Company Member Finds DEC Tech Forums as Chance to Collaborate

4 August 2021

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The past year of COVID-19 Zoom calls has provided ample opportunities for new voices to be heard. No truer than with Celeste Shaffer at the Q1 Drilling Engineers Committee (DEC) Tech Forum in March 2021. That quarter’s theme was “Effective Communication Drives Well Delivery.” During that virtual event, Shaffer presented “Digital Solutions for Connecting Drilling Stakeholders in the Office and the Field” to Tech Forum attendees.

Sharing Company Successes

“After 10 years in the O&G industry, I had never considered presenting in front of a bunch of my peers,” said Celeste Shaffer, Business Development Manager at Nabors Industries, “but the whole experience was a great way to get involved in the drilling community and share a little about what I enjoy doing. My background is on the engineering, analytics and operational side, so stepping out from behind my cube and representing my company and our successes was a new thing.”

Celeste Shaffer presenting her March 2021 presentation via Zoom

Abstract Submission Process

“People don’t realize how simple it is to get a foot in the door by submitting an abstract,” says Linda Hsieh, whose role as Committee Liaison for the DEC Tech Forums has experience with the submission & selection process, “Although the abstract itself is only 350 words, the most difficult part of the process is getting internal/customer approvals.” Hsieh continued about the process itself:

We receive a broad range of abstracts for each event, and the DEC thoroughly reads and evaluates each abstract for its innovativeness, timeliness, relevance and technical content. Despite the fact that we only select 20% of the abstracts, we really do enjoy reading through all of the abstracts.

The extent with which the DEC Board Members consider the numerous proposals for limited slots requires weighing all these options together. For a half-day event, the slot can quickly fill up with informative content. The magic usually lies in ensuring the event’s program is valuable content.

“We’ve had a lot of success in the field with the implementation of our RigCLOUD platform and our SmartSLIDE automated directional drilling system, so it was a perfect opportunity to send in a short write-up. The process was incredibly simple, I even joked that the submission was practically a ‘tweet’ via email,” according to Shaffer.

Aligning the Presentation with the Theme

The Drilling Engineers Committee provides some guidance in preparation for the DEC Tech Forum to ensure that everyone presenting is comfortable and aware of the format for the event, but the presenters themselves have to put in the mental elbow grease. Shaffer elaborated on her experience putting together a presentation:

Creating the presentation required a lot of time breaking down our complex systems into more digestible pieces, which helped internal teams learn more about the new platform. My colleagues at Nabors provided some feedback on my presentation throughout the process. After the presentation, after hearing it all put together, many colleagues were actually themselves surprised in the capabilities and recent advances of our systems!

They say that the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to somebody. With the limited time to present, the process of crafting a presentation out of a selected abstract can help everyone grow.

The presentation offered Shaffer a chance to get in front of her industry colleagues and share a company success story with the rest of the industry. “The rewarding part about the visibility was that it not only opened doors to new people and conversations within the industry, but it offered a chance within my own company to network and pursue a career opportunity,” Shaffer commented.

Call for Abstracts is 20th August for Q3 Tech Forum on "Performance Limiters"

With an upcoming Tech Forum on “Performance Limiters”, professionals within the industry have another opportunity to present their ideas.

“The Committee’s Call for Abstracts is open to both Members and non-members of IADC, and we’re always excited about what we’re going to get from the industry,” concluded Hsieh.

Submit An Abstract