NSI Chairman’s Corner                           March 16, 2020

It’s 4 pm and I am thinking about how NSI should respond to…

COVID 19

Social Distancing is the phrase that will define 2020.  Just as 9/11 defined 2001.  And Great Recession defined 2008/2009.

The majority of office workers are going to very quickly begin working from home to create social distancing and slow the rate of spread of Covid-19.  Absolutely the right thing to do.  There are some good simulations herein that show the benefits of aggressive social distancing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/?itid=hp_hp-banner-low_virus-simulator520pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

Those of us who work in an office, travel to meetings, etc. are going to have a difficult adjustment to the lack of human contact that comes with working from home. 

But as I cringed about not being able to travel etc., I then thought of my young adult son and his friends who have a dynamic social network that mostly happens at a long distance using their phones and online gaming sites.  It has been difficult for me to understand how this works for them but being forced into this new world of social distancing, I think there are lessons we can learn from these young adults.  The main one being that social distancing does not have to equate to lack of human interactions.  The interactions just have to use the digital tools available to us.

To that end, NSI is going to put serious effort into creating opportunities for our fellow frac’ers to have peer group interactions.  Working from home will create challenges, but it will also create opportunities for catching up on the important things (continuing training, post frac data analyses, etc.) that normally get shunted aside by the urgent activities of the office environment….all those meetings that each ran 15 minutes long consume so much of each day.

We have some ideas for creating interactions, such as:  Re-structuring our April Frac course on the web instead of in person.  Setting up a Forum half day, with industry leaders to moderate technical sessions, but with a very open format so all participants can share their ideas, questions and comments.

We would very much like to hear from you about any ideas you might have for creating an online opportunity for our user group.  Maybe some of you would be interested in sharing how you use Spotfire with StimPlan data?  How you port StimPlan data to reservoir simulators?  Let us know what you think is compelling, and when we get a good number of people expressing similar interests, we will get a peer-to-peer web meeting set up!

Let’s all be serious about social distancing, but instead of letting it be a hassle, let’s take advantage of the time to find ways to meet new people while we improve ourselves and our industry.

Be safe. Be well. Do good.

Steve

www.nsitech.com

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