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Charlotte Bishop, GRSG Chairman

In January we launched our Moving the GRSG Forwards in 2018 campaign. This saw us look to expand the GRSG presence both locally and internationally. Our aim was, and continues to be, to grow our truly international organisation into something even bigger with an increased presence online and throughout relevant industries.

This is no mean feat for an organisation that is run completely by volunteers from across the industry themselves based in several geographies including the UK, USA, South Africa, Czech Republic and now Norway with my move way up to 69o North to work for KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) in Tromsø.

Despite our seeming disconnectedness the wonders of modern technology as well as the support from our organisations to take the time once every few months for us to meet face to face (or via skype) makes this possible.

As we pass the half year mark I think we have a number of things to look positively on and a lot of objectives have already been met with many more in the pipeline before our return to London in December.

We already have three GRSG or co-affiliated events under our belt including the recent success of the Oil & Gas workshop in Boulder, Colorado. Where we saw a wealth of new technology presented including a whole session on methane monitoring from space and aerial sensors, something of a hot topic particularly in Oil & Gas. As well as representation from a range of ‘new space’ companies represented by Ball, Astra Space and Capella Space, GHGSat, none of whom had been to a GRSG event before. Its also the first event I have been to where we have had stereo glasses to wear – a great way to start day 1 from Jim Ellis, Ellis Geospatial.

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The Geological Society Logo

Along with being invited to speak as part of the Geological Society’s public lecture series which was also live streamed, the recording is now available online. We have also been asked to repeat this talk in Belfast in October where I will speak on the same topic, Satellite Top Trumps, for another Public Lecture at Queen’s University Belfast before following it up with some STEM outreach to one of Belfast’s Primary Schools.

Our newsletter has now moved over to an online, accessible news source. There are still more improvements we want to make to this process as we go forward but we are certainly going in the right direction and always welcome your comments on additional improvements we can make.

After the summer break our website and subsequently membership and payment systems will be improved to streamline our outward facing online presence as well as ensuring that access to all the parts of the website that are of interest to you the user are more obvious such as resources, contact points, membership and payment.

It’s been a busy 6 months and shows no signs of slowing down before our 29th Annual International GRSG Conference in December with our first Young Professionals event held in conjunction with the PESGB (Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain) next week in London where Nick Kellerman, Shell (and Committee member) will present on ‘From Subsurface to Space’.

We are delighted to be back in London this year and look forward to welcoming those old and new to our ‘home’ and as our industry gets seemingly smaller in many ways the technical advances are quite incredible and we look forward to being able to prepare a programme that reflects that.

Charlotte – GRSG Chairman