AEGC 2019 sets a new benchmark

On every score the second Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference (AEGC2019) lived up to its rock star billing by exceeding even the wildest expectations.

Record breaking numbers tallied after the gathering at Crown in Perth revealed that 1182 delegates, including 459 full conference subscribers, attended the four-day event in the first week of September.

This represented growth in excess of 30% from last year’s inaugural event in Sydney comprising identified members that included: two AIG-ASEG-PESA, three AIG-PESA, 53 ASEG-PESA, 43 AIG-ASEG, 93 AIG, 245 ASEG and169 PESA memberships.

Of special significance was the 65 high school participants, who were not counted with total delegate numbers, while the YP night recruitment drive attracted 10 AIG, seven ASEG and two new PESA student sign ups.

There were 375 unique workshop attendees (including 76 complimentary presenter delegates), of which 109 went on to do a second workshop (including 12 complimentary presenter delegates) and 19 a third workshop (including one complimentary presenter delegate).

One indefatigable and inspired person even managed to do four workshops – the workshops attracted 504 attendees and were broken down into: 30 AEGC sponsored student placements, two from GA (W17) and two from WGC (Women in Geoscience Canada).

Helen Debenham, AEGC 2019 Technical Program Chair, said the strong technical program was a big driver for the success of the conference.

“And the venue helped as well, because it was not convenient to nip back to the office, so people stayed around a lot more, which was especially well received by people in the exhibition areas. But also, people didn’t want to go back to their offices.

“Crown as a venue was a key part which helped us to sell the conference and there were so many submitted abstracts as part of the technical program. I think we did well at publicising the call for abstracts and making sure they were submitted. The whole committee was in on that.

“The feedback was almost entirely positive, the only slight negative perhaps being that the poster room was a bit out of the way and some people were in two minds about the music entertainment at the first happy hour. It was supposed to be inspired by geophysical measurements of the earth, but was maybe a bit weird to some.”

Now it’s a case of onwards and upwards moving forward to the next AEGC Conference, which will be held in Brisbane in April 2021.