BrothersReunited Tsunami Appeal
As most of you know PT Jawasoft, the creators of BrothersReunited is based in Jakarta, Indonesia. You can imagine then how our Christmas and New Year were overshadowed by the terrible events on December 26th. The death toll has risen with each passing day and today stands at 144,000 souls with the over 100,000 being from the war torn province of Aceh, North Sumatra.
Schlumberger has strong ties with Aceh - Indonesia's oil industry is one of the oldest and  in 1930, almost a half century after the first commercial discovery and the earliest oil production began at Telaga Tunggal in East Sumatra, Asia's first electric log was recorded by M. Jabiol, a young engineer who led the Schlumberger crew that came from Paris to North Sumatra. This marked the start of 74 years of continuous activity for Schlumberger in Indonesia and to this day Schlumberger maintains a base near Lhokseumawe, Aceh's second city, also hard hit by the Tsunami. Further south large numbers of our members have been trained at the Indonesian Training Centre (ITC) in Medan (myself included).
Accordingly I have decided to give all BrothersReunited donations received in the month of January to the International Red Cross fund for Aceh. BrothersReunited is neither the fastest, cheapest nor most tax efficient way to donate money and so if you have already made a contribution via one of the main charities that is great. However for those of you who feel that you ought to do something but have been undecided how to do it, make a donation via PayPal to BrothersReunited and we will directly deposit matching funds to the Red Cross account here in Jakarta. You will all be able to monitor our progress via the Donations tab within the site and I plan on sending out updates during the month to let you know how we are doing. I think this is an opportunity for us all to give something back to one one of the countries that made our international careers so memorable so please make the effort.
 
BrothersReunited in Indonesia
To show how connected we are to this vast but strangely unlucky country here are the relevant statistics from the site:
 
Members who have worked in Indonesia: 802.
Members who are Indonesian: 237 (7th most common).
Members trained at ITC: 444 (3rd busiest learning centre).
Members who currently reside in Indonesia: 232 (7th most common).
 
I am not currently aware of any Brothers actually missing in the disaster which is a blessing.
 
12000 Members
Due to the events just described we missed the chance to wish you all a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year (though the sentiments stand) however we passed another significant membership milestone 10 days ago when the membership passed 12000 for the first time! Around the same time I was on a logging job with a crew of three engineers, two of whom were not yet members so it seems we will have an inexhaustible supply of new members as old hands retire and fresh faced new graduates sign up for a life of adventure with Big Blue!
 
New Features
Since your last newsletter way back in September we have made a few nice improvements:
  1. Photo's on the login page now identify the owner and title of the photos so that you can put a name to the face.
  2. You can turn off the Happy Birthday reminder emails if you are not that sort of person.
  3. There is now a nice world map on your profile showing graphically all the countries where you have worked.
  4. You can now export your profile in a portable XML format for import to sister sites (see below).
  5. On your 'My Brothers' tab we now only show the people who list you in return in bold - now you can easily see who reciprocates your friendship and who does not!
British Training Centre (Livingston) 30th Birthday Book
Some of you will recall that we appealed for photos for a book on the history of BTC  which turned 30 years young in 2004. That book has now been published and is available (free of charge!) to all those who are interested. All you have to do is contact Susan Barker at SBarker@livingston.oilfield.slb.com and she will mail you a copy.
 
Austin and Ridgefield
It was with great sadness that I heard of the closure of Austin systems centre last year - although I only spent a few weeks there it always seemed an almost mythical oasis of knowledge and peace, unlike most of the oilfield. Now I hear rumours that SDR Ridgefield is to move (may already have moved?) to Boston due to the difficulty of persuading bright young academics to relocate to Connecticut. All I can say is - end of another era and I hope all goes smoother than some of the recent transitions in Schlumberger!
 
Alliance Schlumberger
Alliance Schlumberger is a social organisation for ex Schlumberger employees and their spouses. Much older than BrothersReunited the organisation is based in Europe and organises reunions on an annual basis, publishes a magazine and now has a website and online member directory similar to BrothersReunited (http://www.allianceschlumberger.org/). Anyone interested in learning more about the activities of this group may contact:  secretary@allianceschlumberger.org
 
New Sites
Over 2004 we have tried to reproduce the phenomenal success of BrothersReunited by writing similar software to handle other communities. Some of these may be of interest to you and are listed here:
  1. OilfieldHands.com
    Built in conjunction with Brian Foster (Brother) and another Oilfield veteran, we have been mailing invitations to all BrothersReunited members. All you need to do to join this community is follow the link from the Home tab of Brothers to have your profile data (and photos) migrated across. After that your profiles are independent which means that you can list different information for your friends on Brothers than for the slightly less intimate environment of OilfieldHands.
    We are aiming for OilfieldHands to function as a networking and business tool as well as the social aspects - those of you who have already signed up please make the effort to invite some non Schlumberger contacts or it will end up dominated by blue coveralls!
  2. HalliburtonReunited.com
    It seemed rude to leave them without a site of their own after 2 years supporting the Schlumberger community. Unfortunately their legal department saw things differently and are threatening legal action over the unauthorised use of their name. I have made efforts to accomodate their concerns but they have also rejected the names bigredreunited, halliburton.companiesreunited.com and hesreunited.com and have declined to suggest a valid alternative. The site itself is doing well with over 2000 members and lots of emails of appreciation, but I am faced with the choice between shutting it down or renaming something non controversial such as www.idiotsreunited.com
    Anyone who is qualified and would like to join let me know.
  3. CambridgeReunited.com
    I thought that a Brothers type site for alumni of my old university Cambridge would be a surefire hit but we are still below 100 members. Any of you who are alumni of Cambridge and would like an invite please let me know as I would really like to see this site succeed.
  4. EurekaHub.com
    Build in conjunction with Guy Wheater (a Brother)  EurekaHub is a collaborative community for academics and researchers. It encourages the upload of scientific papers and other documents to your profile and then uses a very advanced third party clustering search tool to identify members based on their published work as well as listed fields of expertise etc. All of you working in research related fields who would like to join please let me know.
We have also licensed the software commercially for some third party applications. Some of those proceeding or being discussed:
  1. United States Marine Corps
    We have a very vibrant and exciting Brothers type site for veterans and serving members of the USMC. As you can imagine with profiles including medals awarded (graphically) and combat operations taken part in this site really makes the most of the Brothers format.
  2. George Soros Open Society Foundation
    We have started development on a version to support the alumni of their sponsorship program.
  3. University of Queensland - School of IT and Electrical Engineering
    We are just starting on a copy of the Cambridge software for this school.
  4. CSIRO Australia
    We are very excited to be talking to the world famous Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia about a possible site to support their alumni.
  5. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
    We recently had contact from a Brother working at the prestigious Woods Hole institute who wanted to propose such a site for their research alumni and others. While rather premature to mention this, we are also very excited by the possibility of working with another world leading research institute.
If any of you have thought that BrothersReunited type software would work well for your company, university or other community but were not aware that we were capable of these alternative versions, please get in touch to learn more.
 
That's all for now - I will be nagging you all again soon to contribute to our Tsunami appeal, but till then I wish you all the utmost success and happiness in 2005!
 
rgds
Ewan Makepeace