How long have you been involved with The Open Group?

I’ve been involved with The Open Group for the past 6 months starting in 2019.

What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?

I am the Geoscience Manager where I manage all of the geoscience projects at Searcher including seismic processing, interpretation, and data management.  I also support our sales team and aid in the development of new technologies such as our Saismic product.  I’ve been in this role for 5 years.

Why did your organization become a Member of The Open Group Open Subsurface Data Universe™ Forum and what does your involvement look like?

We have a strong commitment to open source technology and believe that a collaborative approach is the best way forward to encourage innovation in the oil and gas sector. A large part of this is developing standards and ensuring that technologies are not developed in isolation. Primarily, we are involved in the Open Subsurface Data Universe™ (OSDU) to liberate data and address the many data challenges we face. 

How has membership in The Open Group benefited you, your organization, and the industry at large?

The membership in the Open Group has shown us how many companies take seriously the idea of open standards and helped facilitate many discussions on our products and technology.  We see that this can help the O&G exploration sector to quickly catch up with other industries in the Big Data and ML space.

What contributions do you hope to bring to The Open Group?

We hope that we can contribute by attracting new Members to The Open Group and sharing our ideas and technology with the other Member organizations.

Why is it important for other organizations to join The Open Group?

If you believe, like us, that open source and open standards are the way of the future, then you should join us with the other participants to help drive this change in all industries.

What are your hobbies?

In my spare time, I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu which is a fantastic martial art that challenges the body and mind.  I also like to do Texas style BBQ such as beef brisket and pulled pork, and work in my garden.

What book are you currently reading?

I’m currently reading Angry White Pajamas by Robert Twigger, which is a personal recount of a foreigner joining a martial arts gym in Japan and learning some life lessons on the way.

What social networks do you belong to?

I belong to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram

Any last thoughts?

The Open Group and OSDU are great initiatives to help drive innovation in the technology sector, I highly recommend that your organization consider joining.

Brief Bio 

Joshua Thorp is an experienced geophysicist with a strong background in mathematics and technology.  After graduating with a degree in Pure Mathematics, Joshua began his oil and gas career in seismic data processing with CGG (then CGGVeritas).  During his tenure there he worked as an expat in Houston, Paris, Angola and Rio de Janeiro on high impact projects.  He then moved to Searcher Seismic in Perth Australia where he continued his work in seismic processing, quantitative inversion and interpretation.  Joshua has recently been working to implement open source Big Data technologies to enable transformative AI and machine learning workflows in the oil and gas exploration sector. 

September 2019