October 28, 2003

Minutes

Corrections or additions to these minutes should be sent to:

Guy Flanagan guy.flanagan@conocophillips.com

Guy Flanagan - Chairman, Alan Herring Vice-Chairman John Bain, Rao Yalamanchili, Pat Millegan, Ed Biegert, Dave Oxley, Jeff Rowe, Jerry Hensel, Afif Saad, Kwok Chan, Bob Lo, Dale Bird, Jeff Phillips, Mark Ander, Marc Vallee, Mark Odegard, Derek Fairhead, Ted Urquhart, Alan Reid, Jaap Mondt, Luise Sander, Terry McConnell, Brian Spies, Bill Pearson, Richard Hansen, Mike Hall, Doug McConnell, Herminio Passalacqua, Fritz Kronberger, Rolf Pedersen, Michal Ruder

Guy Flanagan thanked Alan Herring for his service as Vice Chairman during 2002-2003 and noted that Dave Oxley has accepted the position of Vice Chairman for 2003-2004.

Guy Flanagan reported on presentation to Executive Committee Meeting in May. The key item being that the Executive Committee is well aware of the concerns of small contractors about location and attendance at the Annual Convention.

Alan Reid reported on Data Standards issues: EPSG finalized in view of Standards Committee. GDF brought in line with GFX. Alan to bring GDF in line with SEG standards.

John Pierce not present but supplied the following report on the Meter Reader following the meeting:

"Basically, it's been a good year with a steady flow of interesting manuscripts appearing, and most of them have been unsolicited. The flow of new material has nearly dried up, however, so the pipeline is quite empty at the moment. We will have a paper from Xiong Li, based on his talk at last year's SEG, in the November TLE. There's a manuscript on magnetics and archeology being revised, and I have the promise of one new manuscript in the next month or so. I found one paper at the SEG worth considering for the column, and that author was receptive to the idea. So we have at most three in the pipeline after November."

In response to a question on timing for the next TLE special issue Pat Millegan said Dean Clark likes to have a G&M issue every year and a half. He suggested the group should be proactive. We should decide on a topic, chose special editors and send a written discussion of the special section to the TLE Board. The Board will get it onto the calendar, if they like/accept the theme.

Alan Reid reported that he was looking for suggestions for papers to be included on CD volume of key Grav/Mag papers. These do not need to be from Geophysics or TLE as the SEG will seek appropriate copyright approvals if necessary. Brian Spies indicated there was a strong need for good tutorial articles.

Mark Odegard reported that the SEG/AAPG interpretation committee wants him to try to resolve the bottleneck on the Nettleton monograph revision. Pat Millegan indicated that because of its status as a monograph the SEG had very specific guidelines as to how this should be handled and that essentially it had been left in Tom Lefehrs hands and he had not done much work on it. There was some discussion that possibly what was needed was something new as a tutorial if progress couldnt be made on the revision. Mark is going to pursue the monograph issue to see if it can be resolved.

Michal Ruder reported that the Continuing Education course was still doing fine and being presented mostly as in-house or section sponsored courses and if anyone is interested they should contact her.

Guy Flanagan reported that the Updated North American Gravity Database being compiled mainly under the auspices of the USGS is going forward with a planned release next year. They are still looking for data donations in key localities even if they are decimated.

Guy Flanagan on behalf of Tiku Ravat discussed the planned World Magnetic Compilation and Tikus request for support and data donations. Mark Odegard indicated this was in direct competition with their business and previous attempts have had limited success.

Derek Fairhead brought up the issue of whether the committee should become proactive in suggesting guidelines for proper use of Geoid and Ellipsoid definitions in collection of gravity data. There was significant discussion as whether this issue should be handled by the committee. Alan Reid pointed out that one needs to record what theyve done as a matter of course to be preserved in meta data. Alan Herring indicated he has seen companies specify quite specifically to contractors how this should be done. Richard Hansen indicated much of the issue is a terminology problem. It was decided that if someone feels strongly about this that they should bring it to the committee as a formal written proposal to be considered.

Guy Flanagan asked for suggestions to be brought forward for anyone deserving of SEG Awards and recognized our 2003 recipient Richard Hansen.

Guy Flanagan asked for ideas and assistance in updating the Web Site. Michal Ruder indicated a new SEG IT director had been named and had suggested that the GM committee be a good web site to tackle as an example for the other committees.

Guy Flanagan asked for suggestions or volunteers to be recommended as GM representatives to the 2004 technical meeting in Denver. Bill Pearson and Richard Hansen agreed to serve in this capacity. Guy will suggest their names to the incoming Technical Committee chairman.

Guy noted that we had a lack of submittals of papers to the technical session this year resulting in only 2 sessions with virtually all submitted papers being accepted. This followed an outstanding year in 2002 where there were 3 sessions and additional G/M papers oriented papers in other sessions. Guy encouraged everyone to consider submitting papers to the 2004 meeting.

Suggestions also requested for the 2004 luncheon speaker. Guy indicated that travel expenses would have to be paid for the individual if they werent local but that with the new SEG policy a single day pass to the convention should be available.

Terry McConnell gave a summary of the current status of the planned 2004 GM Workshop on Magnetic Gradiometry which he is organizing. To date about 80% of the interest is from the Mining sector and 20% from the Petroleum sector with 3 people submitting papers on history and 7 on technology. Discussion followed on how the workshop could be best organized: Presentations, panel discussion, and posters? How can we keep the topic focused? Possibility of having a Thursday morning technical session of formal presentations followed by an afternoon workshop suggested. Terry is looking for additional suggestions and a co-chairman preferably from the petroleum side.