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Is this a sad story, or is it a story of human ability and success? Persist a little while, for the story starts out sad, and you wonder if there is light at the end of the tunnel. I think it is a story of the human spirit and the opportunities that mining brings. The story comes to us via a letter in the January 2007 Canadian Mining Journal. I quote, and liberally edit to get to the point of the tale.
“I am the wife of a geologist…..entering the mining field means constantly uprooting the family and often living in remote communities, or always traveling and usually absent from important family celebrations…..this is an unstable profession and you could be without work in the blink of an eye if the markets fall….I recall many of my husband’s colleagues—bright, hard-working geologist—desperately seeking work in the early 1908s….and finally changing careers.
OptimiZ Consulting is Kay Sever. I have never met her. I have exchanged many an e-mail with her. I have read much of what she has written on the topic of improving quality in the mining industry. Now let me introduce you to her writings. Here are the papers she has sent to me and which I have featured on TechnoMine and keep in the InfoMine library:
Everybody likes to go to a conference. The further away the conference, the better. The more exotic the locale of the conference, the better. Las Vegas, Honolulu, and San Diego are my picks for conferences. In the last year I succeeded in going to conferences in St Louis and Denver; so in retrospect I failed. But regardless of how cold and dreary those cities were, there was still benefit in being at a conference.
The obvious advantages of conferences are the chance to escape routine, to meet old friends, to see new places, and to gather information about one’s profession. In particular, the chance to attend talks and presentations by experts is a central part of any conference. There is no substitute for a live presentation of work done, ideas generated, and doubts expressed. We are creatures of a tribal past; I suspect our instincts are honed to sitting, talking, and listening as a way of exchanging information, making value judgments, and picking up scraps of useful information from even the most inarticulate.
