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OBSERVATIONS AND INSIGHTS
by J. Vazquez
November 14th, 2018
It’s been an unusually busy summer! Playing on words, I’d say that for me, the summer was busy and unusual. A couple of weeks ago, we finally moved back to our house, after a leak repair that had us living in a hotel for 2 weeks and in an apartment for 3 months. While not quite the same as living in your own home, the apartment’s location was great (in the middle of the museum district and adjacent to the Miller Outdoor Theater) and I came to appreciate a few things from this forced move into a minimalist living style. As we prepare to relocate our possessions the moving/packing company put back in our house once the work was completed, my wife and I are pledging we’ll only keep the things we really want. I think this will mean that either a local library or a Goodwill store will be getting at least 100 books from us in the next few days/weeks. The same goes for clothes, old computers, cables, and even food. I don’t know if we can get rid of any photos, though.
Something else that made these past 3 months unusual for me was that over a period of 3 weeks I made 3 trips to Mexico - One planned and two unexpected. The planned trip was to attend the IADC Critical Issues Latin America Conference and Exhibition, in Mexico City. More on this in the article on culture, but for now I direct you to the below picture, included in one of the presentations.
The above picture can be interpreted in many ways. One way would be to say that we miss a lot of innovation opportunities because we are focused too much on just getting the job done. Another way would be to say that the time to innovate is when we are not too busy, which is something we’ve been doing here at 3DENT – In the past 2 years, our little company with fewer than 10 staff members has produced eight technical papers, assisted in two conference presentations and filed four patent applications; all the while working on advancing various engineering analyses for the XLP and continuing to work with our clients during the slow period in the offshore oil & gas industry.
Going back to the 3 trips to Mexico in 3 weeks, the unplanned trips were to visit my father at a hospital in Monterrey, following a fall he had from a ladder. Thankfully, he is recovering well, albeit slowly, given the fact he’s 74. Thanks to all who sent me encouraging emails/texts when they found out about this.
This summer, I also attended another IADC conference – in Austin (Advanced Rig Technology). The reason for my attending both of these conferences was that one of our clients was presenting on a system we developed for them. Due to confidentiality agreements, I am not giving the specifics here, but I am sure you can locate what I am referring to if you check out the program for the Austin conference.
Two other things that added to the busy part of the summer for me were the development and successful submittal of a patent application and a paper I co-authored for the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference (ADIPEC). I’ll be happy to tell you more about either of these, of course.
This summer, I also attended the OrcaFlex User Group Meeting, here in Houston. I am always impressed at the new things the guys from Orcina add to the already quite versatile software package. I am looking forward to their adding a fully self-contained option for the analysis of floating wind turbines, and also the addition of a diffraction analysis package.