Word has just come in that the folk organizing the conference Tailings and Mine Waste ‘08 have just met.

They have extended the deadline for submission of abstracts to this conference until mid-June and they are asking that papers come in by mid-July. 

This is a conference worth supporting, writing for, and attending.  It is a resuscitation of an historic series–seven previous conferences that established and advanced the science, engineering, and technology of tailings and mine waste. 

Another good reason to write for and attend the conference is that it is in Vail, Colorado in October this year.  Hard to find a nicer place to be at that time of the year. 

By way of full disclosure:  the company I work for part time as a genuine engineer, Robertson Geoconsultants is a sponsor, and the other company I work for as a Blogger and engineering author, InfoMine (really TechnoMine)plan to put as much on the site as we can get as is left behind after publication of the proceedings by a European publisher–in fact the one that published all seven past proceeding. 

Call Linda Hinshaw at 970-491-5049 or e-mail her at linda.hinshaw@colostate.edu for more information or to get personal attention. 

Is it true that the salary of new mining graduates is $100,000 a year?  Depends on whom you ask.  Bragging professors tell you that it is true.  Impressionable young journalists gush about high starting salaries in the mining industry.

But those who take time to ferret out the numbers disagree.  They say it is no more than $50,000–still not a bad salary.  Seems you can get one hundred K if you go to work in Houston or a remote mine on Baffin  Island.  But if you want to work in a nice place, you may have to settle for half that.

At this link is a much longer piece I compiled that explores the details of this mining salary debate.  Or contact Jennifer Leinart (jbleinart@earthlink.com) of CostMine who is trying to compile the data.