Dear Paul, Melanie, Roice, Bridget, Rob, Ben and Sarah, Sara, Heather and Nate Pace, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt,
cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail,
Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana
Warner. and Diane Cluff.
Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea,
belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit
to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended
family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail
box at any time.
"The dictionary defines citation as: 1. an official summons to appear (as
before a court); 2. Quotation; and 3. a formal statement of the achievements
of a person.
This word comes to mind as I think over this last week because:
1. Jeff Hume, the President of Continuum, gave me a citation (officially
summoned me) to come to his office on Tuesday morning to discuss the state
of the company (and to imply to me I will be laid off, if I do not stop
working on long-term projects and don't start focusing on bringing short-term
revenues into the company. I was talking to Sara about this on Saturday and
she said, `Dad, I don't understand your business at all.' The simple facts
are: (a) I do not like to manage large groups, and so I give up the management
to other people; (b) the consequence of giving up this control is they have
the power and the right to fire me if I am not doing what they believe the
company needs me to be doing, specifically if I will not change my actions;
and (c) I am willing to risk this because I have never been fired from a
job in my life, and I am quick enough to out manervor most of the guys who
do like to be the boss. There is risk. There is a larger risk the basic
assumptions the new companies are built on are in error, and we have
underestimated market acceptance, competition, development difficulty, etc.
2. I found myself quoted in several different presentations and articles
recently (citations), and it is amazing to me how much credit people want
to give me for stuff that many people were involved in developing. One
of the most recent was an article in the July AAPG (American Association of
Petroleum Geologists) titled `Geology Is Now Virtually Dazaling' by Louise
S. Durham. Included in the article were these citations:
<![CDATA[ `"You need to be unencumbered when you're in the environment, and you also
need to immerse yourself in more than just the visual," said Roice Nelson,
chief visualization officer at Continum Resources, which is the first
commercial immersion environment (IE) to be launched.
Indeed, in a true IE like Continuum offers, intimacy with the data attains
new heights. Via voice recognition, the user can talk to the computer. A
head tracking device lets it know what you're looking at, and a joy stick
enables you to "fly" through a field, interrogating recognizable objects
to obtain information, such as producing rates, temperatures and pressures.
Inother words, the computer is being trained to work with humans instead
of vice versa.
Nelson, who was the initial founder of Landmark Graphics, talks about plenty
of ongoing esoteric research in the immersion arena. Continuum, for
instance, is investigating auditory applications, among others. "If you
assign different voices that sound like, say, wind or breath, to velocity
and density well logs and listen to both at the same time," he said,
"you're in effect listening to acoustic impedance."
...
For those folks who have yet to have a work experience in one of these
facilities, Nelson perhaps draws the most simplistic yet dramatic picture
to describe the impact this technology can have on the E&P industry.
"As explorers, we build pictures in our minds," he said, "and good oil
finders must communicate these pictures to each other and also to
management to make big money decisions. So if I can build a picture in
three dimensions so people can walk around and see the picture in my mind,
I have a better chance. It provides an opportunity for every geoscientist
to be a world class communicator."']]>
3. On Monday, Roger Anderson sent me a copy of a citation he had written
about me to submit to the SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists) for
the Enterprise Award four of the Founders of Landmark Graphics will be
given at the Annual SEG Convention the first week of November. Maybe as
an ongoing effort to feed my ego I will quote it here. The citation reads:
<![CDATA[ `Presentation to H. Roice Nelson, Jr. for SEG's 1999 Enterprise Award
to Landmark Graphics Corporation
By Roger Anderson
Energy Research Center
Columbia University
New York, New York
It is one of the great honors of my life to honor H. Roice Nelson, Jr. for
his contribution to the 1999 SEG Enterprise Award. - Roice and his co-
founders created the Landmark Graphics Corporation from scratch and made
it into a dominant part of a fortune 100 company in less than 15 years -- a
remarkable accomplishment for any entrepreneur. But Roice is not only an
entrepreneur, but also an Inventor, Scientist, Businessman, and above all, a
Friend to so many of the SEG membership fortunate enough to be in his
Network-of-the-Minds. Roice and his brilliant co-founders truly did change
the way our entire industry does business, and decidedly for the better, I
might add.
The creation of Landmark Graphics Corporation was not a routine event in our
industry, unfortunately. There are many of us who make incremental
improvements in the business of doing geoscience that is exploration
geophysics, and a few who make technological leaps that produce breakthroughs
in exploration and production, but Roice and his co-founders accomplished
that rarest of all feats in science and industry-- a true paradigm change.
Landmark Graphics had its origins in Roice's mind, and remarkable it
was almost fully conceived by the time of his first permanent job at Mobil Oil
in 1974. By then, Roice already knew that 3D seismic interpretation was
possible on computer workstations, even though 3D seismic surveys were
themselves only in their infancy, even though 2D seismic interpretation was
all that was done, and it with colored pencils on wall-sized sheets of paper,
and even though computers were still mainframe monsters with total compute
capacity dwarfed by the laptop G3 I'm writing this on.
Roice recognized the 3-D nature of horizons and maps when he worked for
Pan American (later Amoco) the summer of 1970 and for Amoco the summer of
1973 as part of his college scholarships. He then did a senior thesis in
1974 at the University of Utah for which he used an Evans & Southerland
Line Drawing System to create 3-D perspective drawings which convinced him
there was a better way to do interpretation. Think back to the early 1970's,
those of you fortunate enough to have lasted in this cruel, but thrilling
industry for so long. I was just getting my first HP pocket calculator --
remember the "chewing gum strips" it used as magnetic recording devices.
At that very time, Roice was refusing to sign the Mobil intellectual property
confiscation document that the rest of us routinely filled out to turn over
ownership of future inventions to our new employers. In today's world, it is
incredible that any of us would ever sign such a thing.
Roice then spent the rest of that decade trying to convince Mobil to build
the first 3D seismic interpretation workstation, to no avail. It wasn't all
Mobil's fault though. Giant corporations have a very difficult time accepting
paradigm shifts, particularly when they are invented from within -- just ask
Xerox. His boss saw the value, however, and so when Landmark finally sold
its first unit to Mobil 1985, it was to him.. However, I don't want to jump
ahead to Landmark's founding just yet.
Roice went from Mobil to a very important tenure at the University of
Houston, where he and his brilliance for creation of new institutions became
clear to us all. Roice coordinated and managed the Allied Geophysical
Laboratories (AGL) at the University for just under 3 years, but remarkably,
he implemented not one, but FIVE new laboratories during that short time.
These new Labs have themselves produced significant technological leaps for
our industry. Fred Hilterman had founded the Seismic Acoustics Laboratory
in 1978, and Roice implemented Fred's plan (telling Fred at the beginning that
he would only work there for 3 years and then go off and start a company to
develop the "stuff we would be prototyping" at the lab.
Roice also implemented the Keck Research Computation Laboratory, the
Cullen Image Processing Laboratory, the Well Logging Laboratory, and the
Field Research Laboratory - and he helped increase sponsorships for SAL
from 33 to 42 oil industry companies with funding in excess of $3,000,000.
The growth in personnel at the AGL and associated labs rose from 17 to 65
employees. While there, Roice wrote a prescient article, "Introduction to
Interactive 3D Interpretation," in the Oil & Gas Journal which forecast the
impact of interactive, 3D interpretation technologies. (I recommend you read
it: V. 79, No. 40, pp. 106-125, 1981.) It is always a test of a "well-lived life"
to ask if one leaves a job the better for having been there, to which the
University of Houston gives a resounding "yes".
Now to the creation of Landmark Graphics. Working out of their garage in
Palo Alto, with funding borrowed from their parents -- no, that is Apple.
But Landmark is to our industry as Apple and Microsoft are to the computer
industry. Landmark got its funding from the "big boys" of the venture capital
world (Sevin-Rosen) and institutional banking (Donaldson, Lufkin, Jeanerette),
and industry pros NovaTech (the venture arm of Elf Aquitaine) with legal work
done by the Compac creators, and even a giant computer company that no longer
exists invested in them -- Control Data Corporation. This initial contacts
were at the direction of the 5th, and unrecognized founder of Landmark
Graphics, Kevin Kinsella, who was involved with Roice's new creation for 5
months early on in the formation process.
Landmark started business selling interactive processing on an 8086 chip
running MS-DOS, which was upgraded within 6 months to an 80286, and then
a couple of years later to an 80386 running UNIX. Oh it was an impressive,
room-filling cabinet though. It had to be because of the giant platter discs
required to hold some of the first 3D seismic surveys acquired by the
industry. In my lab, we proudly still display the old RT with its giant
optical disc drive, but we use it as a storage table.
Think now of recent SEG conventions and the exhibition space is dominated
by interpretation workstations. Imitation is great flattery, but more, it
signifies the degree to which an individual has changed an industry.
Landmark introduced the FIRST computer workstations to the SEG show floor
in 1983 in Las Vegas. They had two systems on the floor, one in the
small Landmark booth and one in Control Data Corporation's booth,connected
by a bright yellow Ethernet Cable (an umbilical cord to their investor!).
They also had a system (for parts backup) in the Jockey Club, which they
used for private demonstrations. This was a remarkable nine months after
receiving first funding (15 December, 1982), and was the true birthing of
the company, as Roice often says. Now I go to the SPE, see few 3D or 4D
seismic workstations on their exhibition floor and know with certainty
that they will soon come. Nowadays, we go to the OTC and see the hundreds
of beautiful, hand created drillship, rig, and production facility MODELS,
and know with some sadness that computers will soon replace them on their
show floor as well.
We have all experienced Landmark's revolution close-up, so I'll not dwell
on the technologies. I do want to point out a significant event buried
within Landmark that has also changed the educational system of the
industry. At Roice's insistence and from the very first days of business,
Landmark established a University Research Grants program, in which they
awarded by competitive proposal, entire Landmark systems to universities
throughout the world. This program has had an enormous impact, and to the
great credit of senior management right up to Bob Peebler today, it continues
to support not only the training of new students, but the invention of new
technologies. I know that 4D, which came from universities like Stanford,
Cornell, LSU, Penn State, Delft, LSU, and my lab at Columbia, would not
have happened there if not for gifts of entire Landmark systems to each of
these universities.
It is the measure of any great inventor that he follows creation with
new creation, and Roice has done enormous good for the industry after his
tenure at Landmark. In 1991, Roice left Landmark to found the HyperMedia
Corporation. The company was positioned and had the hypermedia
technology to become NetScape before Netscape did. Unfortunately, Roice
was ahead of the technological wave just a hair too far, and the Internet
and WorldWideWeb were not yet available outside the military and university
communities. Significant information technology problems were solved for
Saudi Aramco, Fletcher Challenge Petroleum, my Global Basins Research
Network, Mobil, and Unocal. The company did not make it, however.
For those of you not in the entrepreneurial "company-creation" business,
venture funding firms look very positively on failed, but brilliant start-up
creations. So Roice had little difficulty starting yet another revolution
with his latest start-up company, Continuum Resources International
Corporation. Continuum is developing what I believe will become yet
another paradigm shift in our industry by designing immersive environments
to improve information and knowledge management through better 3D
computer visualization of our entire business.
Finally, I think there are great lessons to be learned from the formation
and success of Landmark Graphics Corporation. Ours is an industry
dominated by giant, multi-national and national oil and gas companies. At
mine and most other business schools in the world, it is routinely taught that
great breakthroughs rarely come from within such giant corporations -- unless
special effort and great expense is incurred for a sustained amount of time.
Think of IBM's Watson Research laboratory, or Bell labs and its successor
Lucent technologies. Where will the future paradigm changing technologies
come from within our industry. Almost all of the great oil company research
laboratories are gone. Where are the thousands of start-up companies that
fuel the engine of innovation in our industry? One hint would be to watch
Roice and see what interests him in the future and go where he goes. On
behalf of the SEG, we thank you in advance for continuing in that arduous
and difficult life path that creates new enterprises. We are certainly better as
an industry for your efforts so far.']]>
So what happened this last week in my life? Last Sunday evening Andrea and I
went down to St. Joseph's hospital to see Jane Morlas. She is dieing. She has
been diagnosed as having Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD, Mad Cow Disease). This
is particularly frightening to me. A citation I wrote back on April 29th of 1997:
<![CDATA[ `I got talking about the book 'Deadly Feasts,' which I had
just read and describes a significant health hazard for the next
50 years. This hazard is probably more dangerous than AIDS, and
it comes from infected meat which carries a protein that
crystallizes in the brain, causing other proteins to crystallize
and starving the brain. It is not based on DNA or RNA, but is a
crystallization process, and there is nothing which can attack it.
It is 100% fatal, was first discovered as a New Guinea disease
related to cannibalism, and has most recently been tied to England's
Mad Cow disease. As I started to talk about it, one of the students
said the dinner was coming. I guess I kept talking, and Roice said
'So you are going to keep talking about it, even if it is totally
gross at meal time.' I guess I am not very socially appropriate.']]>
I gave Jane the sacrament and spent some time talking to her daughter Cheryl.
It is very sad. Taylor has slept with Granny for the last 4 years. In the
middle of the night Cheryl's sister found her in the chair Granny always
read stories to her in. Jane has been coming to Family Home Evening since
the first time we held it, and she was here about a month ago, as her normal
happy self. She is now completely in a coma. They have had to start feeding
her interveineously this week. She is not expected to live much longer. Her
citation as an emergency room nurse would read much longer than the above one
Roger wrote, if she had a friend as eloquent as Roger to write it.
Monday there was the sales staff meeting. Sales are slipping, and their revenue
is $70,000 for the same time frame it was $600,000 last year. John Wearing
(9917.html and 9929.html) turned in his resignation in the morning. The salesmen
are always the first to know what is happening. In the afternoon there was a
review of the new sales presentation. It looks good, and would have been much
better to have six months ago. It is easy to look back and see I should not
have spent so much time on the big new gorilla opportunity. Steve Slawson and
I made some calls about the Utah Rural Development Technology Center. Last
week I mentioned my friend Steve and Connie Slawson concerns about their baby.
I invited and they came out home for Family Home Evening. Andrea gave a lesson
she had used for the Young Women on Sunday about eternal perspectives. It was
really good, and it was nice to hear Rachel pray for the Slawson's daughter,
whom they have already named Sophia. As an answer to this prayerful citation
the tests on Wednesday were completely normal. Steve said `The first people
really messed up or there was a miracle.' It is nice to see good happen,
especially when there is bad to highlight the difference.
Tuesday morning started at 7:00 fulfilling my citation to visit with Jeff in
his office. He really is grabbing hold of his office, and I am very proud of
how he has handled stuff this week. It is not fun at this stage of a new
start-up. The beauty of Continuum is the three immersive environment theaters
we have up and running in Houston, London, and Perth. Needless to say I got
busy and made a bunch of phone calls. Interesting how we all know what we
should be doing, and for some reason, we often just don't do it. It turned
into a very busy day. I spent quite a bit of time interpreting some data we
finally got in from Australia, so we can use it to illustrate the stratal-slice
technology. I didn't get back to the house until 6:45. There was a Relief
Society swimming party at the house, and I was to have the kids out of the
house by 7:00. Audrey went to the Single's Ward Family Home Evening. Rachel
and I went to Sonic and Matt went across the street to McDonald's. Then we
went over to David Kessler's and I reviewed the suggested changes to his
business plan. We got back to the house about 9:15 and I finished up last
week's Thoughtlet, which was delayed by pushing the delete button on Sunday.
Wednesday was interpretation, phone calls, and maintenance. I had signed up
to split with the missionaries in the evening, and met at their apartment at
7:15. Mike Pickerd, our Bishop when Roice and Ben were Priests, was the other
person splitting. He went on and on about what a good person Andrea is, and
I felt like he was telling me he was surprised anyone so good would agree to
be my wife. I gave him and Marion and Ron Burgerner a citation of his
comments after the baptism this evening, and asked if he really felt I am not
good enough for Andrea. He was tongue tied.
Thursday and Friday were more of the same. There was a meeting of the
original shareholders of Continuum Resources from 11:30 until 12:30, to give
everyone a status of how we are going to exchange the responsive notes for
stock and the steps being taken to raise the necessary capital to keep the
doors open. In the afternoon there was a review of the new sales presentation
for the entire company. Scott Truman signed the agreement to pay us to put
the presentation together for the Rural Development Meeting in September right
after Labor Day. Because of the money they have available, I will not be
giving the presentation, which is disappointing because I feel I could do a
good job. Oh well! There was a phone call which caused me a tremendous
amount of personal grief on Friday. It is really sad when something happens
which hits all of your `scared buttons.' I started to respond, and haven't
yet. Rather I called Andrea and gave her a citation to go out with me. She
is really good for me. We went and looked at scanners, then we went and saw
the movie `Run Away Bride.' It was very enjoyable, and by the time we got
gas and got home I had calmed down and didn't feel like my value as a human
being on the planet was completely squashed.
Saturday we went for a run around the block (I now have weights for my ankles
and my wrists), I took Sara out to breakfast, we watched a couple of movies
and I labeled photos from our honeymoon, Andrea helped Rachel write a talk,
I got a haircut, and the Weber's took Andrea and I out to dinner and to
Herman Park to see Shakespeare's `Twelfth Night.' It was a wonderful evening.
Sometime during the day Andrea gave me the following citation to ease my
mind about some of my concerns:
<![CDATA[ `Once upon a time there was a beautiful and talented young lady that lived
on the side of a mountain in a ramshackle house with her parents. Every
morning as she got up to milk the cow and do her chores she would look
across the valley and see a beautiful house with a golden window. Finally
she told herself she was going to leave the drudgery of her daily life, and
go and visit the house with the golden window. So after doing her chores,
and without telling her parents she took off down the mountain. It was a
long hard trek, with briars and forests and chasms and boulders. As the
sun was setting she reached the house, and was astonished to see a run down
house not unlike the one she had left. She saw a handsome young man and
said, `Excuse me sir, but do you know where the house with the golden windows.'
He responded, `You are on the wrong side of the valley, see it is over there.'
She looked and saw the sunlight shining off of the windows of her home.']]>
One of the things I have come to realize about each of you 10 kids and the two
spouses is that you are all very smart. I therefore expect each of you to
realize the obvious fact if you pick up one end of a stick, you also pick up
the other end. There are consequences to our choices. A sad part of life is
some of the consequenses we face, like CJD disease, have nothing to do with
a conscious choice we make. Others, like AIDS, do. Emotional burdens we place
on ourselves and others often are directly related to our choices. Andrea
also pointed out to me that I apologize to you kids a lot. One of the
consequences of my sorrow for my mistakes is it can be used as an excuse for
your mistakes. If you are doing this, stop it. Each of you, except maybe Matt,
are old enough to own your own emotions, to realize you have the power to make
choices that are fair or unfair to others. The consequences down the road
to someone who is taken advantage of to satisfy physical or social selfishness
have been documented in the scriptures (see for example Proverbs 6:32 or Alma
39:5), in history, among friends we each know, and more recently in the popular
press as the consequences to President Clinton of his choices continue to unfold.
The counseling he is receiving seems to be having an impact, and the lives he
has destroyed will affect generations of people. There isn't a religion nor a
social order in the world that doesn't teach the same basic human values I keep
harping on. I hope the citation for each of your lives will be an unsoiled
reputation."
I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements
of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how
important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy
it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of
distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets
go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at
rnelson@walden3d.com.
With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)