Wilding out

Houston-based, energy-focused digital media company launches networking app

This Houston-based media company launched a networking platform to help solve the energy crisis. Photo via Headway/Unsplash

A Houston-based media organization dedicated to covering the energy industry has officially launched the beta program of their networking app.

After producing zanily named energy podcasts like “Big Digital Energy” and “What the Funk,” Digital WIldcatters is trying to bridge the hiring gap in the energy industry. By providing a platform for individuals to get their questions answered by experts and a space for companies seeking qualified talent, Collide is structured to ignite the next generation of energy innovators. Collide is currently available for users in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Collin McLelland, co-founder and CEO of Digital Wildcatters, says he aims to expand their professional community through this networking platform. Rather than being a transition away from Digital Wildcatters’ roots as a digital media organization McLelland explains Collide is an integration of the community they have built through podcasts and events into an interactive platform.

“If you look at what we’ve done historically with Digital Wildcatters, we’ve built an extremely engaged community of energy professionals — it’s a next generation community, very young forward thinking professionals that are working towards solving the world’s energy crisis,” McLelland shares.

Screenshots via apps.apple.com

The roll out of Collide has been intentionally gradual, McLelland says because they want to shape the user experience based on feedback from ongoing focus groups. Currently they have about 1,000 users and are examining how they can make the app valuable to them before providing the platform to a wider audience.

McLelland says there are two major issues within the energy sector that Collide hopes to address — a lack of knowledge about energy verticals and difficulty recruiting talent. McLelland attributes the information gap to how expansive the energy sector is, incorporating beyond oil and gas, everything from renewables to lithium mining. Similarly, by zeroing in on the energy sector, McLelland believes Collide can draw upon the network of talent Digital Wildcatters has already cultivated to tackle recruiting issues.

“What we really see with our platform is being able to bring people together where if you want to find a piece of information, you need to find a subject matter expert, or if you want to find your next job, it happens on the Collide platform,” McLelland says.

Unlike other hiring platforms, Collide offers users the opportunity to look for information about the energy sector by integrating all of Digital Wildcatters’ podcasts and videos into a content search engine. This program is part of their DW Insight subscription product which also has a startup database with overviews of various companies, from their demos to a portal to contact them.

“We hope someday that we’ll have this knowledge base that can be searched and queried to where if you want to find out any piece of information, you’ll be able to find it on (DW Insight),” McLelland explains.

McLelland co-founded Digital Wildcatters with Jake Corley. The two started the Oil and Gas Startups podcast in 2019.

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A View From HETI

A View From UH

A Rice University professor studied the Earth's carbon cycle in the Rio Madre de Dios to shed light on current climate conditions. Photo courtesy of Mark Torres/Rice University

Carbon cycles through Earth, its inhabitants, and its atmosphere on a regular basis, but not much research has been done on that process and qualifying it — until now.

In a recent study of a river system extending from the Peruvian Andes to the Amazon floodplains, Rice University’s Mark Torres and collaborators from five institutions proved that that high rates of carbon breakdown persist from mountaintop to floodplain.

“The purpose of this research was to quantify the rate at which Earth naturally releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and find out whether this process varies across different geographic locations,” Torres says in a news release.

Torres published his findings in a study published in PNAS, explaining how they used rhenium — a silvery-gray, heavy transition metal — as a proxy for carbon. The research into the Earth’s natural, pre-anthropogenic carbon cycle stands to benefit humanity by providing valuable insight to current climate challenges.

“This research used a newly-developed technique pioneered by Robert Hilton and Mathieu Dellinger that relies on a trace element — rhenium — that’s incorporated in fossil organic matter,” Torres says. “As plankton die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, that dead carbon becomes chemically reactive in a way that adds rhenium to it.”

The research was done in the Rio Madre de Dios basin and supported by funding from a European Research Council Starting Grant, the European Union COFUND/Durham Junior Research Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation.

“I’m very excited about this tool,” Torres said. “Rice students have deployed this same method in our lab here, so now we can make this kind of measurement and apply it at other sites. In fact, as part of current research funded by the National Science Foundation, we are applying this technique in Southern California to learn how tectonics and climate influence the breakdown of fossil carbon.”

Torres also received a three-year grant from the Department of Energy to study soil for carbon storage earlier this year.

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