Robert's New Job

-->(unrelated photo and comment) Does anyone else's office vending machine sell CRUNK! energy drink? Because our's does. Feel free to make jokes/comments about this or other things you think MMS vending machines sell in the comments field of this post.





And now here's the rest of the story.....

Robert here in case that wasn't clear by the title of this posting. Not to many months ago I received a certificate here at my work. It was in recognition of my five years of federal service. It caught me off guard a little bit because some times it feels like I just started as an intern just the other day. However, other times I feel like I've been here for 25 years already. (ah, I can see all you working-aged readers nodding your heads in agreement) Anyways, knowing how long I've been here at MMS, and knowing that I have done pretty much the same thing for the last three of those years, I felt like it might be time to try something new. As chance would have it, my organization of MMS (MRM or Minerals Revenue Management) was in the midst of a reorganization. With that, three new groups would be forming. State and Indian Coordination (ick), Royalty Valuation (dealing with regulations and such, ick) and a Market Analysis group. Now I know what you're sitting at your computer saying:

"Hey Robert, didn't you minor in Economics, the study of markets? And didn't you also take a bunch of statistics classes that dealt primarily with analysis? Too bad you hated both of those... What's that? You didn't hate those classes? You say you really enjoyed those??? Well then, that sounds like a great fit for you."

And indeed, you've just had yourself an accurate conversation with yourself. Good Job.

So, if you couldn't surmise it from the underhanded way I just conveyed it to you, my organization asked for volunteers to go and form the new groups, I applied, and was selected to be one of the founding 2, count'em 2, members of the new Market Analysis Group. Although, techincally, they merged us with another exisitng group of two people because of HR issues, and renamed us the Economic and Market Analysis group, but still, I'm in a new group.

My reasons for the change were more than just my interest in the field. I had recently applied for a couple of promotions and didn't get them and so I was looking for other opportunities to broaden my talents and experiences in hopes of making myself an even hotter commoditiy here at MMS. Moreover, after having done this job, which I enjoy very much, for the last several years, I wanted to move on before I got in a rut and became burned out without any desires for upward movement. I see that a lot here, and I didn't want to fall into that trap.

What does an Economic and Market Analyzer do, per se? Well, that's a good question, and the short answer is, "we'll see." The longer answer brings up the fact that this is a brand new group so nothing is very defined yet. In general terms, based on my position description and our new group's mission statement, we'll be tasked with keeping a governmental thumb on the pulse of the US energy markets. We'll make databases of market intelligence and pricing, including specialized regional data, trasportation and processing costs, et al. that we can get from outside, third party information providers. Ideally, we'll be able to provide that information to the other parts of MRM so that they can make more informed decsions when dealing with industry and the data they submit to us. Fun huh? I think so.

So far, in my first couple of weeks, we've had some meetings about how we're going to go about getting this data and what data we want to collect. Also, I've been doing a lot of reading of industry journals and publications. So far I am enjoying it very much. Next week, I will be spending a couple of days at a conference in NYC that MMS gets seats at as part of our subscription to one of those 3rd party industry journals. I am looking forward to that and will probably make a post about it once I get home.

That's the long and short of my new job. I am excited about the opportunity to be in this group from it's inception and help to create it's direction and focus.