1st Research Conference - Gulf Coast Section SEPM

BACK TO THE FUTURE: A NOTE FROM THE FOUNDATION
In 1980, the GCSSEPM Foundation did not exist, and no one knew whether this series of
conferences would be given more than once. Thanks to the vision, the extremely hard work of a
few good people, and industry support, this year (2003) the twenty-third research conference will
be held.
The program and abstracts of the first conference have been long unavailable. It would be
prohibitively expensive to do it again in hard copy, and frankly, I have been unable to find a truly
clean copy for scanning; it appears that everyone who attended took copious notes on/in their
copy. Therefore, the program and abstracts have been retyped and the figures scanned from an
original copy. Thus the exact look and layout is not the same as the original copy, but the words
and figures are.
One key difference is that I have not retyped the program schedule; I assume that when the paper
was given in the conference is not important but the abstract itself. A second key difference is
that after the authors, I have included the original page numbers in the hard copy, so that the
indicated page numbers may not reflect where it is at in this electronic copy. If you reference the
abstract, these page numbers should be used, not the position of the paper in this copy.
Why has this been done? The last paragraph of the introduction by Gene Martin and Bob Perkins
explain it all; the goals of the Section and Foundation have not changed. There is also a second
reason: this has been done in tribute to those of the 1980 Section: what we have today is because
of your hard work.
Thank you.
Dr. Norman C. Rosen,
Executive Director,
GCSSEPM Foundation
June, 2003