[0:40] Tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

I’m originally from Chicago, but have been here on the Gulf Coast for just over 20 years. I met my wife when I lived in New Orleans briefly, and we moved our family to Houston so I could become a GIS consultant.

I started as a Cobalt programmer coming out of college. I did start grad school, but family meant I had to cut the program short. I joined Diamond Offshore in 2015 right at the start of the oil and gas downturn as Director of Global Infrastructure, and I had to bring together the infrastructure groups and implement change management. However, one of the first things I had to do was layoffs. Now things are slowly on the up, but trying to get IT investments over the last 7 years has been almost impossible.

[05:16] How is the industry now?

What I tell employees, vendors, and even friends is that just because the price per barrel is increasing doesn’t mean that it affects us. There is a delayed effect on offshore drilling. Bids are starting to come in for the future and longer contracts are starting to come in.

[08:15] What are some initiatives that you want to see in IT to separate your company?

We want to be able to utilize the data we have for better rate management and banishment to make better decisions. Analytics as opposed to straight line transactional data. Taking that into the future we want to tackle preventative maintenance. When are things likely to break down? How long have certain things been operating? Vendors have access to that data, and if we send them our statistics, they can tell us if something is close to going out of service. Any failures mean we aren’t making money. We drill 24/7 365 days a year.

[12:10] Who do you report to?

I report to the CEO, and my stakeholders are his direct reports. I am a department head with all my customers being the executive leadership team. We do things like testing that lifeboats deploy easily and smoothly. We have AI glasses where you can sit on the side of the boat and simulate a lifeboat launch.

[14:36] How did you develop your love of technology and how did it lead you here?

I was always a self-professed geek. My cousin got a Commodore Vic20 for Christmas, and once he got an upgrade, I was given it. I discovered there was basic programming on the machine and I began making my rudimentary games. I always wanted to be a radio personality, but the people side of things led me to switch directions. I got more into it and took electives for programming and data processing in high school, and went to college to pursue it.

My college counselor looked at my transcripts and noted my Cs in math and tried to dissuade me. I just did the best I could on every assignment. I would even come in on Saturday. I started to realize that you have to be able to speak the language of business.

[26:10] For those looking to climb the executive ladder, what is important to study and understand?

How technology is evolving and changing. Understanding the business, where it is, and where it is evolving too. You need to have foresight. Having a mentor can be an advantage.

[31:50] What are you guys doing with AI?

It gets back to preventative maintenance. Now they have IP addresses, and we can gather data. We can track the speed of tripping in and out of hole bores and maximize efficiency depending on the location of the rig.

[39:40] What other things are coming up on the useful horizon?

We’ve looked at AR, but it is an expensive process. It’s still evolving, and once it can reach experts across the world that can remotely troubleshoot and guide it, that is going to be big. On the other side of things, cyber security is a huge market. It evolves constantly. Phishing attacks, monitoring, etc. are always improving.

[42:40] What’s the scariest security threat you’ve encountered?

Things like the solar winds attack, and the conflict in Ukraine. These things currently don’t affect us, but easily could.