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In this blog we would like to present the “SPE Connect Now!” project – a joint initiative of 9 student chapters from all over the world, who are trying to make the communication between the students of SPE easier.  

It all started with a problem… 

Just like many other student chapters, our chapters are hosting a couple of big international events each year and each year we face the same problem - how to spread the word?  Of course, there are people who we have met on other student events and invited personally, so the representatives from their chapters keep coming each year.  This is great, but, in order to enable a true global dialogue and exchange we need more than that. It’s 21st century, after all, so face-to-face communication can’t possibly be the only way to do it. So, what’s the alternative?   

E-mail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Whats App?  We tried it. 

First of all, in order to reach any chapter via these resources, one has to either find the e-mail address or FB page of the chapter or the address/profile/number of a certain member of the chapter he’s looking for. In the first case the problem is that many chapters don’t have a chapter e-mail or a FB page, and many of those that do don’t answer. In the second one, the problem is that often one doesn’t really know who he’s looking for – it’s possible to get the name of the, for example, the chapter president, from the spe.org chapter directory, but this is, by far, not the case for all chapters, and name is often not enough to be sure you’ve found the right person because of privacy settings on social networks. As for LinkedIn –this network is banned in some countries (Russia, for example), and Whats App is almost impossible to use, because phone numbers are very hard to find on the web, and are, in general, reserved for more personal and local communication. Moreover, a message or an invitation is often not directed to any particular chapter, but to anyone who is interested. Therefore this approach can be very inefficient, since finding contact details for only one chapter takes time, and getting in touch with only ten or twenty of them can take hours.  Our members have invested a lot of energy and nerves in creating a database of contacts, but with little success.  

What’s curious is that spe.org chapter directory has all necessary contacts, but SPE International is not allowed to publish them all because of specific privacy laws in different countries. In a way, this is a paradox – SPE is supposed to bring people together, yet it sets a lot of barriers, which prevent its members from reaching out to each other. This is what we tried to challenge at the International Round Table meeting at the VIII “Oil and Gas Horizons” Congress in November, 2016. Students from eight chapters from all over the world (AGH University of Science and Technology SPE SC, Alexandria University SPE SC, Curtin University SPE SC, Montanuniversität Leoben SPE SC, RWTH Aachen University SPE SC, University of Clausthal SPE SC, University of Zagreb SPE SC, University of Kansas SPE SC) gathered at Gubkin University in Moscow, Russia, to discuss problems we’re facing, pick one and solve it together. Mr. Darcy Spady, the 2018 SPE International President, was our special guest. The discussion was initially supposed to be sort of a contest – each chapter was supposed to ‘sell’ the problem and the solution to the others, because a voting was planned in the end. Yet, in course of discussion, everything changed. After listening to only half of the presentations, we soon realized – we are all facing the same problem. The voting was cancelled. It has been decided – we need to try to break the communication barrier in SPE. This is how SPE Connect Now! project was born.  

The next question was – how? The answer was rather obvious, it was something that had been right before our eyes the whole time, yet for some reason (which will be revealed later in this text) we never seriously considered using it – SPE Connect. SPE Connect, International’s own product, a social network designed for all the members, both student and professional, where all members automatically have a profile as soon as they get their SPE number. SPE Connect, a network without privacy barriers, not banned in any country, and also a safe one. This network had all we needed – in the Student Community, (just like any other Community at Connect) there is a tab, called ‘Events’. Here any chapter can post information about their event, and it’s even possible to register for the event directly on Connect. Therefore, if used properly, this tab could be a common database of all events, organized independently from SPE International* by any student chapter in the world. So, a student, looking for a conference, forum, fieldtrip, etc. to take part in, could just visit SPE Connect and find all the necessary information. 

‘If used properly’ is the keyword. At the moment, there is one (if any) upcoming event in this tab. No one is using it! Let’s try to understand why. First of all, unfortunately, SPE Connect is currently gravely misused. The discussions are full of spam - people trying to get a job, or an internship, chapters posting information about some small internal events that they organized, etc. There are, in fact, very few examples of this network being used properly. In order for SPE Connect to work and be attractive for all its members, we have to change the way we are using it. It seems quite basic, but we need to remember what’s relevant, and what’s not, and pay attention to the subject of the discussion we’re taking part in. Apart from that, we need to explore what this network has to offer – for example, if a chapter decides to use Connect for PR, the reports could be posted not in the ‘Discussions’ tab, but rather in the ‘Blogs’ tab as one long, detailed blog about the chapter activity (like we are trying with this blog), and event invitations should, as already mentioned before, be posted in the ‘Events’ tab, rather than ‘Discussions’ This is just some of the examples, but there are plenty of others, and I am sure many of you, who are reading this, are aware of most of them. 

And yet, blaming only the users would be naïve. Despite its obvious advantages, SPE Connect has several serious flaws: it is kind of unstructured, not very user-friendly,  sometimes lacks proper moderation, and has an old-fashioned design. Nevertheless, as Mr. Matthias Meister, the Regional Director of SPE South, Central and East Europe Region, once said, ‘We can choose to be a part of the problem, or a part of the solution’. Therefore, before we give up on using the network entirely, we should try to change it. We should let SPE International and SPE Connect IT team in particular know about everything we don’t like about this network. We should write about everything that should be changed, both in the desktop version, and the app (yes, there is an app as well, no, we didn’t know about it either before we started the project). This is why our team opened a discussion (link to the discussion about the app ; link to discussion about the desktop version) in the Student Community about the quality of SPE Connect, and here I would like to invite all of you who have something to say, to join us. Our team has already attracted the attention of SPE International for this problem – we contacted members of the Connect IT team, and have presented this problem first to Mr. Darcy Spady, at the “Oil and Gas Horizons” and then to Mr. Matthias Meister and Mr. Blaine Horner, ‎Regional Activities Specialist for the North Sea; South, Central, and East Europe and Africa at “East Meets West” in Krakow, Poland, in April, 2017. All of them were more than happy to hear constructive critic, and all of them supported this initiative. All we have to do now is to speak out! 

Long story short –to overcome the communication barrier among student chapters worldwide, before thinking about creating something completely new, we should try to use what we already have the best we can: (1) avoid spam and try to follow some unwritten rules of online communication when using SPE Connect; (2) criticize the network openly, but constructively, and provide SPE International with a thorough feedback on how Connect can be improved.  

In order to introduce SPE Connect to new users, our team has created a video series (link), revealing some (but not all) of the great opportunities it offers. 

Apart from that, we decided to launch a plan B by creating our own database of student events, which is available to all, and can be quickly adjusted to our needs (PetroStage) . Eventually, we are hoping to turn it in sort of ‘booking.com for student events’, with all the information, and detailed reviews from actual participants. Please, support us by adding your event to the database – let’s try to have them all in one place.  

If you want to know more, or have any remarks or suggestions, please comment or contact us via speconnectnow@gmail.com. 

*SPE International events are already all gathered in their calendar at spe.org