Open Comments, hosted by The Open Group
Welcome to Open Comments hosted by The Open Group*, where we’ll discuss things openly with our guests from a variety of backgrounds and from different walks of life. Through this podcast, we hope to give you an inside look into a variety of topics with an equal mix of humor and candor.
In this series so far, we have touched on the following topics: Healthcare, HR, Diversity + Access to Technology, Cybersecurity, and lots more. We hope you enjoy our show and look forward to bringing more topics into the fold. Let’s get started!
*The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards and open source initiatives by fostering a culture of collaboration, inclusivity, and mutual respect among our diverse group of 900+ memberships. Our Membership includes customers, systems and solutions suppliers, tool vendors, integrators, academics, and consultants across multiple industries.
Disclaimer: The Open Comments Podcast (hosted by The Open Group) is presented purely for informational and educational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and the guests are their own and are not intended to harm or offend any group, organization, company, individual, anyone, or anything.
Host: Ash – CDMP- Certified Copywriter (CMP) – CDMA, Marketing Specialist, joined The Open Group in 2020, initially working in the Certification Team as a Certification Services Agent, before moving into the Marketing Team where he now works on marketing collateral, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and produces/hosts The Open Group, Open Comments Podcast. .
Open Comments, hosted by The Open Group
Open Comments: S2 Ep. 6 - Petrobas - Brazilian Energy: The Journey so Far with Leonardo Melo and Pascoal Mello
Petrobras IT leaders Leonardo Melo and Pascoal Mello share how The Open Group OSDU® Forum is transforming data management in oil exploration, creating interoperability between applications, and making workflows more efficient and cost-effective.
Key Highlights:
• Leonardo has spent 13 years in data management and governance for geosciences at Petrobras
• Pascoal works in exploration focusing on geoscience applications
• Collaboration means engaging with other operators and vendors to achieve interoperability using the OSDU Data Platform
• Their journey with The Open Group OSDU Forum began 3-4 years ago with proof of concepts to test interoperability potential
• Interoperability solves the challenge of moving data between different software formats efficiently
• Centralizing and standardizing data saves significant time and money by eliminating manual data transfers
• Face-to-face meetings build stronger relationships than virtual collaboration alone
• In-person events provide opportunities to meet higher-level executives and adjust strategies
• The challenge is maintaining the OSDU Data platform while balancing different stakeholder objectives
Copyright © The Open Group 2023-2025. All rights reserved.
The following episode has been recorded at the Open Group Amsterdam Summit Hello and welcome to Open Comments with me, Ash. Today's guests are Leonardo Melo, Manager of Gel Science and Geoengineering Data within the IT sector. Please can you tell us a little bit about your respective careers working for Petrobras so far? Yeah, I can start.
Speaker 2:I've been in Petrobras for around 13 years and the whole time I worked with data management and governance, specific for geosciences and geoengineering, so it's a long time that I have experience with this and in the last few years I became a manager of this area and I'm also the focal point for OSDU in my company and we've been working a lot with the community for OSDU.
Speaker 1:And Pascal Melo, assistant analyst within exploration.
Speaker 3:Hello, I started at Petrobras working network offshore. Petrobras working network offshore and after that I'm focusing exploration in geoscience application with Frick's Tutor. I know to part of the exploration team four years ago and start work with STU.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us a little bit about what collaboration means to you both in your respective roles?
Speaker 2:This is Leonardo speaking In my role. Collaboration means that we have people participating in the forum, like talking to other operators, talking to the ISVs, and making everyone to achieve the same goal, that is, interoperability using OSU. That's the main objective.
Speaker 3:This is Pascoal speaking. Important to us is sharing knowledge and sharing issues solutions because I think collaboration team help us to involve and solve our problems.
Speaker 1:Engage the group to work together and find some same solution for everyone moving on to our next topic, please can you tell us how you got into learning more about the Open Group and what your journey with the Open Group has been like so far? Please?
Speaker 2:Yes, so my journey started around three or four years ago. It was an initiative by Exploration and for IT. We were pretty close to Exploration and we have a need for interoperability between the software of the independent software vendors and it was seen as an opportunity within OSDU. So my involvement started because of OSDU, within OSDU. So my involvement started because of OSDU and we started doing a proof of concepts to test the idea and see if it actually could be useful to our company. And we did a proof of concept and we decided that yes, it is really important to us, it can help us to achieve the objective of interoperability. And then we started to implement the OSDU inside our company and it's been a journey. We are just getting in touch with everybody other companies, other operators to try to improve this interoperability and we've been participating in the forum since this time I mean around three or four years.
Speaker 3:The exploration vision at Petrobras need to solve a big challenge because you have a lot of applications and a lot of partners and they need to work together and share information, and OSDU is a way to solve this for us and we believe that OSDU can use for all the partners in this same way, because this, I think, we a good opportunity to share our environments, our knowledge, our problems, our solution. Because we solve this internally at Petrobras, we help to other operators solving internally too, because all our problems are the same and similar. Because USDU is so important to us, we work hard to do this working as soon as possible and share our experience through the forum and learn with other partners and other operators too, and learn with other partners other places too.
Speaker 1:And rewinding a little bit back to interoperability, what does that word mean for you specifically?
Speaker 2:Atrobras is a big company, like the largest in Latin America, and we have a lot of data and we have a lot of different softwares, and interoperability means the data to be taken from one software, one application, to another, and that takes a lot of. It's a big problem because the formats are different, the sizing sometimes is big, so we have a bunch of people just to load data from one software to another and this takes a long time and the interpreters, that is, are the guys that actually find new oil reserves and need that data to do it. So what we intend to do is reduce the time that the interpreters have to get the data from one software to another. So that's what interpretability means For the data to flow seamlessly between all these applications. And OSDU is like English for data in upstream, so it translates everything and that's why we need it so much.
Speaker 3:With OSDU, we want to centralize and standardize our data and because we have a lot of time to and because we lost a lot of time to make a copy and transfer data application for an order and we need to this all this data in the same place, because we help us to share information in all hours of workflows that we need to do and sometimes we lost a lot of time and a lot of money to do these tasks and doesn't work well, and OSDU is a possibility to do this more flowing, it's more quick and we save money and present our industry, our environment, a different way to work. It's like a new way to do the same thing, but faster, and be more easy and more friendly environment, and we expect that this will bring gain to our company and our users.
Speaker 1:And how have you been finding the Open Group and Stamp Summit so far, and what do you like the most about attending these types of events?
Speaker 2:what I like the most is to be able to encounter the people face to face right, because we've been doing like online meetings and I I know a bunch of people from far away and now it's the time to actually meet that people and be able to do an in-person meeting and talk about our problems, about our goals. That's the main point for me, and we also have a possibility to see how the other companies are using OSDU, how they are improving their environments, and that's quite nice because we are far. We are doing some things in Petrobras that might be different or in some cases it's equal what the other companies are doing, and it's quite nice to see how everybody is going towards OSDU so we can adjust our strategy.
Speaker 3:For me, face-to-face is the most important event that I participate in because it's a possibility to know other persons that have the same environment, the same challenges and we have virtual meetings that help us. But the face-to-face is such a great idea. To do our opportunities to see eye-to-eye and show us with more details, free conversation and possibility to show with more contact with the person, is different than virtual. So face-to-face is so important to make more engagement in the team and create the collaboration environment that works very well.
Speaker 1:And do you think it's easy? I mean, in today's world, a lot of things have become remote, so do you think, when people come together, that it's much easier to gauge the ideas that they have, their viewpoints in person, rather than online or over Webex, where sometimes messages can have different interpretations, whereas when you're face-to-face it's easier to interpret each other more? Do you have a preference over each one, or do you think each one has their own positives and negatives?
Speaker 2:you could say it's like it wouldn't be feasible to meet face-to-face every time, but face-to-face it's always better, in my opinion, because we can see exactly the expression that other people are yes, yeah, and we also can use the environment like boards to write down things. I just think it's different, but it's better to do it face-to-face. But we do a lot of virtual meetings because of needs, right? We are like in Brazil and we talk to people from a bunch of different countries, so that's what we need to do. But whenever we have a chance to do it face-to-face, it's better.
Speaker 3:Meeting is our future that we need to use. But face-to-face is the best way to do the paperwork well, because we need to see the person and keep contact and if we don only do this virtual, we lost some details, some important points that they need to understand. If only virtual meetings you can do this touchable for the person to understand what they really want to do, what they want to explain. So if you have the opportunity to do the face-to-face and for two years, twice years or sometimes, it's so important because the virtual meeting is going to help us to continue this working. When you see the person, see the other person personally, you can make more engagement for what you want to do.
Speaker 2:One other point that I would like to add is that sometimes it's hard for us to meet the higher ups of the companies, and they're are here.
Speaker 1:I think as well because of that it's nice to have, as you've both mentioned. It's nice to have everyone in one place, because obviously we don't always have these opportunities all the time. So when people come together like this because it can be different environments, but because it's face-to-face, it's just, you could say, easier to collaborate. I'd probably say face-to-face. But also, as you said, you're meeting so many different people in different, on different levels, within different companies, that it's not only very energizing, but you can share your ideas, learn from each other, but just get to know each other as well. And I think, in a world where, you know, a lot of things are remote, when we have these opportunities to meet face to face, I'm sure we don't take it for granted, you know, and it's great to get work done in this way, and then we go back to our remote working and then you know, we come back to face to face. So you have it.
Speaker 2:I think it's a nice balance, you know, to have the face to face and also remote working as well yeah, yeah, and in the event it's not just working, because when we are doing a virtual meeting it's just work but when we're here, we also grab a coffee together, networking. You have the events at night, so it's different. You you kind of build a relation with the other guys that are here. So that's really important to actually improve the work later because of these connections that we may have.
Speaker 1:And just go in the relationships as well when you get a chance to meet face to face.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, yeah, in the first phase, the possibility to know more about the other person, what we involve them to do this, what we need to do, and after this we can discuss about the other things that can help us to understand what happened and your workflows, or day by day you need to do your workflows or day by day you need to do. Sometimes you can expand with more time, not only with virtual meaning, that you need time to start and to finish. Obligation to do this and face to face opportunity to know more about the people and relationship.
Speaker 1:Thank you and, to end, is there any advice or nuggets of information that you'd like to share with our listeners after talking with us on strategy and collaboration today?
Speaker 3:after talking with us on strategy and collaboration today. Today is a challenge and we need to work together and sometimes you need to know how we do it the best way and you need to decide how we can do this in the best form. And when you do this collaboration with a lot of persons, with different teams, we can do this better. We can make the show, the important point that you need to solve together and I think it's the most important thing that you need to create in this collaboration team, you work and explain something that you need and you understand what the other person want, and you can do with more flowing.
Speaker 2:I think one big challenge that we have is because in the forum we have the cloud service providers, the software vendors. The forum we have the cloud service providers, the software vendors, the operators, and each of these has different objectives, but we we are moving towards one, one goal, that is, to build an open platform, and it should be open. It's the objective of the open group and also the OSDU. These, these should be open. It's the objective of the open group and also the OSDU. This should be open and that's the biggest challenge for me, Because everyone should collaborate and keep their eyes on the goal. It should be open and it must keep open.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us today on the Open Comments podcast, and we wish you all the best with your future endeavors and to all our listeners out there. Thank you so much again for tuning in, and we hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as we have. Stay safe and happy listening.
