The Schlumberger Information Solutions (SIS) Global Forum, which took place in Paris this week, drew people from around the world who are interested in integrating their operations. According to Tony Bowman, president of SIS, who spoke at the opening plenary session on day two of the conference, this year’s event attracted more than 400 of the company’s customers representing 130 companies from 50 countries. The forum, which has been held every other year for the last decade, began as a means of highlighting the company’s GeoQuest software. The event has evolved into a forum for discussing new concepts and trends in the industry. This year’s event was organized in concurrent tracks that featured presentations on innovation, production and operations solutions, geosciences and reservoir engineering solutions, new technologies, and operations support. Operators including StatoilHydro, Hess, Pemex, Total, ONGC, Shell, and others presented case studies that illustrated problem-solving approaches and results in the course of the three-day event. The opening session on Monday included presentations from Dr. Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency; Jean-Marie Masset, senior vice president, geosciences at Total; Effendy Cheng Abdullah, senior general manager of the petroleum resource exploration department at Malaysia’s state-owned operating company, Petronas; José Formigli, executive manager of E&P pre-salt for Petrobras; and Andrew Gould, chairman and CEO of Schlumberger Ltd. The second day’s plenary session focused on IT trends impacting the oil and gas industry. Panelists included Paul Helm of H-P, Herbert Yuan of Shell, Chuck Hollis of EMC, Hany Abu Khadra of Saudi Aramco, Joseph Williams of Microsoft, and Ashok Belani of Schlumberger. Each panelist gave a brief presentation about his area of specialization, then answered questions from the floor about IT issues and potential solutions. The forum concluded on Thursday, October 9, with an awards ceremony that recognized the best presenters: Kevin Bradford of Shell was best presenter in the subsurface geosciences and reservoir engineering category; Richard Sagli of StatoilHydro won in the category of production, operations and drilling; and Achim Kamelger of OMV was best presenter in the solutions and services category. The week was one of insightful presentations, interesting discussions, and practical problem solving. It was a learning experience for me as well as any others. If you are interested to know more about the opening plenary session, read the article on https://www.epmag.com/webonly/item13054.hp. For the full conference program, visit www.slb.com/sisforum2008.