Vail in October for a resuscitated conference on tailings and mine waste: will you write a paper to justify attending?

The lucky ones attended all the conferences in this series, and now they will get a chance to go to Vail in fall 2008.  At least objectively it seems as though they were the lucky ones.  At least objectively the thought of a conference in Vail in the fall should inspire the lucky. 

My position is subjective and  ambivalent.  My memory is worse.  I vaguely recall attending one conference in the series in Fort Collins and hating it: it was cold; the buildings were academic; and I believed I knew more than the talkers—how many presentations on slope stability can anybody sit through?

Many years later, I was engaged by a lawyer to help fight off a multi-million dollar class action  suite related to control (or absence thereof) of tailings.  I referred to every single set of proceedings of the many conferences in the series.  I quoted and referenced the papers, and we won the case. 

I am talking of the series of conferences on Tailings and Mine Waste that started out at Colorado State University in 1978.  For many years there was an annual conference and the important attended.  For many years no conference has been held: people grew old and tired; careers developed and kids took preference; academics struggled to keep up with the internet and those Australians who organize more conference on the topic than frequent fliers can attend.  

But now a new generation of stalwarts has gathered and plan to put on the umpteenth conference in the series in Vail, Colorado in October 18-23, 2008.  That is not very far off, and they are right now ambitiously calling for papers.  Actually any paper on a relevant topic will be welcome.  My preference is for the case histories; but if you must write another on geosynthetics or stability, so be it.  Hey I see they even list UMTRA as a possible paper topic.  Now that is politically correct.  They ask for one-page abstracts by April 18, 2008.

To be entirely honest, (full-disclosure time,) the company I work for part-time, InfoMine, is a sponsor and my old and current boss Andy Robertson is on the organizing committee.  He has even told me to do all the leg work to keep the companies involved happy.  Thus perforce, I will write about this conference more than others.  I work on the basis that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and on the basis that you can read the official pronouncements any time.  It is not my style to replicate those. 

So that I can retain a semblance of impartiality, I refer you to EventsMine, where the keyword tailings brings up eight conference devoted to tailings in 2008.  Three are in Australia: one is the 3rd Annual Conference on the topic; one is on coal tailings; and one is devoted to Decision Makers—now that is intriguing if a trifle exclusive.  In reality it looks to me as though the same keynote speakers are doing the rounds, so it really does not matter where you choose to listen to them.  It is hard to believe that there are enough revelations in tailings in one year to scintillate eight conferences.

So it really boils down to a simple choice.  If, like me, you have absolutely no desire to go to Australia (one of the advantages of getting old) and if, like me, you love the Rockies, then there is no issue:  time to play politics to get to go to Vail.  And you deserve to go if your job and interest involves that most fascinating of mining-topics, namely tailings.  You can skip the presentations on slope stability, on UMTRA, and those devoted to marketing products and persons.  There is sure to be plenty enough else to entertain and pass the time pleasantly.  And at the end there will be a set of proceedings that someday, somebody will reference to win a class action law suite.