Recently, I had the opportunity to speak at an executive breakfast briefing hosted by WellPoint Systems in Houston, Texas regarding the value being delivered from the digital oil field. While most of the largest oil and gas companies in the world have a digital oil field strategy, the vision and approach varies by company. As the application of the digital oil field has matured, a clearer picture is developing on best practices, but what continues to elude companies is metrics for the return on investment (ROI).

On March 23 - 25, The SPE Intelligent Energy Conference took place in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The biennial event had more than 1,500 attendees converge on the Jaarbeurs Center to examine the impact of intelligent energy on the exploration and production sector.

There's definitely excitement in the air about the future of utilities and the role of new technology at Distributech.  Even though there have been a few shadows cast on smart metering in California and new testing standards in Texas, utilities are moving forward with plans to enable the smart grid, not just the meters.  And they are addressing some of the concerns raised by implementing better protocols and more customer education. 

One of afternoon sessions at the SAP Influencer Summit is focusing on the application of technology to the industry verticals.  SAP has always had a strong commitment to industry verticals.  But, business models and even industries are changing as we speak with different ecosystems and networks. The challenge is how to construct an architecture that can meet the needs of changing industries, but still address the verticals.  So far, the one answer provided by SAP that is clear is in the industry packaging of analytics. 

At the Platt's Global Energy Outlook Forum last week, sustainability was the buzz word in the week leading up to Copenhagen.  Sustainability, however, means different things to different people.  The first session focus was more on sustainability as in "energy security" and economics, while the utility oriented second session was on emissions.  Surprisingly, there was relatively little discussion of the smart grid. 

New enhancements and future technology is the centerpiece of this year's Ascent users' group conference.  The company has been on a disciplined road map toward migrating all of its application to a .net platform and the wisdom of its approach shows not only in the application architecture, but also the functionality enhancements made along the way. 

I'll admit I'm a bit jaded when it comes to conferences, especially since I've attended hundreds of them during my career, but the Autovation conference this week in Denver seemed to have hit a new low.  It's a tough market for events – sponsors have cut their marketing budgets, attendees have had their travel budgets slashed, and there's plenty of competition.  In the case of Autovation, holding the event the week before GridWeek was a big mistake.  However, you would have thought that an event focused on smart metering would still have a fighting chance.  Not so.  The real story here seems to be that buyers are waiting to see if they get stimulus funds before spending any money.  Nearly all of the exhibitors agreed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus package) has thus far had a distinctly non-stimulating effect.  Indeed, it seems to have frozen technology spending by utility companies.  Just ask Itron, which saw it's Q2 revenue decline in North America by 21% compared to the same quarter last year.