Equipping you to be a world-class geoscientist is our goal here at AAPG. It's why we exist as a scientific and professional association: To assist you throughout your career to stay at the top of your game.
Knowledge is a key element of honing your competitive edge. You've got to invest the time to understand both how your particular field and discipline are evolving and how what you know fits into the big picture.
But book learning isn't enough. It's the successful application of this knowledge that creates value. It's accumulated experience that makes you good at your job, so gaining that experience and doing it as quickly as possible accelerates your ability to deliver value to your employer or clients.
And here's some good news: You can leverage the experience of others to boost your own by learning from great teachers and mentors.
And where do you find teachers and mentors who will let you learn from their failures, successes, and share their insights?
You find these people by being connected to a community of professionals.
That's what we do at AAPG - teach each other, and thereby improve ourselves and our profession.
Knowledge, experience and community are three essential ingredients to being at the top of your game. And we're serving up a big dose of all three at the upcoming 2015 World-Class Education Conference, scheduled for March 2-6 in Houston.
Now I realize that eyebrows likely popped as you read that last sentence.
World class? Really?
But take a look at what's available to you at this education conference: 12 courses in four tracks over five days, and the quality of the courses and instructors is truly world class.
♦AAPG member Lesli Wood, who holds the Robert Weimer Endowed Chair for Sedimentology and Petroleum Geology at the Colorado School of Mines, will be teaching a brand-new course titled Deepwater Reservoir Connectivity.
♦ Exploration for Deepwater Sands Using Seismic Sequence Methodology will be taught by AAPG Honorary member John Armentrout, consultant and past AAPG secretary, who has a distinguished international exploration and research career in stratigraphy, deepwater depositional systems and exploration geochemistry.
♦ AAPG members Dana Ulmer-Scholle and Peter Scholle, renowned carbonate experts who have both authored or edited several books and together co-edited AAPG Memoir 77, the Color Guide to Petrography of Carbonate Rocks, return to the education conference with their course on Carbonate Reservoir Geology: Understanding Depositional and Diagenetic Factors Controlling Porosity.
It's intended for exploration and development geologists as well as the geophysicists and engineers working with them to develop carbonate fields.
♦ Carbonate Depositional Systems is the title of noted carbonate stratigrapher (and AAPG member) Art Saller's one-day course. It's an introductory course, but will be helpful even to experienced geoscientists working in carbonate systems.
♦ The final carbonate course offered will be taught by AAPG Sidney Powers medalist Ernest Mancini - it's a brand-new course titled Microbial Carbonate Reservoir Characterization, and will benefit both geoscientists exploration for microbial carbonate reservoirs as well as geoscientists and engineers developing these reservoirs.
♦ AAPG member Donald Herron, an independent geophysical consultant, and Rice University professor Robert Wegner are teaching an introductory course on Basic Seismic Interpretation that is suitable for all new hires, experienced geoscientists or geo-techs who would like to increase their seismic interpretation abilities.
♦ Seismic Amplitude Analysis to validate reservoir composition is the second geophysics course on offer and taught by Fred Hilterman, a past AAPG and SEG Distinguished Lecturer. This course is designed for any geoscientist or engineer who is using seismic data to characterize a reservoir.
♦ AAPG member Kurt Marfurt (a frequent contributor to the EXPLORER's Geophysical Corner), the Frank and Henrietta Schultz Professor of Geophysics at the University of Oklahoma, teaches 3-D Seismic Attributes for Unconventional Reservoirs to equip geoscientists to map reservoir quality and evaluate completion quality in these reservoirs.
♦ Helping attendees better understand the critical factors and risks needed to explore, appraise and develop unconventional shale plays is the focus of past EMD president Creties Jenkins' Discovery and Recovery Thinking in Shales. This is the third brand-new course offered at this education conference, and will help you understand what rock and fluid properties you need to identify and how to quantify the uncertainties of those properties to characterize shale reservoirs.
♦ Introductory Geochemistry for Condensate-Rich Shales and Tight Oil will be being taught by Christopher Laughrey and is a practical and applied course focused on the geochemical tools and techniques used in assessing shale gas/condensate and tight-oil systems.
♦ Two one-day courses by professor George Asquith of Texas Tech University (and a best-selling AAPG author) close out the conference. The first is Log Analysis of Shaly Sand Reservoirs and the second is Log Analysis of Hydrocarbon-Bearing "Shale" Reservoirs.
While these courses are grouped into tracks, you also can customize your training program by mixing and matching courses to suit your development needs and interests.
There's a lot here to choose from. Go online for more details on each course and to design your curriculum.
World-class knowledge, experience and community - we've got it for you in Houston next month.