Mindat Conference - A great success!

I want to say thank you to everyone who helped make the mindat conference a huge success.

Firstly, to everyone who attended - thank you for coming and I know from your comments to me that you enjoyed it greatly!

Secondly, to everyone who worked so hard to make it a success, in particular to Tomasz, Asia and the Spirifer team, Ida, Chris Mavris and the mindat managers, and everyone from the town of Lwowek Slaski who did so much to help us!

Did you enjoy the conference? If so, why not tell everyone here what the highlight of the trip was for you?

Jolyon

Hi Jolyon,
first of all, thanks so much to you, Tomek, Asia, Agata, Krzystof, Jacek, Paulina, Amir, etc etc etc for doing such a wonderful job. I really enjoyed it to meet all of you, very interesting and fun field trips, presentations and lectures. Not to forget the parties

Now everyone who was not there: you missed a great event. I hope that i will be able to attend the 2nd conference in Morocco.

I am sure that some pictures and blogs about the event will eventually be posted here ...

Cheers
Roger

"I hope that i will be able to attend the 2nd conference in Morocco."

Where?

When?

Please let me know ASAP so I can make sure I can attend!

Branko

Jolyon and Tom
Congratulations to you both and to the Spirifer team for a most amazing event! You certainly set the bar extremely high with this one. I can't wait for Morocco!

For those who didn't attend: The Crystal Days weekend in Lwowek Slaski was a lot of fun - think of a mineral show, street festival and county fair rolled into 1. This alone would have made the trip to Poland worthwhile. Then throw in a day and a half how-to photography workshop by Jeff Scovil, a half-day with Jolyon's showing us the ins and outs of using mindat, 2 days of conference presentations by experts from around the world and you have a first class conference. As they say in the infomercials, But wait there's more! How about 3 days of guided field trips to collect Chrysoprase, Agates and pegmatite minerals. Still not convinced - how about great lunches, dinners, beer, vodka, evening social events. And an opportunity to meet a lot of great people and establish new friendships. This all added up to a truly superlative week!

To everyone: Plan to attend Morocco next year.

The best part? - As good as the events were, the best part was meeting so many new friends. What an extraordinary group of people!

Frank

I am definitely planning for Morocco next year - I was very sad to have had to skip this year's 'bash' in Poland! I will look forward for news of date and place so as to activate the plans for the trip...

best wishes

Tim

I was looking on the net trying to research the location of next year's conference, and was aghast to see what appeared to be, a veritable paucity of decent hotels in the place.....I fear for the conference if there aren't enough decent hotel rooms , as a bad hotel in Morocco can be really bad. The only decent looking one I saw had only 30 rooms...please reassure us that there will be something better than that for what may turn out to be over 200 people!
If all the noise I hear about people promising to be there is true, [including my own aspirations] it could get interesting.

Hi to everybody!
Fully agree: it was a great success! In my opinion there were at least two highlights: the trips to mines all together, with people from all over the world (usually I go looking for minerals alone or with other Italian people!), and, of course, the mineral exposition during the speeches!
There is a third highlight: my travel from Italy cycling through Europe! As I explained some of you, I got across the Maloja Pass in Switzerland, the whole Engadine Valley, The Austrian region Tirol, Bavaria in Germany, the Czech Republic where I visited the cities of Plzen and Prague (!), and got into Poland across the border in Harrachov/Szlarska Poreba; just before joining Lwowek Slaski I visited the Polish city Jelenia Gora. In my return travel I visited the Polish town Luban and went out of Poland through the border Zgorzelec/Goerlitz, where I entered Germany. Then I visited the city of Dresden and of course had a two days stop in Freiberg, where I visied all of the museums, including the historical silver mine (over 100 m under the ground!). Then I visited the town Zwickau, where I took a train combination to come back to Italy. It was all right and I could carry my minerals and take them home and place them in my collection!
Greetings from Italy by Riccardo.

Hi J

Just want to say thank you again for the great conference.

Special thanks to all your team and to Tomasz and his team.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and made quite a few new friends

The Polish people themselves should also be very proud of the hospitality provided. Everyone we met were so kind and thoughtful. Not just at the event or in the host town but everywhere we went. Despite the language barriers we had a real ball. Best holiday I have had in a long while.

Cheers for now

Keith

Keith,
i fully second your post .. it was a pleasure to meet you of course ...
finally put faces to names ... i am still in post-Lwowek-good-mood,

cheers
Roger