More on multimedia

Jan. 6, 2003
There has never been a better time to be in the business of communicating with a professional audience.

There has never been a better time to be in the business of communicating with a professional audience.

More ways exist now than ever before to share intelligence. To be more specific about it, communicators have more media than ever at their disposal.

Just a few years ago, a writer or editor tended to work in only one medium. A magazine editor worked in the print medium. A radio announcer worked in the broadcast medium.

The worldwide web changed all that.

As has been reported in this space before, Oil & Gas Journal embraced the web early as part of a multimedia strategy.

The last part of that sentence means OGJ doesn't use the web just as a place to park an electronic duplicate of the magazine (although subscribers can read the current issue on OGJ Online at www.ogjonline.com) or to promote itself (although some of that appears there, too).

It uses its web site first and foremost to help it tell the oil and gas story, to add value to those dimensions of OGJ that profit from being online.

The web's timeliness, for example, enhances OGJ news. And the search-engine capability that comes with the web raises value to subscribers of material from back issues of the magazine.

Continuous evolution

A fascinating characteristic of a multimedia strategy is continuous evolution.

For example, the research dimension of OGJ Online has evolved beyond the searchable archive of magazine articles. There's now an area called the Online Research Center offering a treasury of statistical, analytical, and historic information—some free (such as articles from past editions of International Petroleum Encyclopedia), some not (such as statistical tables, executive reports, and a new pipe-mill spreadsheet).

The Research Center is worth checking regularly. New features appear there all the time.

Evolution of the multimedia strategy doesn't happen just on the web site—although it never fully disengages from the web.

Much is happening at OGJ and affiliate publications in another medium central to the strategy: conferences and exhibitions.

Conferences aren't new to OGJ, which has held events on topics as diverse as alkylation, oil markets, and health care in remote locations. And its sister publication Offshore has developed many successful conferences in its area of focus.

Recently, all the conferences were combined under a single manager, Offshore Publisher Chris Barton. The line-up for 2003 already is rich.

The year's first event is High-Tech Wells Forum USA: Multilaterals, Intelligent Completions, and Expandables Feb. 11-13 in Galveston, Tex.

Others, in order, are the Offshore West Africa Conference, Mar. 11-13, Windhoek, Namibia; Subsea Tieback Forum, Mar. 18-20, Galveston; High-Tech Wells Forum Russia, June 24-26, Moscow; Flow Assurance Forum, Sept. 23-25, Galveston; Deepwater Operations Forum, Oct. 6-8, Galveston; Pipeline Rehabilitation & Maintenance Conference, Oct. 6-10, Berlin, Germany; and Deep Offshore Technology Conference, Nov. 17-19, Marseille, France.

Other conferences are under development. Ideas are welcome.

The best part of all this is how interactivity links the media together.

Interactivity is the ability of a medium to support conversation.

Print isn't very interactive. Except for letters from readers, magazine pages don't allow for much discussion.

Conferences, by contrast, are very interactive. The interactivity is formal, as in panel discussions and question-and-answer sessions, and informal, as in conversations during conference coffee breaks, meals, and receptions.

Interactivity has its disadvantages. Interactivity doesn't attach well to recorded history. Textual conference proceedings can't capture everything said in a Q&A session, and recorded transcripts are cumbersome. A spontaneous insight communicated during coffee-break chit-chat never gets fixed in the record. And to fully benefit from conference-style interactivity, a person needs to be in attendance.

Middle ground

The web offers an interesting middle ground between the fixed record of print and more-ephemeral interactivity of conferences.

Web interactivity is more contemporaneous than is possible in print, yet it records the conversation better than conferences can. And the conversation can be more open than is possible with e-mail.

Web interactivity occurs in chat rooms and online forums, which enable users to post messages to which other users can respond.

OGJ Online has forums in each of its home-page categories: General Interest, Exploration & Development, Drilling & Production, Processing, and Transportation.

Miniature conferences happen spontaneously in areas like these. The web's interactive tools are like that.

But the cocktail receptions are nothing like the real thing.