Presidential Column

Greetings. I believe this is my last column as CSEG president. I will spend some time in the usual way: expressing thanks.

There is much to say in that regard, and it must start with the CSEG’s staff. Jim and Sheryl are a complete treasure to the various communities within the CSEG and to the various efforts those groups drive. From the Executive through all of the varied activities the overall CSEG ‘enterprise’ undertakes we find Jim and Sheryl behind the scenes. Solid bedrock. Thank you very much.

I have not thanked John Fernando and his RECORDER Committee enough in this column. I find it difficult to get this column to John in a timely fashion. Consider what John and the group do. They are a volunteer group, that cajoles the generally on time publication of 10 issues (500-700 pages as an estimate) written by a diffuse group of volunteer authors. Thank you and well done!

Thanks to everyone who chose to serve the CSEG in some capacity. In last months column I mentioned that our volunteer base approaches a third of the membership. This occurs in a social framework where about 47% of adult Canadians volunteer in some form or other. Which is to say the our volunteer community is choosing to put precious personal time into this community as a choice amongst many other opportunities to donate their time. A nearly 1/3 volunteer rate is stunning. Thank you.

I’d like to make a special mention of the VIG committee. They are making excellent progress, from a standing start, in reaching out to the engineering community. They have done so out of a passion for the science and for the value it can bring to decision making in an extraction industry that lives at the nexus of social license and physical science. They have done so largely without my promised involvement, so to that committee goes both my thanks and my apologies.

Some important framework steps initiated in the last couple of years have reached very important milestones in the last few months. Some mention of those is worthwhile. All involve other Societies so there are thanks to be expressed as well.

First, we have signed several MOU’s with related societies: SEG, EAGE and most recently, the Geophysical Society of Houston. Thanks are due to their executive boards and to our own CSEG staff (again) for having enough vision to see where our early steps might lead. Dave Monk, the 2012 SEG President used the word ‘geo-cooperation’. I find it a good word and appropriate – and altogether it is unsurprising that David’s creative mind used it in terms of the SEG working together with a similarly minded but very much smaller group from the relative hinterland. 2014 should see a joint educational ‘symposium’ where the main partners are the CSEG and EAGE with SEG a supportive third presence. Stay tuned in these pages for details.

Second, GeoConvention has reached permanent partnership status. As you may recall CSEG, CSPG and CWLS have created a partnership, much like an accounting or legal ‘firm’. The three societies are each a general partner in the partnership, whose purpose is to operate GeoConvention for the benefit of the three societies. The partnership documents is very likely the most important financial document that all three of the partner societies have signed in their respective histories. The histories are significant: CSPG is over 85 years old, CSEG is 65 years old and CWLS is over 55 years old. They started in 1927, 1949 and 1957. The GeoConvention partnership is a testament to geo-cooperation and several people must be thanked. The immediate Past-Presidents of all three societies: Rob Kendall, Paul MacKay and Gordon Lee, along with Convention volunteers Rob McGrory and Dave Clyde, are all to be thanked for seeing and pursuing what ‘could be’ rather than staying with the comfort of what ‘has been’.

Lastly, thanks to the membership in general for the opportunity to serve you. The executive has done some good things I think, though in this I am clearly biased. I have met and worked with some excellent people. It has been fun.

Stay well.