This week, the world’s mineral exploration community is gathering in Toronto to reflect on the last ten years of mineral exploration progress and discuss what we think the future will look like for our industry. This conference occurs every ten years dating back to 1967, and is organized by the Decennial Mineral Exploration Conferences (“DMEC”).

The theme of Exploration ’17 is “Integrating the Geosciences: The Challenge of Discovery” and this certainly rings true for most of us in mineral exploration. The exploration industry is facing a difficult time with a combination of dwindling resources, financial insecurity and more challenging terrain for exploration. It is great to have a venue to explore these issues in a frank manner and generate innovative ideas on how we can target more efficiently.

I am on the organizing committee, which has been a wonderful opportunity for me personally and professionally. I can tell you that a real effort was made to gather the best in the three main categories of geoscience: geology, geophysics and geochemistry. But further than that, there was a sense to not only discuss the state of the art of these specific disciplines, but also to encourage dialogue on how to better integrate each to come up with the best interpretation.

The conference starts on Sunday, October 22, and ends on Wednesday, October 25, but excellent pre- and post-conference short-courses take place between October 21 and October 27, making this a week-long event.

The staff at Ronacher McKenzie Geoscience looks forward to attending and will report back on the take-away messages after the conference. More information can be found at www.exploration17.com. Past proceedings can be found, along with numerous free resources at www.dmec.ca.