Move Mining's theme is to change the world's perception of an industry already changing the world. We were honored to be among the finalists at the inaugural Move Mining competition, held last week at the SME Annual Conference & Expo in Denver. Find more about the event at www.movemining.org.
Facebook Live
Watch the video of the presentation. We are the last to present and start at 1 hour and 9 minutes, and watch the other fantastic presentations.Presentation
If you'd like to step through our presentation, we've made it available to the public.What We Love Most
We loved the comradery all the teams had with each other. We all cheered for each other and suported one another's ideas. This shows the true spirit of collaboration that all innovations need to move forward. In an age of constant innovation, it seems that mining is getting left behind and ignored. It is nice to see that we are working together to move mining and provide the raw materials the world needs safely and with minimal impact to the environment.
Our Move Mining Journey
We'd been sitting on the Mineral Maniacs for over 2 years, every so often advancing and improving the manuscript. When we got home from Thanksgiving last year, I was flipping through a new issue of Mining Engineering magazine and saw an ad for Move Mining. The submission deadline for a concept was the next day, December 1st. I called my wife and said I think we could submit the Mineral Maniacs. After getting the kiddos to bed, we wrote a 3 page concept paper and included the first chapter of the book and submitted just before the deadline. We'd been sharing the book with various people in the industry for a while, with a lot of excited feedback. We figured if we got selected to Move Mining that would be the validation of our vision to show kids and their parents the fascinating world of mining. A few weeks later, we got the great news that we were finalists and we started transforming the manuscript into a novel.
We hired our illustrator to design the cover and a few of the key illustrations. We built our website, set-up a self-publishing company, and started on the path towards publishing the book. We've been playing with different marketing strategies, such as using social media to help generate buzz before Move Mining. We set up an ad to find an editor and within 2 days we received over 50 candidates, highly qualified editors, most with backgrounds in children's literature, STEM education, and even mining.
Launch ahead
Getting ready for the competition has taken most of our free time over the last two months, but the effort has really paid off. Though we didn't win the competition we have been surprised by many people and companies wanting to support the book. We are now working to get the book ready for pre-ordering to launch our next marketing campaign. It looks like we are close to a launch party for The Mineral Maniacs.
