Exploration Radio

Exploration Radio A podcast about the past, present and future of mineral exploration. Come join us and let's explore.

Welcome to Exploration Radio, a podcast focusing on the past, present and future of mineral exploration. Featuring interviews and discussions with explorers about the challenges they have faced, what we stand to learn from them and how we can better prepare for the future. Ultimately these are stories about exploration...the people, places and issues prevalent in mineral exploration.

09/09/2021

New episode available now!

EP45 - KEEP THE RISK IN THE ROCK WITH TONY REDA.

In this episode, we speak to Tony Reda from Tectonic Metals.

Tony is trying to create a company where the non-technical opportunities or risks are just as critical a pillar in the company as identifying the technical opportunities present.

They are trying to do the right thing as early as possible. Tony joined us today from his home in British Columbia to talk about what challenges he faces in trying to create such a company.

NEW EPISODE - #37 - THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM -
15/12/2020

NEW EPISODE - #37 - THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM -

12/12/2020

"...The elephant in the room is that the devaluation of mining companies cannot be explained by the commodity price, instead it is dictated by the self-inflicted mistakes of a commodity boom, and the irresponsible management of these assets."

"...The elephant in the room is that most of these mining companies believe that the commodity boom will continue to bail out their lackadaisical management and operations."

"...The elephant in the room is that mining companies, in the past, maximised returns for an ever-rising gold price; optimising project resources for scale rather than payback and returns."

"...The elephant in the room is that the mining industry has made so many mistakes; mistakes in the geological modelling, mistakes in community relations, mistakes in environmental planning, mistakes in capital markets, mistakes in communicating with investors and mistakes in overpromising and promoting their business."

"...The elephant in the room is that the mining industry has lost the trust of the most serious investors, causing an exodus of capital that will not return quickly."

For a while, we have been complaining that there seems to be a continuous exodus of investors out of mining. We have laid the blame for this on a number of things: mining is a risky business and investors just do not get us; the boom and bust cycles make it difficult for these investors to stay around; and the common and ever present excuse, it is all because of the commodity price. Maybe it is time that we recognised that we as an industry have lost the trust of investors because of the failures of our recent past in returning value to shareholders. Maybe what these absent investors are asking for, is the opportunity to make real investments that have a potential to deliver long term returns and not just over-hyped stock plays.

Our guest today is Jonathan Goodman, President and CEO of Dundee Corporation, a company with a long and successful pedigree investing in the mining and resources industry. He joins us to talk about how as an industry we need to start addressing some of these “elephants in the room” before general investors start trusting us an industry again.

17/11/2020

In 2005, Wallbridge Mining a junior exploration company based in Sudbury Canada, hired two students to help out with their summer exploration programs. One of these students was Ahmad, the host of this podcast, who only ended up working with Wallbridge for that summer before building a career through different roles and opportunities in several multi-national companies. The other was Attila Pentek, who ended up staying with the company for the next 15 years, starting as a Masters Student, to then completing his PhD with the company, to working as an exploration geologist, then a resource geologist, a mine manager, a business development geologist and now heads up their exploration department.

Our industry has plenty of examples of people that jump between jobs every 3-5 years. It is rare to find someone like Attila that has stayed with a company for such a long time. Even rarer still, is someone that has done it at the start of their career with a junior explorer. Junior companies are not usually renowned for having established programs that develop and nuture graduates. Maybe the reason that Attila stayed with Wallbridge for so long has something to do with the culture that the company has created, where loyalty is rewarded by opportunity. At some point, all of us have faced these questions: when is it time to leave? Is it better to switch jobs to chase opportunities? Or stay and show loyalty where the reward is opportunities provided?

Our guest today is Attila Pentek, the Vice President Exploration for Wallbridge Mining and we talk to him about why he took the career road less travelled.

09/11/2020

Why did you start this podcast?... What have been your favourite episodes so far?... Is there anyone you haven’t yet interviewed that you would particularly like to speak to?... How do you go about constructing an interview?... Do you get a lot of feedback for your podcasts?... What does the future of Exploration Radio look like?

Over the last 3 years, we have often been asked these questions by individual listeners. We are only too happy to answer them. We really hold no secrets behind what our motivation was in starting this podcast, our interest in continuing it and our desire in what we want to do with it.

So when the AIG convinced us to join them for a webinar, we figured that was a great opportunity to answer any questions our listeners (and others) had for us about Exploration Radio. In this episode, the interviewers become the interviewees and you get to ask us whatever you wanted to know about Exploration Radio.

NEW EPISODES!!... STARTING WEEK OF NOV 9th.After a longer than expected wait, we are ...Tune in next week... ...
06/11/2020

NEW EPISODES!!... STARTING WEEK OF NOV 9th.

After a longer than expected wait, we are ...

Tune in next week...

25/03/2020

On December 23rd, 1935, Walt Disney sent a memo to Don Graham, an art teacher, asking for his help in running some courses for his employees at the Disney Studios. Walt felt that people being hired at his studio were adequate cartoonists - they knew how to draw really well. But they were missing the key elements of being a good animator - the ability to capture motion and movement in their drawings and use those to impart emotion and a sense of storytelling to the audience. Since there were no schools or institutes teaching this skills, he took it upon himself to fund these courses. The early success of Disney Studios was driven by this investment in up-skilling and educating their staff. They pioneered teaching the skills required to be an animator - along with developing better filming techniques and equipment to produce better animation films. For over 80 years, Disney Studios have run these courses largely uninterrupted. In that time, they did not only end up training their own employees to be better animators, they ended up training animators for the entire industry.

With the current movement of changing skillsets in geoscience, we could be standing on the same precipice as a 1920s cartoonist - needing to acquire new skills to stay relevant in a changing industry. The question of who should be responsible for up-skilling geoscientists is not an easy one to answer. Most companies have scrapped graduate programs, which used to teach the key practical skills required for survival in the industry. Universities are more interested in teaching the fundamental scientific skills and not the industry specific practical skills anymore. With the ever increasing digitalisation in geoscience, the skills gap between what is being taught and what will be required is only getting wider.

Our guest today is Richard Lilly, who runs NEXUS, the National Exploration Undercover School - a 3-week program built around teaching undergraduate geoscience students the practical skills they will need to succeed in a career in the resources industry. Initiatives like NExUS are trying to bridge the gap by teaching students the fundamental practical skills from the past but, more importantly giving them a broad understanding of the skills that may be relevant in the future. Like how Walt and Disney worked on fixing the skills gap in cartoonists becoming animators, Richard and his team are working on the skills gap between what geoscientists know now and what they might need to know in the future.

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