DoodleTrain on Track

Oh to visit Calgary in early November. It’s too late for golf and too early to ski, but some of the most respected geophysicists in the world will be coming to our city during the week of November 3rd to the 7th. Canadian instructors will be joined by instructors from the UK, and several U.S. cities to take part in a uniquely Canadian geophysical event - the DoodleTrain.

CSEG’s continuing education week, the DoodleTrain, now in its second year, has become an integral part of the CSEG calendar. Last year’s event was very successful for participants, companies and instructors alike. Three hundred and fifty registrants took 23 courses. Four hundred more attended Sven Treitel’s keynote luncheon and about a hundred attended the Wednesday evening meet-the-teacher social event. Late that night I was delighted to meet a geophysicist holding up the bar who had traveled all the way from London to take a DoodleTrain course! Sven Treitel had such a good time that he’s coming back again this year.

Continuing Education is a life long commitment, whatever our individual role in the geophysical industry may be. It keeps us up to date with new developments in our field, introduces us to related disciplines, and refreshes our understanding of the basics. Staying current makes us more effective in our present jobs and better prepared for future ones. A recent continuing education survey shows that 65 percent of members polled spent 3 or more days last year in some form of training.

Much of that interest in continuing education reflects our society’s demographics and the shape of our industry. Basic training courses for new-hire geophysicists will always be in demand, especially now that major oil companies have trimmed back in-house training programs. But most of our members have more than 10 years experience in industry. These baby boomers are more interested in new technologies, concise refreshers and obtaining the cross-disciplinary skills their employers demand of more experienced staff. Most DoodleTrain courses are one to two days in duration to accommodate professionals with busy schedules.

This year, twenty-three short courses will be offered at downtown Calgary venues. Courses in interpretation, acquisition, processing, development and data management will be offered in a wide range of sub-topics. There are too many excellent courses to mention in this article, you will have to visit the website at: www.cseg.ca for detailed information on all of them. In this short space I’d like to highlight a few courses from this year’s DoodleTrain that have never been offered to the public before. Here are a few examples:

Mike Batzle is a leading expert in fluid substitution in well logs. Recent advances in the theory of how pore fluids affect geophysical observations are important for modeling the response of the reservoir interval in many plays. His course is a half-day introduction to the important developments in this field.

The CAGC is putting on a workshop in the topic of how to estimate seismic survey costs. This workshop will cover a wide variety of seismic acquisition details vital to the oil company geophysicist culminating in a “real” shoot, in which course participants sharpen their pencils and prepare AFE’s for fantastic prizes.

Ted Glenn has noticed an increase in heavy oil applications of electromagnetic in recent years. He has also been involved in some promising applications to shallow gas exploration. With over thirty years of experience specializing in non-seismic methods in Western Canada, Ted has put together an excellent introductory workshop in EM methods for the oil business - another DoodleTrain first.

Not all of the courses are for geophysicists and geologists. Two new courses are aimed at techs and data managers. The first, presented by the CSEG’s GTS committee is part one of a new curriculum for technicians, secretaries and land administrators working with seismic data and agreements. The second is a larger scale overview of the challenges of geoscience data architecture and management of interest to data managers, IT and geoscience professionals alike.

We are honored to have Enders Robinson, the father of digital signal processing, as this year’s keynote luncheon speaker. The reunion of Robinson and Treitel both in the classroom, and as honorary hosts of our meet-the-teacher night on Wednesday November 5, will be another highlight of this year’s DoodleTrain. All course registrants and sponsors are invited to that social event, which was a great success last year even if a few students were off to a slow start the next morning. When we were students, who wasn’t?

So hop on board the DoodleTrain! Take a course, come to the keynote luncheon, pass the word on to a co-worker, a tech, your geologist, manager or contractor. Continuing education is everybody’s business and I encourage you to make the most of this once-a-year opportunity.

Note:

It takes a lot of people to get the DoodleTrain on the tracks each year. This year’s organizing committee:

Sue Carr: Registration
Kristy Howe: Finance
Lisa Michetti: Publicity
Stuart Mitchell: Arrangements
Larry Lines: Keynote Luncheon
Ron Hinds: Course Program
Sandy Chen: Volunteer Coordinator
Sean Callaghan: Sponsorship
Sandor Bezdan: Web Site
Melissa Burdan: Course Material
Bill Nickerson: Chairman