cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"This week was one of those really busy weeks. I haven't responded to a lot of e-mails I thought I was going to get to (my in-basket sits at 131 messages right now). Roice and Melanie are the only outstanding e-mails from you kids. It looks like it is going to be Wednesday or Thursday night before there is time to get caught up.
There was a nice letter from President Galbraith of the Novosibirsk Mission this week. The letter was short and it seems appropriate to quote it here:
Until I hear from Paul, I assume it is best to change mailing addresses to the church office building, as listed below. I hope you each send him a letter of congratulations on how well he is representing our family.
I was asked by some executives at Landmark Graphics to support the annual Landmark Technology Forum. Two students from the VETL (http://www.vetl.uh.edu) and I spent last Sunday afternoon getting a demonstration area set up for the conference, which ran from Monday morning through Wednesday noon. We had the nicest area in the Adams Mark Hotel, just off from the main exhibition area, and about 20% of the size of all of the other exhibits combined. We were in the Glen Meadow room, which is 60 feet by 24 feet by 12 feet. Silicon Graphics put in a big 2 graphics processor Onyx computer. It was at the north end of the hall, with two sets of two monitor systems sitting off on either side of the computer. The hall wasn't tall enough for the 14 foot screen, and we had to set up the Wall (sm) at an angle in an area where the ceiling was recessed. This was at about midway up the room. The ElectroHome projector sat against the back outside wall and projected onto the screen at an angle, so people walking by would see the large 3-D images. We closed and taped the 4 large curtians so there was no light from outside coming into the room. There were about 1200 participants at the conference.
I put up the HyperMedia booth about 25 feet from the south wall, and, without any bailing wire, figured out a way to use PVC pipe and duct tape to hold up a black plastic sheet wall all across the 24 foot width of the room, so we had a private booth area where we could run people into after they saw the 3-D visualization demonstration. John Amason helped me put together a dozen posters which we put on the booth with velcro. These posters showed displays from the VETL ROOMS (sm), and had text describing how we intend to make WVS (Walden Visualization Systems) Corporation into a viable operation. At the far right side was the booth monitor table with the TV from the house playing videos from the VETL. Against the back wall were two tables with new brochures (http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/wvsbrochure.htm), the models of ROOF (sm) built at ASI (Roice's company) (see http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/asi for list of photographs of the models), questionaires, and other supporting material.
Monday evening Bob Peebler, the President of Landmark came by and I gave him a demonstration. He said, `Roice this is really fun.' Then when I took him in the back and showed him the posters he said, `So Roice, let's cut to the chase. You have mapped out this niche called visualization, and your are integrating solutions for this niche.' I responded, `Yes Bob, that is a good description.' I did not stress that 50% of Landmark's business is visualization, nor that this nitch will grow to encompass everything they now sell. It was obvious to me. He was tired from a major presentation.
This was one of the better conferences I have been to, in terms of response to what I was showing. We consistently had people telling us we had the best presentations and material at the show. There were a lot of Russians who came through, as well as folks from Croatia, Ghana, Nigeria, Europe, Australia, Canada, South America, etc. With the help of Sister Burnham, Sister Morelas, Alma Law, Rhonda Hartmann, and three students from the VETL we collected 187 company business cards and 65 Landmark business cards. We are going to be doing an intensive follow-up the next couple of weeks. We are optimistic this is going to turn into a big business which can make another positive impact on the hydrocarbon exploration and production industry.
In case you kids don't realize it, one of the things I started at Landmark was a University Program, where we gave away workstations and software to Universities. We even had source code and a computer stolen from Imperial College in London back in the mid 1980's, and we assumed it was taken behind the Iron Curtin for reverse engineering. We had an annual meeting for these researchers, patterned after the semi-annual meetings we had at the Seismic Acoustics Laboratory. The Landmark Technology Forum is the extension of these research conferences. Dennis McMullin, who I hired to run the University Program for me, is the one who really got this thing going to what it is today. Like the rest of us, he has been passed by by the machine.
There were a couple of times when there were not very many people in the booth area. They were all in the large conference area listening to the major talks. So I went down to listen to a couple of the talks, particularly on Monday afternoon. Bob gave an excellent talk on process. He is talking all around our Knowledge Backbone (sm) stuff (http://www.walden3d.com/hmc/ knowledge_backbone/summary01.html). They did a nice job of bringing several industry leaders into the presentation via video. Some of the stuff they said, particularly about capturing knowledge and Best Practices is just plain wrong. We solved those problems several years ago. Oh well, maybe after industry hears it from Peebler they will listen to us the next time we present our solutions. They had a very famous business professor named Gary Hamel give an hour keynote address. It was wonderful. I was sitting next to some of my friends at Landmark and they kept leaning over to me and saying `Did you write this for him?' or `This is written about you!' He was talking about the next big jump in business processes. He was very strong that it didn't matter how big you are, doesn't matter how much money you have, and doesn't matter how much of the market you own. What is key is you have a strategy which places you in front of the competition, where they are going to be spending their time catching up to you. He said you need to be surreptitious (sneaky, like getting Landmark to pay your entrance fees to have you display competitive products in their show), revolutionary, innovative, and daring. I expect they will publish the talk, and I will probably post the whole talk because it was such a nice description of what we have been doing.
I don't think you kids ever realized much about the conferences I supported in the past. This was one of the major responsibilities I had at Landmark for years. They are always a lot of work, and travel is not easy. The most trying I remember was going to Stavanger, Norway to teach a one week course, flying back to Houston to wash my garments (never did like to do this in the Hotels) and go to church with you all, flying to Calgary to teach a one week course, flying back to Houston to do laundry and go to church, and flying to India to teach a one week course. There was a guy from Shell who came up to me and said, `You taught me how to do interactive interpretation in 1984, do you remember?' Did I remember! It was early on, and Shell Research in Riswick, The Neatherlands, was the most impressive place we had been asked to train at. I was stretched getting the training materials together and did not have time to get all of my passport visa's. While I was there I was putting together the course at night, and there was no time to go to the Brazilian consolate and get a visa. Then there was an ice storm in Houston, the water pipes broke upstairs and ruined the carpet, and your Mom had to fix everything while I was away `playing.' I flew from Holland to Brazil without a visa, for important meetings with PetroBras and the new President of Landmark, Gene Ennis. They wouldn't let me into the country, because I did not have a visa. Somewhat niave, I went along with Landmark's agent who bribed a border policeman to give me a 4 day temporary visa. Gene and I paid him back out of our own pocket and I have always been afraid I would get caught and sent to jail. I think this was the most illeagal thing I have ever done in my life, and I repented in my next temple recommend interview, and have always felt bad about it. The memories associated with being back in a conference were mostly good. However, I must be getting older or more out of shape, because I was totally wiped out after Wednesday afternoon when we got everything torn down.
As we were leaving, the Executive Vice-President of Operations for Landmark, John Gibson, came by to see the booth. The computer was already down and we had packed up most of the screens. I had told him about my conversation with Peebler and he had got quite concerned Peebler was conceeding to much to this new company. I asked him if he wanted to be the President of WVS Corporation. He talked around it. He does have 700 people reporting to him, and he has been making regular trips to Redmond, Washington to meet with Bill Gates about moving MicroSoft technology to where it can support Landmark technologies. After we got everthing packed up, I went back in and looked him up. He started of stongly positioning Landmark and saying he wanted to come out to the VETL to meet with me (when he wasn't busy with MicroSoft). Then he got reasonable and pointed out Landmark had service centers in Jakarta, Calgary, Caracus, Houston, London, Cairo, and Baku where our visualization products could be placed almost immediately. As we were walking out of the hotel I kept asking him why we couldn't just talk about it right then. He said `Later, and we need to get Halliburton involved.'
At that moment we went past the front desk, where Bill Hottman, the key Halliburton guy was standing. We had given a great demo to Bill two weeks before. I said, `Well, here's Bill, let's just have the meeting right now.' John got defensive and said something like `Well we can deliver anything you can right now.' My ego got the best of me and I responded, `No you can't.' He said, `Yes I can!' I said `No you can't!' He pulled out his wallet and pulled out a blank check which he said he carries with him to handle times like this. I asked how would you deliver. He said `Well we would go to Trimension in Toronto.' I said `Yes they can build you a building, and what about oil and gas applications?' He said `We can go to the VR group in Atlanta, or a little company in Albequerque called MuSE.' I said, `That's a great idea. We already have a VAR agreement with them, and we have negotiated a Master VAR Agreement with them so that everything you buy from them we get a percentage of. Of course, I havn't decided if it is worth the amount of money they want for it yet.' John was completely caught off guard and he left the conversation with Bill somewhat upset. I expect we have all the exposure we could possibly want at the very highest levels of Halliburton and Landmark now. And on Friday Halliburton purchased Dresser for billions of dollars and stock. It really was a fun week.
Another thing which happened you might find interesting was related to AIOC, the Azerbaijan International Operating Company. AIOC was formed by a production sharing agreement of 11 foreign oil companies to develop three major oil fields in the Caspian Sea. These are the largest offshore oil fields in the world. Angus Jamiason, one of the guys we are working with, sold on Monday, for WVS, a software package to AIOC for optimally positioning platforms. The first platform was positioned with this software and it saved them over $30 million. This prototype software will be put in the virtual reality environments shortly and we anticipate it will become the standard method for well and platform planning. Paul, I am probably going to have to learn Russian, or at least have someone who can translate for me. Roice, they purcahsed the software with the intent of it providing a basis to visit the U.S. and evaluate our visualization technologies with the idea of putting one of these ROOF (sm) structures ASI has started designing for us in Baku. Ben, I expect there is a way to get you involved too.
It is impossible to predict exactly what the future holds. However, it is obvious to me there are going to be some more very busy times. It is good for me to be busy and to keep my mind off of the emotional stress I feel. Frankly I must admit this has been more the norm than the exception over all of the time you kids have been around. I did just get and read a book, `Finding Wholeness and Happiness After Divorce' which I recommend to each of you, since you are all also affected by what has happened. I do feel like someday I will not find it necessary to hide from my emotions in my work. In the meantime, it is more positive than other addictions, and as you each consider how you are going to spend your time, I hope it will be with something positive like work, and not something distructively addictive."