Northern California SME Section

We had a successful meeting, co-hosted by Mineral-X last week at Stanford University.  Chris Johnson did a head count and said that there were 45 to 50 people attending.  The main point of the meeting was a panel discussion with Dr. Marc Herpfer-2024 SME President, Tim Arnold-2016 SME President, Josh Su-Principal at BHP Ventures and Shievani Upadhyay-Entrepreneur and Business School Graduate Student at Stanford.  Special thank you to Dave Kanagy-SME Executive Director who flew in with Marc just for the meeting and Tim who came in from Reno.  It was good to see our Northern California SME members there, some who drove several hours to attend

Mineral-X had a very enthusiastic and interested group there.  They also had a spread of Greek food and appropriate beverages for after the panel discussion.

Each of the panel members were asked questions.  The meeting can be summed up by the answer Tim gave to a question about what he sees as the biggest problem facing the minerals industry today?  His answer was that of perception.  If we can get people to have a positive perception of mining our problems will become easier to solve.  The issues of manpower, technology, access and the many other issues the industry faces will become a lot easier if there is a positive perception of the mining industry

From the enthusiasm generated at the meeting has us talking about the next step.  How can we continue with the interest?  A SME Student Section was discussed.  There are currently no active student chapters in California.  If you would like to help and get involved, please contact us.

Thanks again to Tyler Hall with Mineral-X and Chris Johnson and Andy Sass from the Section for organizing this meeting.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there, but most encouraged that it was a success. 
congratulations to those who arranged it.