As perennial as Fat Tuesday, irises, King Cake and Lent, New Orleans hosted the 42nd iteration of the Howard Weil Energy Conference for 600 institutional investors and 150 presenting companies as a weather-plagued first-quarter 2014 drew to a close.

The confab marks the practical inauguration of the energy year as operators close the books on annual reports, shrug off the vagaries that characterize first-quarter performance and embark on the new year’s plan of action.

The true treasure at Howard Weil is not the entertaining enthusiasm of suit-clad Northeastern institutional investors wandering along Bourbon Street following company-hosted investor dinners—Wall Street’s version of spring break. Rather, it lies in teasing out the informal word cloud of industry thinking.

With triple concurrent presentations, the déjà vu from hearing certain phrases re- peated across industry subsectors congeals into the crème brûlée of current industry thinking.

Five themes emerged in New Orleans this year. Watch for them at an energy conference near you.

The first is execution. This is the year when the tight formation hydrocarbon cycle transitions from the hope of delineating the next hot play or the science fair of optimization into demonstrating that the tight formation cycle really works. Basically, the white-collar entrepreneurship of discovery is morphing into the blue-collar world of converting risked resource, possibles and probables into proved undeveloped and cash-producing proved developed reserves. It is now clear that the factory model has established a firm foundation in the oil patch, and operators are asking the investment community to judge the industry on its ability to extract greater recoveries out of tight rock as initial production rates and estimated ultimate recoveries grow.

Furthermore, getting the goody out of the ground will illustrate each management’s capability regarding the second conference theme: capital efficiency. Capital efficiency is hidden in the steady litany of falling well costs as operators master the assembly line of hydrocarbon extraction across large acreage positions. This year’s emphasis on capital efficiency suggests operators are less interested in pursuing the latest hot play and more interested in reducing costs and maximizing field work to get previously discovered resource to market.

As coquettish natural gas prices flirt with $4.50 and lingering cold weather threatens a late spring, investors in New Orleans privately expressed hope that the natural gas story might get better, if only long enough to refill depleted winter storage. As a result, the stigma of gas-laden portfolios has given rise to a potential benefit that provided the third theme at Howard Weil: optionality. Like lagniappe, optionality is unexpected but nice to have—the extra oyster the shucker provides after most of the first dozen have been consumed. The current rally in natural gas provides operators the optionality to sell legacy gas assets, or reactivate them if the market develops legs.

The fourth theme at Howard Weil was weather. In a world of $100 oil and near-record stock prices, this winter’s polar vortex gave informal, off-the-record hope to many investors that unexpected upside is still possible in a frothy oil and gas investment market.

And that leads to the final theme that emerged from the presentation word cloud at Howard Weil. Operators are optimistic about turning the corner from putting money into the ground to getting money out of the ground. Multiple operators noted that their companies would become free cash flow positive in 2015.

Positive free cash flow was certainly jazz to the ears of investors in New Orleans. The industry is completing the first decade since the unconventional era began with the adoption of horizontal drilling and multistage fracturing in tight formation gas.

The first opportunity for free cash flow was cut short when gas prices collapsed in 2008-2009. Surging gas production subsequently presented a major challenge to gas-heavy operator portfolios that has yet to dissipate. Then came the challenge of raising capital to begin a new tight formation cycle, this time in crude oil and natural gas liquids.

It is evident that operators have negotiated that transition. The main theme remaining for investors after the early morning Elvis videos, the Tuesday afternoon basketball tourneys and the endless parade of nonpress industry dinners at Howard Weil was decidedly New Orleans-like. When it comes to oil and gas in 2014, let the good times roll.