February 2007

Ongoing Search

The month of February has been very busy on a number of fronts.

As indicated in the previous message, I spent the entire week at the Underwater Intervention show which was held at the Convention Center in New Orleans talking to a lot of folks. I had a prolonged chat with a guy who was the customer's representative while we were developing a deepwater ROV at SubSea International. Anyway, he asked me what I was doing and asked if I would like to work in the Washington D.C. area as he knew of companies looking for expertise like mine. I indicated that in the past I would not have been interested, but at this point in my life I might be. He indicated that he worked very closely with a company which he had a lot of respect for, was small enough to get noticed, and had a good workload.

To be honest, I had completely forgotten about the conversation when I got a call from a manager at a consulting company in Nortyhern Virgina to ask me to send them a resume. I do so and soon after I'm asked me to come up to DC to meet with him. We have made arrangement to meet in late March as it's the earliest all our schedules allow. I'll keep you posted.

In any event, I am applying for a number of different positions through a variety of sources and getting little if any response. The market for technical talent at my level is rather small and definitely specialized. Companies have the luxury of being very selective about the experience level of the people they hire, and I as attempting to change industries, it's something of a challenge.

In addition, I am pursuing no less than three other developmental opportunities for new company startup type opportunities.

• The first is the three company roll up I mentioned last time. We are working on arrangement to get all the interested parties together to discuss the issue in detail. Thus far it's been a severe cat herding exercise and we still haven't successfully scheduled a meeting date
• The second opportunity is with a guy I've known since my Neptune Sciences days. Charles Whitehead called me out of the blue when I was working at Neptune to discuss his business development activities around something called shape memory alloy materials. Charles is a rather dynamic individual so our initial conversations tended to very long, but informative. Recently Charles has focused his energy on the offshore oil and gas market and we have put together some idea for products around which to create the first component of a multi-tiered corporate entity. Charles invited me to go to the Houston Technology Center's Venture Capital Conference at which he was invited to speak. It was an interesting experience in that I got to liaise with a large number of investors both small and large. We did meet a couple of investors who were very interested in the technology, so in that regard the conference was a success
• My third opportunity is with a guy I've known since my SubSea days, and is rather out in left field. I met Paul Tidwell while at SubSea as Paul was looking for a deepwater ROV to conduct a survey mission on a German submarine he had located in very deep water of the Cape Verde islands. The deal with SubSea to use the ROV never materialized, but I've kept touch with Paul ever since. He has recently moved from the Washington D.C. area to Mandeville, which is near my house. Paul and I have been meeting regularly to discuss his plans to develop a company around search, recovery and conservation of undersea antiquities.

While all this is going on, daily life continues. The house is for sale, but the market is still very slow. Work at Outland continues with new products being developed daily. Some of these are pretty interesting. Working at Outland pretty much leaves only Friday's for job hunting, but does provide much needed cash flow to keep the household functional.

Y'all take care now!

Free Agency

Well,

My final day at PCS was last Wednesday. On Monday I took the opportunity to clean out my office as the remainder of the week was going to be pretty hectic as I wanted to attend Underwater Intervention 2007 (UI) in New Orleans. It has been a couple of years since I've had the opportunity to go. The last time I went to the show was 2004 and it was pretty dismal as the offshore business was pretty slow at the time. That certainly wasn't the case this year as the offshore oil and gas business is growing great guns. The show had more people in attendance this year than I've seen in a long time. In any event, on Wednesday, I went and finished cleaning out my office, and left before lunch to go to UI. It was bittersweet as I certainly don't relish being out of work, but it was also a relief as my time at PCS hasn't exactly been productive.

As UI was very busy I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time in order to reestablish contacts. Everyone asked me what I was doing and I said I was a free agent. Luckily Buddy Mayfield of Outland Technology has graciously provided some contract work to tide me over until I find a suitable permanent gig. I've done free lance work for Buddy for years helping him design his lights, cameras and ROV systems. We are going through all his products and making certain his documentation is complete. I'm even looking at new product design for the future. It's good to be busy. I'll post some pictures when I've got something to show. Yesterday I did a major change to a housing for his new LED light modules and today I'm starting to design a new grabber for his ROV. I want to do a modular design that Buddy can build up grabbers to suit customer requirements in one, two, three or even four functions. The design process has just started with the identification of appropriate electric motors.

The employment opportunities seem to be bountiful so hopefully my free agency should be limited in duration. Three opportunities involve start up entities around my services. Two of these I've been working for a several years, with the third surfacing just a couple of weeks ago. The new opportunity happens to possibly include the three company roll-up I talked about in the fall. An associate, with whom I had been discussing another opportunity last summer, called me a couple of weeks ago about become the focal point of a new engineering capability for his organization. We talked at some length and I decided to see if they were interested in talking about the roll-up as it fit their strategic goals. All of us met after UI last Wednesday, and I thought the synergies were good. In any event, I'm not getting my hopes up, as all are still fairly embryonic and may not develop in time for me to take advantage of them. Additionally, I've got a recruiter in Baton Rouge that has decided to find me a job. Darren Smith of GoodPeople has been very active on my behalf and it's been good working with him. He has provided a lot of good information and we have had several really helpful conversations. Thanks Darren!

Just today I got an e-mail from someone at Shell asking me to submit information to them for possible employment. Shell has been one of those places that I wanted to work for years ago and just couldn't get there from here. I'm going to send my information, but I'm not particularly optimistic

Jourdan participated with his school in Mathcounts over the weekend. His school, Lake Castle in Slidell, came in fourth place. The competition was fierce and it was an accomplishment to come in fourth. In addition, he is also competing with the chess team this spring. Jourdan is playing on both the 6th and 8th grade teams so he plays on both days of the weekend when there is a match. So needless to say, our weekends have been pretty busy doing either Matchcounts or chess. That's okay, it's worth it!

There isn't much more to report at present. The sale of the house has thusfar proven to be nonexistant. The offer we were supposed to get from the couple from Pennsylvania never materialized. Evidently they were scared off by the cost of homeowners insurance, so they decided to buy something significantly less expensive. The market down here has pretty much died, although our agent swears it's going to get better as we get nearer to summer. I just hope we can get it sold before hurricane season.

I'll see you soon!