In the forward planning for this year’s AAPG centennial celebration – at the Annual Convention and Exhibition (ACE) in Houston and beyond – the 100th Anniversary Committee was organized in 2004 as an ad hoc committee per the suggestion of current AAPG President-elect Charles Sternbach.
The purpose of the committee was to organize an ambitious series of events and create products that can be used by the Membership as part of their daily workflow and for the training of future generations of petroleum geoscientists.
Charles served as the founding chair of the committee and convened annual planning meetings from 2004 to 2010 with broad-based committee members to discuss projects and deliverables for Membership. As the committee matured, Ed D. Dolly (this year’s Michel T. Halbouty Outstanding Leadership Award recipient) became the chair in 2010, and then Steve Sonnenberg and I served as co-chairs beginning in 2013.
Five main products from the 100th Anniversary Committee will be highlighted at the 2017 ACE:
• Since 2008, Discovery Thinking sessions have been held at every ACE, and at every International Conference and Exhibition (ICE) since 2012. These sessions’ purpose is to present talks that summarize the most recent important discoveries globally and the scientific and business thinking involved during the process. Speakers have been an all-star cast, including two Sidney Power medalists, six Michel Halbouty recipients, and nine Norman Foster Explorer Award recipients. In total, 115 men and women have either been presenters or co-authors fulfilling a decade long promise to spotlight “100 who made a difference.”
This speaker series (co-sponsored by the Division of Professional Affairs) have proven to be incredibly popular with conference attendees and are typically among the best-attended sessions at each year’s ACE and ICE. The lasting contributions of the series for Membership have been the willingness of the speakers to post their slides on Search and Discovery, and, when approved, videos of their presentation. These videos have been available to Membership since 2008 with tens of thousands of views. Sternbach, Dolly and I have been the organizers.
For information on this year’s Discovery Thinking forum at ACE, see the related story in this issue on page 34. To learn about past sessions, see
http://aapg.to/AAPGdiscThink.
• The GeoLegend interview series comprise a series of 50 interviews with 62 key geoscientists who made game-changing discoveries, significant scientific contributions that were adopted by the greater geo-community, or people who made significant contributions in building companies or service to the profession.
The interviews highlight the thought processes involved with their work. Some of the interviews have been shown at various regional and national conventions. They will go live on the AAPG website in April with the first set of interviews and will be showcased at the AAPG booth on the exhibition floor at ACE.
Interviews include 16 Sidney Power medal awardees, five Michel Halbouty medal recipients, and eight recipients of the Norman Foster Outstanding Explorer Award.
Dolly and I produced this interview series with extensive editorial effort by Pax Harris and Sam Carothers.
• “Outcrops that change the way we practice petroleum geology” is a celebration of the importance of field geology in the education and enlightenment of all geologists.
Following a conversation between Sternbach and Andrew Hurst at the 2008 ACE in San Antonio, a concept was born for a volume that presents high-quality field trips of significance to global E&P for hydrocarbons. Development of powerful, portable tablets allowed the volume to develop as an immersive, interactive digital product. The digital format enables greater flexibility for user applications while representing a foundation for future digital publishing. Chief editors Hurst, Jeroen Kenter and Stephan Graham perceive “Outcrops” as a step-change in geological publishing with AAPG making a forward-looking contribution to the health of geology worldwide.
• AAPG Past President Randi Martinsen has overseen a major compilation of a list of the most influential papers in the different disciplines in petroleum geology. These lists include the seminal papers that introduced concepts that are now routinely used by geoscientists. Input was gathered from 20 sub-committees.
The list will be distributed at this year’s ACE.
• Steve Sonnenberg and Rick Fritz have compiled a list of the top 100 Field Trip Guides that are accessible on the Datapages and Search and Discovery sites.
The list includes field guides from the past 70 years from more than 30 different professional societies. The list, including more than 50 sedimentary basin, will be distributed at the convention in April.