The following post was written by Anna MacKay. Anna recently attended the World Mining Competition in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan through the CSA Conference and Competitions Program.
Over the last weekend of October, I had the privilege of attending the World Mining Competition in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I worked alongside my three teammates, Austin Goncalves, Cole Stocki and Jack Barber, all of whom are Geological Science students at the University of Manitoba. When we arrived in Saskatoon we attended a networking event as well as a banquet dinner to kick off the activities for the weekend, where we got to meet the 14 teams coming from other schools in Canada, Germany, England and Chile! The next morning we were presented with the case and worked together for the following 36 hours to solve the financial, geological and engineering aspects of the case, which allowed for us to truly come together from our differing disciplines to create the best case presentation possible.
Throughout our time working on the case, we had two challenges where we were put on the spot to come together as a team and present ideas in front of business professionals from many different industry backgrounds. On the final day we had the preliminary presentations and then the rest of us were able to watch the final five presentations. My team and I did not make it to the final five, however, we are very happy with what we came out with as well as with our ability to work as a team. We have all learned so much more about not only our own disciplines but each other and how much value each person’s knowledge add to one another’s. The presentations were followed by a gala dinner with all the teams and business professionals and professors and was held in a beautiful new art gallery in Saskatoon.
Overall I felt the weekend held a great balance of competition, games and networking and I was able to come back with new friendships with students from all over the world. I am extremely grateful that I got the opportunity to attend this case conference as it was an amazing way to experience my first ever case competition. I am also very grateful of the Commerce Students Association for helping make my trip possible.