In case you hadn't noticed, it's a multimedia world.
There are more ways now to transmit and receive information than there ever have been before.
And new ways to communicate appear all the time. A world once thirsty for information now pitches and heaves in a roiling sea of it.
The profusion challenges information providers with traditions in printed communication-such as Oil & Gas Journal. Ink on paper isn't the only game in town anymore.
Which makes it a splendid time to be in this business.
Darkness and glare
Communicating used to mean throwing light where darkness once prevailed.
What the overinformed, multimedia world now increasingly needs, however, is for someone to filter the glare.
The aim at PennWell Corp., OGJ's parent, is to tailor multimedia channels of business intelligence to professional audiences such as the oil and gas industry.
The media include but will never be limited to traditional print, conferences, database publishing, and, of course, the internet.
Products of PennWell's strategy include OGJ Online, the Journal's web site, and PennPoint, a rapidly developing provider of well and production data.
Late last month, the channel gained an important link. Through its wholly owned internet subsidiary, pennNET Inc., PennWell formed a partnership with EBCO USA Inc., a 20-year-old Oklahoma City company that conducts auctions of producing oil and gas properties. PennNET publishes OGJ Online, other PennWell web sites, and electronic newsletters.
PennNET and EBCO will form an internet auction platform called Oil & Gas Journal Exchange, in which pennNET will hold majority interest.
Another piece of the channel thus clicks into place.
The channel
See how it works? OGJ Online provides the electronic meeting place for buyers and sellers of producing properties. PennPoint offers data to help them make decisions.
And while deal-makers are in the web site, they can check out the current week's issue of OGJ, search back issues, learn about upcoming conferences, and read commentary and analysis written exclusively for the web by some of our favorite observers of the industry.
Paper and ink. Chairs and podiums. Electrons and computer screens.
People in touch with one another and with decision-quality business intelligence.
That's the multimedia channel under construction here. And it's nowhere near complete.
