AME Roundup 2016: Innovating and Connecting

Nov 30, 2015

Where can you go to learn about the latest in mining technology, watch presentations by leaders in the industry, and have dinner with several hundred of your fellow mining and exploration professionals? The answer is AME BC’s Roundup 2016 conference, happening this January 25th to 28th.

2016 will mark Roundup’s 32nd year, and the 2nd in its new location at the Vancouver Convention Centre. The conference this year boasts 352 exhibitors and will have roughly 6500 attendees. Trinity Power Rentals caught up with Roundup’s Organizing Committee Chair, Kendra Johnston, to get the inside scoop on this year’s conference: what’s new, and what not to miss.

“This year’s theme is innovation and exploration,” explains Johnston, “and it’s all about what we need to do as members of this industry to create a future for ourselves.”

This focus on innovation is evident in the new features of the conference this year. An expanded poster session will happen in the exhibitor’s hall over the full four days, making it more accessible. It will also include soapbox talks on the Tuesday, where poster presenters will have the opportunity to give presentations to small audiences.

Building on Roundup’s track record as a valuable networking event, this year’s conference will include more formalized networking opportunities. A new spotlight speaker series, also in the exhibitor hall, will “give companies who don’t typically sit in the technical sessions or the showcase sessions the opportunity to come and talk about whatever it is they’re doing,” explains Johnston. “So those are either big picture industry-wide things, or perhaps a new technology -like a new drill bit.” Spotlight speakers will have half an hour to give their talk, followed by half an hour to network with their audience.

Other new networking opportunities will include an aboriginal engagement panel and networking session, and themed discussion sessions on topics including communities, commodities and first nation engagement. “Those kinds of topics that are on the periphery of the geological, technical world that Roundup is sort of known for,” explains Johnston.

Having been involved with Roundup since 2003, Johnston has some insider tips on what not to miss. “I think there are going to be a couple of technical sessions that are going to be really good,” she enthuses. “We’ve got some really good names coming to [the Monday theme] session that are draws just because of who they are.”

Johnston is also looking forward to the commodities sessions, which will be a little bit different this year. She explains: “In the past, our commodity session has typically been very much individual commodity-based. This year, it’s going to be a little bit more big picture: how do we use these metals, what does supply and demand look like. So it’s going to be a little bit more interconnected.”

Interconnectedness and innovation are key ideas for Roundup 2016, and for moving forward through the current economic realities facing mining and exploration. “It’s innovation in terms of geological techniques, it’s innovation in terms of research, it’s innovation in terms of brand new technologies that are going to be used for exploration and mining,” she explains, of what innovation will mean at Roundup, adding, “It’s also new innovations in community engagement, in land access and use, in health and safety. So it’s being the best of the best, but being creative about it and figuring out how we can better ourselves through innovation.”

Expect to meet the best of the best at Roundup this January.

Trinity Power Rentals will be exhibiting at Roundup, 2016. Come visit us at booth 302.

#conference