On the 25th March 1999 a Stadium Webcast team went down to the Wytch Farm BP Amoco oilfield in Dorset to help their Water and Gas Control project capture and share some of their expert knowledge with colleagues through the company.
In two webcasts lasting about 40 minutes each, 3 oilfield engineers spoke live through the KMi Stadium from the floor of a working field stores shed to around 50 colleagues seated at their desks inside the BP intranet around the world: from Bogota, through Houston to London and Aberdeen. (Some participants came to both live events).
The event was introduced by John Davies from Wytch Farm, who set the context of the presentation and the technology it was examining: the use of inflatable tools in water and gas intervention. The main section of the presentation saw a BP engineer from Aberdeen, Andrew Patterson, controlling a presentation which was streamed to the remote clients and which included slides, animations, a section of a simulation, and some movies and vr shots of the inflatable device. At the end of the presentation the BP speaker was joined by a Baker Oil Tools Senior Applications Specialist from Houston, Gordon Mackenzie who answered questions about this downhole technology. Just under half of the remote audience participated in this question and answer session.
A replay was instantly available for participants who could not make the live session, and is now part of a significant legacy web site on the BP intranet with further multimedia and support for workers to continue thinking about the topic.
Initial feedback about the event and all the Stadium technologies used here has been very positive. According to one participant in Aberdeen, speaking about the first session:
The webcast was an excellent example of using new technology to distribute information, and I can see many applications for this approach in the future. I wonder how much it would cost to have the same 35 people in one room, in terms of expenses, never mind the man hours!
Once commercially sensitive aspects of the presentation have been cleared it is hoped that a version will be available on the public internet via KMi.
