DENVER MEETINGS

Date: Friday, September 15, 2017

Place: Denver Merchandise Mart (Aisle H, lecture room)

Board Meeting: 2:00 - 2:30 PM

Membership Meeting: 2:30 - 4:00 PM

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TENTATIVE DENVER AGENDA 

1. Call to Order
2. Introductions
3. Approval of the Tucson Meeting Minutes
4. Treasurer's Report
5. Membership Report
6. Collections/Curators Committee Report
7. Education Committee - Denver exhibit; Tucson program and case
8. SMMP Grant Program Report
9. Best Practices Initiative
10. New Business

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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Greetings to all and I am hoping each of you had a productive and enjoyable summer.  As I gather information for my first newsletter as president, I am in awe at the amount of moving parts of SMMP and am thankful to those who have reached out to guide me through the first six months of my tenure. I would like to especially thank my VP, Eloise Gallou, Mike Rumsey and Peter Davidson who have been incredibly active in Europe to engage new mineral curators to this group and increase visibility at what SMMP does to our European colleagues. 

SMMP Europe has had a successful second meeting in Ste Marie aux Mines, June 23rd, 2017 and special thanks to all who attended and took minutes which can be found on the SMMP website (follow link below). Looking forward, the Munich show is coming up (Oct 27th to 29th) and there have been some conversations with the organizer to promote SMMP at the main show and make us more visible. This will be an agenda item for the SMMP Munich meeting, which will be held Thursday, October 26th, Room TBD.  More information and a formal agenda will be forthcoming via the listserv.

Jean and her team have come up with an interesting topic of "Un-precious Metals" for the Denver display this year.  This is also the time of the year to consider Tucson’s theme of "Crystal and Crystal Forms" and urge all brilliant ideas for the SMMP case in Tucson, 2018 be forwarded to Jean for consideration. SMMP Tucson case will be an agenda item for discussion at the SMMP Denver meeting which Virgil will be chairing in my absence. 

Colorado Chapter of Friends of Mineralogy along with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science has organised an extra event in our Denver calendar, with a VIP Behind-the-Scenes Tour of the collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, on Thursday Sept 14th from about 6 to 8 pm. Please refer to Tony’s post on the listserv and those going to Denver should take the opportunity to visit. 

Communication is vital to this organization and I am thrilled the listserv issues have been resolved. Many thanks to the hard work of our webmaster Tony Kampf for doggedly working out the bugs with his team at LA County. To increase communication to different audiences, SMMP has been active on Facebook with Sarah Christiansen, Eloise Gallou, and myself moderating posts and posting lectures and activities. Our Facebook page aims to increase visibility and push visitor ship back to the SMMP website so I urge you to let us know if you are speaking at a mineral show, or have an event coming up.  This venue promotes the work we do in museums, and is of interest to colleagues and to outside parties.

Looking ahead, SMMP will be having some collective discussions around Mineral and Museums conference and how we could get involved and help facilitate these vital meetings with IMA-Museums.  This will be an agenda item for the SMMP Munich meeting as there will be representatives from IMA present.  I look to Tucson to have a more fulsome discussion of where we are and look for input from you all on how to proceed.

On a more social note, SMMP will be organizing a social night on the Tuesday before the main show (Feb 6th, 2018). It will give newcomers to the group and those who feel Tucson is so hectic, some face time to get to know people in less formal environment. Details will be forthcoming. 

For those who are traveling to Denver and Munich, safe travels and I look forward to connecting with you all in Tucson.

Best
Katherine