, information and knowledge. A Virtual Seminar is immediately available anywhere in the world where there is a telephone connection and the ability to FTP files via the WWW. Alternatively they are available where there is a telephone connection and where scheduling allows for express mail delivery. In addition, CD-based Virtual Seminars can be available on any system with a CD-drive that has an HTML Browser on it, and is subject only to getting access to the Virtual Seminar CD.
A Virtual Seminar presenter must be better prepared than those making traditional professional presentations. The Distance Learning Teacher, or studio teacher, is the common thread throughout the Distance Learning Process. This Mentor is responsible for knowing the subject matter, preparing lesson plans, producing the course material, selecting supporting materials, delivering instructions effectively on-line, determining the degree of student interaction, and selecting the form of distance evaluation or assessment . (l) Typically, this kind of technical and business expertise is developed over several years of work on the job, after receiving the appropriate formal training at a qualified university.
Virtual Seminars encourage presentations to be customized for each specific audience's interests and needs. They allow Learners to interact directly with subject matter Mentors without regards to spatial and temporal boundaries. Virtual Seminars legally protect the presenter's intellectual property, while encouraging active use of domain expertise knowledge and experience. Martin Meyerson, President Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania (m) has pointed out "The best lectures have always been those that deal with "tentative materials" that result from the professor's research. If they cease to be tentative, don't include them in the lecture; print them. The main teaching function has to be interactive." To quote the AI researcher, Herbert A. Simon, (l) "Human beings are at their best when they interact with the real world and draw lessons from the bumps and bruises they get." The on-line HTML-based ELectronic DOcuments are living ELDOs which the Mentor can update to allow Learners immediate access to the latest developments in the domain of study. Procedures can automatically update Best Practice ELDOs using the INTERNET. Because of the ubiquitous nature of HTML files across platforms and operating systems, Virtual Seminars are available through Browsers, like America On-Line's Browser, MicroSoft's INTERNET Explorer, Mosaic, or NetScape.
Virtual Seminars are the ideal mechanism for technology transfer. In fact, Virtual Seminars encourage more frequent, targeted, one-on-one or one-to-many Mentoring, helping to solve problems as they occur. An issue is that many students come to universities with a lack of extensive computer experience (m) and many who can take advantage of Virtual Seminars in the business world are in a similar state. Therefore it is critical to 'keep it simple.' We should always beware of those who profit from making a subject difficult and complicated. Ever since the days of witch doctors, mystification has been a useful tool that helps a professional accumulate and maintain power. (k) The more familiar teachers are with the instructional design and delivery process, the more effective their presentations will be. (l) There needs to be plenty of guided, hands-on practice developing and delivering multimedia courseware to live audiences. Simplicity is one of the elegant aspects of Virtual Seminars.
Virtual Seminars are a cost effective mechanism for providing Distance Learning. However, there are still difficult questions needing to be answered about the qualitative differences between face to face and mediated social interaction. (d) The major drawback of radio and broadcast television for instruction was the lack of two-way communication channel between the teacher and the student. (l) In the beginning of the "talking" movies, some visionaries have asserted that teaching was going to be completely changed by this new technology. The radio has played this role in many countries where geographical distance made necessary the use of Distance Learning systems. Now with the rise of satellite television we face the same situation: one video recorded course can be sent and received virtually everywhere in the world. Video conferences and teleconferences are equally if not more helpful. (d) Enhancing INTERNET based Virtual Seminars with PC video and sound will provide all of advantages of video conferencing at a fraction of the cost.
EXPERIENCE TO DATE
The first Virtual Seminar using the WWW was given from my home office in far West Houston to a group of 20 students and professors at the University of California at Santa Cruz on May 8th of 1996. (n) The presentation lasted an hour and a half and is titled "Integrating Multiple Seismic Surveys to Interactively Interpret a Salt Dome." The motivation was to prototype a new way to accomplish the goals of the AAPG's Visiting Geologists Program. The HTML files were prepared in advance. A copy was put at a local FTP site and electronically copied to UCSC and put on a UNIX and a Macintosh system there by a graduate student. Mirroring the presentation allowed both sites to step through the presentation at the same rate, without network "downtime." A direct INTERNET link was made on a second computer at my house and a computer at UCSC for questions to be posted during the presentation on an interactive Dialogue Page. Then it was simply making the telephone connection at the scheduled time. After introductions by Dr. Casey Moore, the 100 slides were reviewed in about 70 minutes. Several questions were submitted during the presentation, and answers were worked into the presentation. Following the formal presentation there was a question and answer session that lasted about 20 minutes. Comments about the Virtual Seminar were positive, especially the significant savings in travel and time.
The second Virtual Seminar followed the same basic format. The key difference was the absence of an INTERNET connection to the booth on the floor of the EAG (European Association of Geoscientists) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The mirrored HTML files were taken over on 8 mm tape and loaded on a system on the convention floor. Then a speaker phone was obtained and a presentation was made from my home office to 10 senior executives of an Oil Service Company. The material was not new to them, but the media sparked new ideas of remote demonstrations, decentralized marketing focus-groups, product introductions, advanced training, targeted support for key customer problems, and product support . Once the preparation was done, the Virtual Seminar only required a speaker phone and a telephone call. It was a very inexpensive and safe trip to Amsterdam.
The third Virtual Seminar was given to a group of 55 scientists attending a conference in Halden, Norway on June 25th of 1996. The mirrored presentation was on "Virtual Reality in Geosciences" and was projected on a large screen for participants to see. In addition, a computer was set up for anyone who wanted to come to the front of the room and send a question via the Dialogue Page during the presentation. The 61 screen presentation was given in about 50 minutes, with a half a dozen questions answered and one request for follow-up information received via the Dialogue Page. Following the presentation there was about a 40 minute question and answer period, with a roving microphone at the conference site.
Eight days later the fourth Virtual Seminar occurred. It involved giving a presentation on "How to Prepare and Present Virtual Seminars" to executives of Landmark Graphics Corporation at their offices in Houston, Austin, and Denver simultaneously. This Virtual Seminar was different in that none of the screens were downloaded in advance and mirrored. The performance was good in both Austin and Houston. However, Denver only had the teleconference call because a power hit earlier in the day took down their INTERNET server. Not having to travel to Norway, back to Houston and then on to Austin and Denver was a real treat. In some ways, the participants probably focused more and got more out of the presentation than if travel had allowed an in-person viewgraph or slide presentation.
Another key Virtual Seminar on July 10th of 1996 involved administrators at Winona State University at Winona, Minnesota, the University of Oregon at Eugene, Oregon, and The University of Houston in Texas. The Virtual Seminar was a repeat of "Preparing and Presenting a Virtual Seminar." However, each site, like at previous Virtual Seminars, had a customized presentation. Each screen of the presentation had a footer with the appropriate school logo, the name of the Virtual Seminar, and the copyright protection information relative to the ELDO. As these Virtual Seminars are enhanced, the ELDO can be automatically regenerated and distributed to customers so they always have the latest technical information available on the topic of interest. Of course, the knowledge on each screen is cross-referenced against an appropriate Knowledge Backbone. The cost of the teleconference call was the only negative issue discussed relative to this Virtual Seminar.
On Tuesday, August 29th of 1996, Ken Turner's Virtual Seminar on "The Philosophy of Synergism" was digitally recorded by the teleconference supplier. This allowed Learners to review the Virtual Seminar at their convenience, either downloading the ELDO so they have a personal copy on their system or accessing it across the WWW. For users in different parts of the world this removes all barriers of time and space. Figure 2 summarizes Virtual Seminars available to the E&P business as of the first of October 1996.
Figure 2: Virtual Seminars match a Learner's needs with a Mentor's experience.
"All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses -
the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it
not possible that someday the path may be established more directly? We know that when the
eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical
vibrations which occur in the cable or a television set: they convey the picture from the
photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast."
Vanneavar Bush (b)
Virtual Seminars, when built on a foundation of Benchmarks, Best Practices, Meta Data Types, and Knowledge Backbones fill the Knowledge Gaps modern enterprises face. The barriers of time and space dissolve and spatial inaccessibility is no longer issues. As processes are embedded in an organization to automatically capture relevant technology developments, this Knowledge becomes available to every Learner seeking these answers. Management is able to monitor associated industry experience and Benchmarks as they learn to "fly by wire." End users have access to relevant information about standards and Best Practices. The bottom line is that Virtual Seminars implemented in this fashion can provide access to the right data when and where it is needed.
Modern organizations must fill the Knowledge Gaps. There is a real and desperate need to honor the individuality of employees, and provide them with the data, the information, the knowledge, the intelligence, and the wisdom they need to accomplish their jobs and be complete human beings. This starts by providing a task based Data Type, or information structure, against which job required material and experience can be catalogued. It culminates with implementation of procedures that ensure Benchmarking, Best Practice documentation, continuous improvement, and the development of a digital corporate memory. In other words, the Knowledge Gaps are filled by allowing Learners access to Mentors through Virtual Seminar technologies.
Within a short time of implementation, information catalogued by an E&P office in the Far East or Africa will prove to be of considerable value to the home office in Texas, filling in the Knowledge Gap of spatial inaccessibility. As systems are implemented and as employees get in the habit of capturing technology against the 'meta code' of a Knowledge Backbone, everyone will benefit from having the latest status of all new technological developments. As companies come to understand which industry experience gives them a proprietary advantage and which does not, and share those which lift the entire industry, we will discover 'green' oil companies in the E&P industry and worldwide improved efficiencies. As data is catalogued against tasks and geography, and made interactively available, within appropriate security boundaries, there will be a tremendous improvement in worker effectiveness.
This kind of change will not happen overnight. Apple Computer has found that it takes up to two years for instructors to adjust to and work with new tools, to implement them successfully, and to integrate them into their curriculum. (l) Enterprise modeling tools have been available for more than 25 years. Implementing them to enable an enterprise to "fly by wire" will happen slowly. (j) Recent computer and network technical improvements are making it possible to build these changes into daily work flow. But as the Chinese saying we all know states: "a long journey begins with a single step."
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