The MEI Blog is 15 years old today

Just over 15 years ago Jon came back from a trade exhibition with a suggestion that it would be a good idea for MEI to have a blog.  I knew very little about blogs, but thought it might be worth a go so I downloaded a suitable platform run by Google (the same as being used today!) and designed a layout (the same as used today!) and the first posting, on February 5th 2009 was news that snow had fallen in Falmouth!  

Later on in the month Jon and I attended the SME Annual Meeting in Denver, where I published very short posts on various meetings with people, and it was then that I realised the potential of the blog to develop into a history of 21st century mineral processing and its people- it would have been wonderful to look back at the 20th century, if blogging had been available, and to see the famous scientists and engineers, and youngsters who would one day become well know personalities, interacting at major events of the day.

So I resolved to report on this century's major events, concentrating particularly on people, their triumphs, tragedies and inevitably the passing of well known personalities. And here we are now, 2500 posts later, an archival source of mining industry, as well as other things which are of interest to the dynamic people in our industry, such as travel and outdoor activities.

The reaction to some of these posts has been amazing. In 2013 I exposed the WASET series of conferences as a possible scam and invited anyone who had experience of WASET to comment on the posting. There are currently over 130 comments, all from those who have had bad experiences, and the posting has had well over 69,000 views.

Geology also invites much interest, and the second most viewed posting, with 31,000 views, is the 2015 post on the ancient rocks found at Gwithian Towans, on the north coast of Cornwall.

Travel is also popular and number 3 of the most viewed posts, with over 19,000 views, is my 2016 comparison of the world's three greatest waterfalls, Victoria, Iguasu and Niagara.

A close-up view of Victoria Falls with Ian Townsend and Corby Anderson

There are almost 8000 photographs illustrating all these posts, most taken with a fairly expensive digital camera, but increasingly now just by smartphone- I still find it almost unbelievable that a camera lens so small can produce such high quality pictures.  It is difficult to pick out my favourites of all the photos on the blog, but here are a few:

The most poignant must be the photo of the MEI team with Prof Dee Bradshaw at Comminution '18 when she had just advised us that she only had a few months to live. She died 2 months after this photo was taken.

Dee was an inspiration to young people, and this photo taken at Flotation '11 typifies the effect that she had when talking to young scientists.

Young people don't remain young for ever, and the photo on the left is of the first recipient of the MEI Young Person's Award, Peter Amelunxen, receiving the 2011 award at Process Mineralogy '12 in Cape Town in 2012. Since then Peter has vindicated our faith in him. In 2015 he presented a keynote lecture at Flotation '15 and in a few week's time he will be the recipient of one of the SME's most prestigious awards, the Antoine Gaudin Award.

The photo below is one of my favourites, taken only 3 months ago at Flotation '23, of the MEI team with Prof. Antonio Peres, of the University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. 

Antonio has been to more MEI Conferences than anyone and below he is photographed at Flotation '09 with delegates who had attended all the century's major flotation conferences, Graeme Jameson, Dan Alexander, Jim Finch, Stephen Neethling and Dee Bradshaw. Sadly Dan Alexander died at a much too early age, in 2020, just one of the many for whom I have written appreciations over the years.

Jim Finch has been a consultant to MEI's flotation conferences for a number of years and he was co-editor for the 8th edition of Mineral Processing Technology. We had a memorable book signing at the SME Annual Meeting in Phoenix in 2016.

I had the pleasure of photographing Graeme Jameson and Jim Finch when Graeme received the Lifetime Achievement Award (LTA) of the International Mineral Processing Council (IMPC) in 2016. Jim was the recipient of the LTA in 2020.

Jim Finch, Chairman of the 2016 IMPC in Quebec, with LTA winners
Ponisseril Somasundaran and Grame Jameson

The first recipient of the LTA, in San Francisco in 1995, was Prof. Doug Fuerstenau, who I interviewed for the blog in 2015 and who would have been prominent in any 20th century blogs. At the SME Annual Meeting in Denver in 2019 he became the only person to hold the LTA and the IMPC's Distinguished Service Award (DSA), and I was honoured to be photographed with him, at the time the only two living recipients of the DSA. In 2020 we were joined by Prof. Eric Forssberg.

Denver 2019 with Doug Fuerstenau (2nd right),
IMPC President-Elect Ralph Holmes, and outgoing Chairman Cyril O'Connor

Although I report on the SME Annual Meeting every year, the 2020 event in February 2020 was the last until Salt Lake City in 2022, due to the Covid pandemic which I reported on from its beginning in March 2020 and has provided an interesting social history thread.

Jon introducing an online conference during the Covid pandemic

Cornwall and its stunning coastal scenery has featured heavily in the postings, as has its rich mining heritage.

MEI Conferences have provided major input to the blog, and highlight our approach to offering not just  technical content, but to have fun events where people from all over the world get to know each other and make new friends.

Informal evening in Cape Town

Hiking up Table Mountain

Relaxing in Falmouth

My favourite photo is a personal one, which I have used on various postings. It is of Barbara and me crossing the Tropic of Capricorn in South Africa in 1969, our first time in the tropics. A couple of hours later we crossed the Limpopo River into Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and the next day the Zambezi into Zambia and from there on to the Copperbelt to commence my long career in the mining industry.

Beginning what we hoped would be their long careers in the minerals industry were these young people at Flotation '13, presenting papers at an international conference for the first time. Recognise any of them? 

The young man on the left is Martin Rudolph, who I identified as a Rising Star in 2018. Now he is head of mineral processing at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF) of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and he hosted my visit to Freiberg in 2019.

Martin has become a regular at MEI Conferences, bringing with him large teams of young researchers from HZDR.

The HZDR team at Flotation '23. Martin is in the centre

I have to say that I have found writing the blog, with occasional input from others, to be one of the most rewarding things that I have ever been involved with. Researching the material for the posts has taught me a lot and the response that I get when I travel to various conferences makes it all more than worthwhile.

Thanks to all of you who follow the blog, particularly those who comment on the postings. I wish more would do this; I do appreciate comments, which makes the whole thing more interactive. 

So please do try to contribute to this archival 21st century history. The blog is not going away!  Even if Google winds it up and it is no longer online the hard copies are on my shelves, and one day  I am sure that Amanda will find a suitable home for them!