Jon is representing MEI at the AusIMM's Mill Operators' Conference this week, and will be reporting daily on events. Following is his report on Day 1:
After a gruelling 52 hour journey, including an unexpected day in Singapore, I arrived in Perth at 5am on Monday morning, just giving me time to get in to my accommodation before heading to the Pan Pacific Hotel in Perth for the start of the 13th Mill Operators conference. This is the 4th Mill Ops conference I have attended and it felt good to be back in Perth and at the former Sheraton hotel that was home to a few MEI conferences in the past.
The conference got underway with the usual welcome speeches announcing that there are around 350 delegates from around the world at the event.
The first keynote was given by Peter Munro of Mineralis Consultants and was entitled "Back to the Future - Still on the Dark Side" and in a passionate talk he discussed how in the last decade there have been no real technological breakthroughs and no improving of human capital by strengthening educational institutions or skill development schemes for graduates, something which Barry mentioned in his posting of 3rd October.
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| Jon with Peter Cameron |
The next talk by Peter Cameron, of Split Engineering, looked to be not so pessimistic and said that the tools were there to improve things but that they were just not being used.
The organisers have introduced a new concept to the conference in that there are not traditional questions after a presentation. Instead after the session, 30 minutes is set aside for a discussion chaired by the presenters with questions being asked (maximum 1 minute allowed) and answers kept to a maximum of 2 minutes.
At the end of the day there was a 2 hour welcome reception held in the exhibition area that was well attended and gave everybody the chance to relax and catch up with old acquaintances. It was during this that I met up with some MEI regulars including Magotteaux, who have confirmed sponsorship of Flotation '17, Huntsman (regulars at the same event), Ben Tordoff of Zeiss (sponsors of Process Mineralogy '17), Scantech (exhibitors at Comminution '16), Keramos (sponsors of Comminution '18) and Steve Flatman from Maelgwyn Minerals (sponsors of Flotation '17).
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| Huntsman |
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| Magotteaux |
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| Scantech |
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| Keramos |
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| With fellow UK delegates Ben Tordoff and Steve Flatman |
As usual, this event looks like being a highly sociable, interesting and worthwhile event for all involved and I look forward to the next 2 days.
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I am very happy that important aspects like human capital, education etc were brought to centre Table.
ReplyDeleteI am also happy to note the change they brought about on paper presentations and deep discussions--I am sure these would bring out some new ideas to take forward our profession.
Rao,T.C.
The discussion session at the end of the presentations appears to have been successful and may end up being incorporated into more conferences. It stops both the problems of no one asking a question or of the same person asking each time!
ReplyDeleteInteresting but the worry might be that all the discussion might be only with one or two of the speakers. By having discussion at the end of each presentation then at least the questions are directed to that speaker alone. What are the views of those who attended most of the sessions?
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