Machine learning goes mainstream

At our first machine-learning-themed hackathon, in New Orleans in 2015, we had fifteen hackers. TImes were hard in the industry. Few were willing or able to compe out and play. Well, it’s now clear that times have changed! After two epic ML hacks last year (in Paris and Houston), at which we hosted about 115 scientists, it’s clear this year is continuing the trend. Indeed, by the end of 2018 we expect to have welcomed at least 240 more digital scientists to hackathons in the US and Europe.

Conclusion: something remarkable is happening in our field.

The FORCE hackathon

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, Agile co-organized the FORCE Machine Learning Hackathon in Stavanger, Norway. FORCE is a cross-industry geoscience organization, coordinating meetings and research in subsurface. The event preceeded a 1-day symposium on the same theme: machine learning in geoscience. And it was spectacular.

Get a flavour of the spectacularness in Alessandro Amato’s beautiful photographs:

Fifty geoscientists and engineers spent two days at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) in Stavanger. Our hosts were welcoming, accommodating, and generous with the waffles. As usual, we gently nudged the participants into teams, and encouraged them to define projects and find data to work on. It always amazes me how smoothly this potentially daunting task goes; I think this says something about the purposefulness and resourcefulness of our community.

Here’s a quick run-down of the projects:

• Biostrat! Geological ages from species counts.

• Lost in 4D Space. Pressure drawdown prediction.

• Virtual Metering. Predicting wellhead pressure in real time.

• 300 Wells. Extracting shows and uncertainty from well reports.

• AVO ML. Unsupervised machine learning for more geological AVO.

• Core Images. Grain size and lithology from core photos.

• 4D Layers. Classification engine for 4D seismic data.

• Gully Attack. Strat trap picking with deep reinforcement learning.

• sketch2seis. Turning geological cartoons into seismic with pix2pix.

I will do a complete review of the projects in the coming few days, but notice the diversity here. Five of the projects straddle geological topics, and five are geophysical. Two or three involve petroleum engineering issues, while two or three move into sed/strat. We saw natural language processing. We saw random forests. We saw GANs, VAEs, and deep reinforcement learning. In terms of input data, we saw core photos, PDF reports, synthetic seismograms, real-time production data, and hastily assembled label sets. In short — we saw everything.

Takk skal du ha

Many thanks to everyone that helped the event come together:

• Peter Bormann, the mastermind behind the symposium, was instrumental in making the hackathon happen.

• Grete Block Vargle (AkerBP) and Pernille Hammernes (Equinor) kept everyone organized and inspired.

• Tone Helene Mydland (NPD) and Soelvi Amundrud (NPD) made sure everything was logistically honed.

• Eva Halland (NPD) supported the event throughout and helped with the judging.

• Alessandro Amato del Monte (Eni) took some fantastic photos — as seen in this post.

• Diego Castaneda and Rob Leckenby helped me on the Agile side of things, and helped several teams.

And a huge thank you to the sponsors of the event — too many to name, but here they all are:

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There’s more to come!

If you’re reading this thinking, “I’d love to go to a geoscience hackathon”, and you happen to live in or near the UK, you’re in luck! There are two machine learning geoscience hackathons coming up this fall:

• Aberdeen, 16 to 18 November, at RGU — sign up on Eventbrite.

• London, 23 to 25 November at Olympia (right before PETEX) — sign up on Eventbrite.

Don’t miss out! Get signed up and we’ll see you there.

Fear and loathing in oil & gas

Sometimes you have to swallow your fear. This is one of those times.

The proliferation of 3D seismic in the 1980s was a major step forward for the petroleum industry. However, it took more than a decade for the 3D seismic method to become popular. During that decade, seismic equipment continued to evolve, particularly with the advent of telemetry recording systems that needed for doing 3D surveys offshore.

Things were never the same again. New businesses sprouted up to support it, and established service companies and tech companies exploded size and in order to keep up with the demand and all the new work.

Not so coincidently, another major shift happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the industry-wide shift to Sun workstations in order to cope with the crunching and rendering the overwhelming influx of all these digits. UNIX workstations with hilariously large cathode-ray tube monitors became commonplace. This industry helped make Sun and many other IT companies very wealthy, and once again everything was good. At least until Sun's picnic was trampled on by Linux workstations in the early 2000s, but that's another story...

I think the advent of 3D seismic is one of many examples of the upstream oil and gas industry thriving on technological change. 3D seismic changed everything, facilitating progress in the full sense of the word and we never looked back. As an early career geoscientist, I don't know what the world was like before 3D seismic, but I have interpreted 2D data and I know it's an awful experience — even on a computer.

Debilitating skepticism?

Today, in 2017, we find ourselves in the middle of the next major transformation. Like 3D seismic before it, machine learning will alter yesterday's landscape beyond all recognition. We've been through all of this before, but this time, for some reason it feels different. Many people are cautious, unconvinced about whether this next thing will live up to the hype. Other people are vibrating with excitement viewing the whole thing with rose-coloured glasses. Still others truly believe that it will fail — assertively rejecting hopes and over-excited claims that yes, artificial intelligence will catapult us into a better world, a world beyond our wildest dreams.

A little skepticism is healthy, but I meet a lot of people who are so skeptical about this next period of change that they are ignoring it. It feels to me like an unfair level of dismissal, a too-rigid stance. And it has left me rather perplexed: Why is there so much resistance and denial this time around? Why the apprehension?

I'll wager the reason it is different this time because this change is happening to us, in spite of us, whether we like it or not. We're not in the driving seat. Most of us aren't even in the passenger seat. Unlike seismic technology and UNIX|Linux workstations, our sector has had little to do with this revolution. We haven't been pushing for it, instead, it is dragging us along with it. Worse, it's happening fast; even the people who are trying to keep up with it can barely hold on. 

We need you

This is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's happening. High time to crank up the excitement, get involved, be a part of it. I for one want you to be part of it. Come along with us. We need you, whether you like it or not. 

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This post was provoked by a conversation on LinkedIn.

On breaking rules

Humans have a complicated relationship with rules. 

One of the mantras of the 21st century economy is 'first, break all the rules'. If the rules are merely stale conventions, then yes: break away. But it's tempting to go too far and scoff at all rules, and even laws, as the petty creations of boring bureaucrats, declaring, "Rules? Pah! We won't be tied down by your rules!"

But it's not that simple. We like some rules, like the rule about not smoking in aeroplanes, or parking in your reserved parking place. When others break those rules, it's annoying. And rules that define boundaries can heighten, not hinder, creativity and impact — look at code golf, Yves Klein, haiku (though the 5–7–5 thing is a myth), and Twitter. 

So what to do about a rule we don't like? There are usually a few options:

1. Obey it. The rule worked! But maybe not for you.
2. Change it. This might work, but it might take a while. Good luck!
3. Break it. Easy! Just pretend it's not there. There's no need to feel bad: everyone else is doing it.

Is that it? Be boring, be brave, or stick it to the man? No, it's a false trichotomy. There is a fourth option:

4. Make the rule irrelevant. Build or contribute to a new version of reality where the rule no longer applies.

In other words, don't break stupid rules — that doesn't change anything. Better to make your point by subverting the entire foundation of stupid rules. For example:

• When lawyer Larry Lessig decided he'd had enough of copyright restrictions, he didn't say 'screw you guys' and start downloading movies on BitTorrent. He started Creative Commons and transformed the way the sharing economy functions. Result: not just reduced revenue, but reduced impact of traditional media — far more important.
• The local government will partly fund training for small businesses from a marketing consultant. Apparently, it's common to game this system by hiring a consultant under this program, then simply having them do work for hire — website, branding, and so on. But these are normal business expenses; instead of coercing a broken system to channel public money into private enterprise, we'd all be better off beating a new path to small-scale investment and collaboration. 
• There's a young would-be Robin Hood in the geoscience publishing world, hosting copyrighted textbook PDFs for free download. He believes he's helping to rid the world of the tyranny of over-priced technical literature, but he's going about it the wrong way. Better to promote open-access literature, and be a champion of legal re-use. This denies 'the establishment' their impact, instead of lauding it, and helps spread truly shareable content.

Next time you come across a rigid rule you don't like, don't break it. Ask instead how you can make the rule not matter.

No Trespassing image CC-BY-SA by Michael Dorausch on Flickr.

Touring vs tunnel vision

My experience with software started, and still largely sits, at the user end. More often than not, interacting with another's design. One thing I have learned from the user experience is that truly great interfaces are engineered to stay out of the way. The interface is only a skin atop the real work that software does underneath — taking inputs, applying operations, producing outputs. I'd say most users of computers don't know how to compute without an interface. I'm trying to break free from that camp. 

In The dangers of default disdain, I wrote about the power and control that the technology designer has over his users. A kind of tunnel is imposed that restricts the choices for interacting with data. And for me, maybe for you as well, the tunnel has been a welcome structure, directing my focus towards that distant point; the narrow aperture invokes at least some forward motion. I've unknowingly embraced the tunnel vision as a means of interacting without substantial choices, without risk, without wavering digressions. I think it's fair to say that without this tunnel, most travellers would find themselves stuck, incapacitated by the hard graft of touring over or around the mountain.

Tour guides instead of tunnels

But there is nothing to do inside the tunnel, no scenery to observe, just a black void between input and output. For some tasks, taking the tunnel is the only obvious and economic choice — all you want is to get stuff done. But choosing the tunnel means you will be missing things along the way. It's a trade off.

For getting from A to B, there are engineers to build tunnels, there are travellers to travel the tunnels, and there is a third kind of person altogether: tour guides take the scenic route. Building your own tunnel is a grand task, only worthwhile if you can find enough passengers to use it. The scenic route isn't just a casual lackadaisical approach. It's necessary for understanding the landscape; by taking it the traveler becomes connected with the territory. The challenge for software and technology companies is to expose people to the richness of their environment while moving them through at an acceptable pace. Is it possible to have a tunnel with windows?

Oil and gas operating companies are good at purchasing the tunnel access pass, but are not very good at building a robust set of tools to navigate the landscape of their data environment. After all, that is the thing that we travellers need to be in constant contact with. Touring or tunneling? The two approaches may or may not arrive at the same destination and they have different costs along the way, making it different business.

Landed!

After a predictably exhausting trip across Kensington, then across Calgary, then across Canada, then across Nova Scotia, we have landed in our new town. Next week (we hope) we make the final move across the village to our house. Before then, we have some painting, planning, repairing and replacing to do. Fun stuff, but I am going to be trying to make myself useful to present and future clients while we do it. We'll see how that goes!

In the meantime, I got my new business cards just before we left Calgary. They are a bit home-made, but I like it that way. The geeky 2D barcode thing is a QRCode, and very easy to make online (just Google make qrcode). This one points at this website. You can encode more or less anything in them, but the more text you encode, the bigger they get. They max out at 255 characters.

Packing our bags

We fly to Halifax in a week. Before that, we have to pack up our house... or, rather, watch some guys come to pack up our house. Supposedly it will only take a day, and they'll be ready to load the truck on Tuesday. Unfortunately, it has become very cold and snowy, so it won't be much fun for them, trudging between the house and the truck.

Relief all around this week as we have finally sold our house, after it was on the market for about ten weeks. The buyer got themselves a good deal, and we got some peace of mind. The transaction doesn't happen till 1 February, but once we get to Nova Scotia, I think time will start to fly. Just as well, since we'll be paying for two mortgages till then. 

Only 7 more sleeps in Calgary.

Welcome to Agile*

In late August, my family and I spent a week in Chester, Nova Scotia. Beautiful little seaside town. Incredible weather. And the Multiple Listing System. We decided to look at some houses, around Chester, Mahone Bay, and Lunenburg. So gorgeous! So old! So inexpensive! We'd already looked at a few online, of course, talking about the options. Reduce our mortgage(s). Work from home, Enjoy the outdoors, the sea, the community. 

Next thing you know, we've made an offer on an amazing house, had it accepted, talked to a mortgage broker, and changed our lives completely. Our happy, safe, healthy, wealthy life in Calgary, Alberta. In our beautiful, much-loved, unique house. Where my fun, exciting, interesting, well-paid-with-great-benefits job is. Or was, because I quit last Thursday and in two weeks we're moving, jobless, to the other side of the continent to see what life is like in the slow lane.

And I can't wait!