Making the most of your MINEXCHANGE attendance

How do you get the most out of your experience while attending MINEXCHANGE? There is so much happening at the conference that it is impossible to attend everything. Planning ahead and considering your goals for the conference can go a long way toward providing value to your conference experience. Before attending the conference, take some time to consider the most important aspects of the conference for you. Are you looking to log some educational hours to maintain a professional certification? Or perhaps excited to hear about new technology and looking for new suppliers? Your goal may be to network with new and existing clients, look for a new job or increase your involvement in SME. Thinking about these goals ahead of time will greatly help your planning for the conference. Many professional certifications, such as professional engineer, professional geologist, and SME registered membership, require you to log professional development hours. Attending an SME short course that is applicable to your job can be a useful way to earn credits. The short courses are held during the weekend prior to the conference and require additional registration. Another option for logging credits is to sign up for professional development hour (PDH) tracking at the conference. The system helps you log all the technical sessions you attend and generates a summary of your earned hours at the end of the conference. Earning professional development hours can be a way to justify attending the conference to your employer, especially if your employer expects you to maintain a professional certification as part of your job. Those of us involved in putting together the technical programming for the conference take tremendous pride in what we do. We are intentional on covering a wide range of topics that are important and relevant to the mining industry. You can find talks about new products and innovations, new mines, important industry subjects like parental flexibility or mental health, student research, financing, experiences of other people in the industry, sustainability initiatives and much more. The conference program is available online several months ahead of time. Spend some time looking through it, plan which presentations you want to attend and use that as a basis for your conference schedule. Remember to peruse the talks across all divisions, you never know when one might spark your interest. It can also be useful to have some backups in mind as some last-minute cancellations are inevitable. And of course, make sure to track which sessions you attend and log them if you are using PDH tracking. Presenting at the conference offers a lot of benefits, but also requires early planning. SME sends out a call for abstracts during the summer before the conference, and abstracts are due at the beginning of August. Writing and submitting an abstract is a fairly simple process, but many companies will expect you to have permission to attend the conference prior to submitting an abstract, and that can be difficult to obtain the year before the conference. Start the process early and keep after your supervisor. Presenting at the conference is a great way to justify attending, and it also has other benefits. You get practice in building a presentation and speaking in front of an audience; you get an opportunity to showcase the cool stuff you are working on; there are often good networking opportunities at your session, and it is a way to start getting more involved in SME. While you are at the conference, give some thought to what you could add to next year’s technical program. Attending meetings and events within your division or committees that you are interested in is one of the best ways to increase your SME involvement. Most division and committee meetings are open to anyone interested. They are held the weekend before the start of the conference, which is important to keep in mind when arranging your travel. Division luncheons are held throughout the conference and can be added to your registration. Showing up at the division business meeting and/or the luncheon is a great way to network and become more involved in your division. The Mining & Exploration (M&E) Division holds a silent auction at the division luncheon and all proceeds go straight to the M&E scholarship fund. While attending the luncheon you can bid on some exciting items and support students. All M&E Division awards are also given at the luncheon, and attendance is a way to show your support to those recipients.Walking through the exhibit hall is a rewarding way to learn about new industry products and suppliers. Make an effort to talk to vendors and see what they have to offer, as booth duty can be a bit lonely at times. You never know what you might learn. Walking the exhibit hall is also a chance to network or simply catch up with old friends. There are two designated exhibit hall socials and exhibit hall lunches. Attending any of these is almost a guarantee of running into someone you know. Another opportunity for networking is the SME Foundation Gala on Sunday night, which also helps support the SME Foundation and all the wonderful work it does for our industry. Most of the mining schools hold alumni events on Tuesday night, which provide a chance to catch up with old friends, meet and mentor some of the current students, and get to know the faculty at your alma mater. There are many activities at MINEXCHANGE. It is likely that your schedule will book up quickly. If there are specific people you want to see at the conference, make plans with them in advance. My best advice, however, is to take time to think about what you are hoping to accomplish and put some planning into your conference attendance. This will help you get more benefits from attending, keep you excited about our industry and help justify your attendance at future conferences.

Making the most of your MINEXCHANGE attendance

Authored by: Jenessa Haarala

To view the past issues of the UCA magazine you must be a member of SME/UCA.

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To view the past issues of the UCA magazine you must be a member of SME/UCA.

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