Note: This post ran as a Presidential Column in the Summer 2021 issue of the Mining History News.

Now that our Elko “virtual conference” is in the rear view mirror, I think I can safely say this: it went better than just about anyone expected, and that’s no small victory for a volunteer group trying to adapt on the fly to a global pandemic. The Mining History Association’s culture and traditions ended up being an asset in pivoting to a virtual environment, and the hard work of our resilient conference planners created an excellent learning experience.

Consider the ways in which our normal practices helped us in adapting to a virtual meeting. We have long tried to hold just one paper at a time during our in-person meetings, so that everyone in attendance has an opportunity to see all the papers. (I can think of just twice where this was not the case, at Scranton in 2005 and Virginia City in 2015, where there were just too many good submissions to turn them away.) In our virtual meeting, this one-at-a-time pace was crucial to simplifying the entire conference. Most everyone knew where to be, when, and we were able to use much simpler technology compared to that employed by some of the larger conferences holding virtual meetings. It also meant that we could handle the technical side with a minimum number of trained people, which simplified coordination and planning. We’ve had plenty of situations in previous meetings where, due to the setup of the room, speakers were not directly in charge of running their own presentation slides, so it wasn’t an issue to do it that way this time either. And we have a large reservoir of goodwill among our members, which proved essential in making this work. If we made a mistake – because none of us had ever planned a virtual conference before – we knew you would be willing to forgive us for it.

We were also able to take advantage of some of the advantages the virtual environment gave us. Foremost among them was the opportunity to hear from people who might not usually be able to make the trip. I know of at least a couple of research papers whose authors could not have traveled, and a few old friends we saw online that we wouldn’t have been able to see if the conference had taken place in person. (What a treat!) The virtual tours took us to places that we would simply not have been able to travel as a group. (More on that in a moment.) We also had access to the recordings of the sessions for a week afterward on a private YouTube link, which was a nice balance between the ability to go back and re-watch particular talks, and the rights and permissions needed to put the talks permanently on video out in the world. And of course, conference attendees certainly saved the cost of travel!

Barbara Clements deserves the lion’s share of the credit for figuring out how we could make this all work online, with some key input from the MHA Council. Barbara and I worked throughout the conference to handle the technical stuff, passing the baton back and forth, encountering just a couple of glitches en route to a successful meeting.

Our Elko conference planning team was the other ingredient to our success. Dick Reid, Dana Bennett, Rob McQueen, Dean Heitt, and Jenny Hildebrand rolled with the punches and did a wonderful job. The printed program, sent to all participants, is an informative keepsake. We got a good number of discussions of northeastern Nevada mining history, in keeping with the spirit of the “local” content. The virtual tours of Eureka by Dick Reid and the Cortez area by Rob McQueen were interesting and insightful. I suspect most members would prefer to put their own boots on the ground, of course, but we were able to get to see some things that we couldn’t have seen otherwise, and nobody got sunburned or a mislabeled lunch.

In all, while I suspect most of us are eager to resume gathering in person, our first virtual conference was a major success. Hopefully, we can incorporate some of the best ideas to come out of it – such as an occasional virtual tour to an otherwise-inaccessible place – into our regular practices. I’m optimistic, too, that we can harness some of the energy that comes through meeting more regularly via online means into our practices. The MHA Nuggets are bite-sized presentations on a wide variety of topics, hosted on Zoom then posted on YouTube. And I plan to convene the MHA Council to meet quarterly via Zoom as well, so we can have more of the business of the organization completed before next June. So while I hope we don’t have to hold a virtual conference again (no more pandemics please!), I think we can be proud of how our traditions and culture carried us through this one. Thanks, everyone.

Eric Nystrom, MHA President

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