cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"What a week! The breakfast I mentioned last week ended up being a half hour later than intended. I couldn't get the e-mail to work correctly and so I didn't send 'Frustration'(http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets/1998/9837.html) until after breakfast. I forgot to change one of the parameters on in the e-mail program, and was definitly frustrated. However, this momentary lapse was quickly overcome by being at the SEG Convention, 1998 version. I have a lot of good friends who attend these conventions. It is really a good experience for me to go and talk to my friends, get a good hug from some of the wives and some of them, to catch up on the trials and successes of the last year, and to generally reconnect. If you go back and read my Thoughtlet about last year's SEG Convention you might see what I am attempting to express (.../1997/9745.html).
I made it over to the booth by 8:00 for the staff meeting. We reviewed
some notes John had put together and that I modified. There were about
10 of the Energy Innovations/MuSE/Walden Visualization Systems people
there. Then at 9:00 the first demonstration happened, and they didn't
stop until 6:00 PM on Wednesday. I have attached two pictures that
summarize these three days of my week: (1) the crowds standing outside
of the booth 
; and (2) me talking, trying to find the
words with my hands and my body to explain the most significant advance
in man/machine interface since Xerox Park 
. It was a great week, and
a real ego boost. The first few demos were not a pretty sight. I was
trying to learn what to say, everything on the system was not set up
right, and Craig Peterson and I were learning to bounce back and forth
off of each other and off of the demonstrations. Oh well! At least
I still can learn, and by the end of the show we had a pretty good
speal down. Rita, one of our secretaries, kept telling me how much
I like to talk and how I am a 'real talker.' Our partner from Imperial
College kept sitting through demonstration after demonstration, and
when I asked him about it he said, 'I learn something new ever time
you go through it. You don't repeat yourself much. It is kind of
like rewatching an old movie you really like.' Just before he left
he was saying how wonderful the technology is and he said: 'What you
have developed is a geological Hubble telescope.'
Monday evening Continuum Resources had their first party. Since almost everyone in the old Energy Innovations drinks, the bar was the emphasis. However, John and I seemed to get along fine. There was also good New Orleans food. Paul, it was held at 'The House of Blues' with some good, but loud muscians. I don't remember their names, and they have cut several records. Several people commented to me how much fun I seemed to be having. It was fun. I was meeting new people, saying hi to friends, getting a hug every once in a while, matching different people up so they could talk about how they would work with Continuum, etc. I also got one of the nicest compliments I have ever had. I had gone out in the entrance way to get away from all of the noise, and sat at a table with Rita, Rhonda, and some other ladies. I was reintroduced to the wife of Jeff Hume's business advisor, Mr. Derek Paget-Clark. PC is about 80, has a heart condition, and during all of the negotiations relative to the formation of Continuum Resources he has been fairly aloof from me. His wife sat back in her chair when we were introduced and said 'I'm shocked at your age. Based on all of the things you have accomplished I was sure you must be 90 years old.' Even though 'No success in life can compensate for failure in the home,' maybe I do make a difference more than I give myself credit to have done.
Every night, during the week in New Orleans, I was absolutely wiped out. It turned out that as our staff requirements grew, we could not get enough rooms, and so John Amason and I ended up sharing a room. On Tuesday morning after he left, and after I finished my morning reading from the scriptures, I had a wild idea. I sat down and in five minutes wrote the following, to the tune of a similar song Quentin Reed and I wrote back in 1970 (based on D&C 101:16 and Psalms 46:10):
I wanted to get a guitar and sing this as an opening to the Press Conference at 9:00 that morning. I bounced the idea off of one of my colleagues and he thought it was better not to do this. So I didn't. Still think it would have been a good idea and would have really caught the attention of those we were talking to. Tuesday evening I attended the PGS party. They spent a lot more on their party than we did. They had a lot more people there. They had a big Marti Gras Parade with police and motorcycles, a high school band, and plastic beads. It was noisy, the food was good, and it was not my kind of party. Wasn't as good as the Continuum Resources Party. Earlier in the day we had finally signed a contract and our first work order to do work on information management for PGS. I was able to use the party as a place to review the plan, talk about 1999 activities, including the AAPG Convention in San Antonio in April, and generally lay ground work for the future. John was relaxing watching CNN when I got back to the room. It is never hard for me to fall asleep, especially after a day of giving life my very best.
Wednesday was another day of demonstrations. Fred Hilterman, who hired me to leave Mobil and move to Houston came by. He gave Rhonda a bad time with comments like: 'Who is that guy talking? He sure has a big head? I can't even see the screen.' John Northwood and his wife came by a couple of times. We met on my first trip to China back in 1983. She asked how the last few years had been, and after I responded 'hell,' we had a good conversation. It was a special conversation and I appreciated her empathy. Craig Peterson and I were both getting very tired, we understood where we were each coming from, and we were able to play off of each other. The demos got better. Numerous people came up and told me we were the talk of the show. Some of them I didn't know, and many saying they overheard it from others in other booths. One guy with Schlumberger said they had 150 people at the show and over 100 of them visited our booth. Schlumberger-GeoQuest's theame for the 1998 SEG Convention was 'Immerse Yourselves.' Geco had a full CAVE, which they were using for training drillers, and GeoQuest had a vision dome, which is kind of a neat concept. There were technical issues with both configurations, and I figured they were really just advertising the technology is mature and you need to go find the best provider. Our theame was 'We are and will continue to be the leader in providing immersive environments from a systems and software perspective.'
Paul, you will get a kick our of one of my conversations with a group of Brits. As I mentioned last week, a lot of the Energy Innovations group are British. When I had a private demo to a group of folks from England, one mentioned he didn't know what immersion was before this show. I said 'I have understood the word very well, ever since I spent two years in England as a missionary baptizing people.' I usually strive to keep church and work separate, and I don't think I offended any of the folks by the comment.
Wednesday after the show, we were invited by the guys from Sweden who built the Geco Cave for a private demonstration. (The lead guy was born in Malmo, the same place your Great-Great-Great Grandfather Bengt Nelson was born.) Geco management found out we were in the Cave and asked us to leave, specifying they did not want Energy Innovations to know the details of their presentation. It was really embarrassing for the guys who invited us. It took until 9:00 to get the posters, TV, VCR, and booth materials together to take to the Marriott Hotel for the Friday workshop on Interactive systems. I was tired and hungry after this and so I was looking for a placed to eat, when I came across a couple of friends and their wives. They invited me to join them, and we ate at a hole-in-the- wall with great food. It was interesting to have one of them talk about all of the good years we spent together working on the SEG Research Committee. I had always felt somewhat at a distance from him. He bought dinner. I excused myself, went back to the room, watched Jay Leno deride our President, and worked on the materials we are taking to Norway this next week.
Thursday was spent working on Norway, attending a couple of workshops (Future Trends, and Pitfalls in Seismic Analysis), setting up the old HyperMedia booth for the Friday workshop on Interactive Systems, and going to dinner with Roger Anderson and Richard Uden. I made a new friend, who works for Paul Sullivan at Shell New Orleans. He came up to me after I made a comment at one of the workshops. We went to lunch on Friday, and had a great conversation. I am going to get with him next week when I am back in New Orleans for the SPE Convention (Society of Petroleum Engineers). I'm glad we didn't set up a system for the workshop. It worked just fine to have a video tape. I expect we will do this kind of demonstration more and more. I had several people ask me for a job, and I passed their names to the appropriate people. As I rode in the cab in a heavy rainstorm Friday evening, I could clearly see how big and influencial Continuum Resources will become. It is exciting to have opportunities I wrote about in a song on Feburary 17th:
I was definitly tired when I got home. Larry picked me up at the airport and dropped me off to get a haircut. The barber said she thought I was angry. She gave me a nice haircut, and I gave her a big tip. Saturday morning we had our first Board Meeting for Continuum Resources. I had offended the President of TGS with one of my examples. Oh well! Pretty loose board meeting. Ragweed is out in Houston, and I was stuffed up all day.
Corey Grua picked me up at the office, and we went to the Bering Chapel for a leadership meeting with President Hinkley, The Prophet (as stated on Larry King Live last week). It was the third time I have listened in person to one of the prophets talk to a congregation since we have been in Texas. It was a wonderful meeting. There were 2,000+ priesthood holders from 12 stakes crammed into the Bering Drive building. I saw numerous friends. Tom Eccles from Maplewood II. Ken Yano from a distance, whose daughter Sara's age was killed a year and a half ago (.../1997/9714.html). There were tears of pain and joy, both on the inside and the outside. That's life."