Announcing BIG Media’s Person of the Year for 2021

When I saw this week that Elon Musk had been named Time Magazine’s person of the year, I thought, “Hey, we are also a well-established media company (10.5 months and getting older every day!), so we should also have a person of the year.”

Now, I am guessing Time’s selection process started before December 17, and, of course, we needed to streamline the process so I could make the announcement on the same day that the concept was conceived. There would only be one nominee, and the chairman of the Person of the Year Selection Committee (me) will be the only person consulted … but none of this makes BIG Media’s Person of the Year award any less meaningful than that of Time Magazine. In fact, you will notice that Time Magazine’s person of the year does not even have capital letters, while BIG Media’s Person of the Year capitalizes on the opportunity.

After dozens of minutes of deliberation this morning, the selection committee has reached a decision.

Drumroll

BIG Media’s Person of the Year is Laurie Weston.

Laurie is an internationally renowned entrepreneur/geophysicist. Sound QI, the company she founded in 2007, has introduced through its proprietary software QI-Pro a new level of quantitative interpretation of seismic attributes. Put simply, Laurie and an all-star team that includes chief geophysicist Carl Reine and business development wiz Martin Bawden, help energy companies find oil and gas deposits.

Laurie is also a super cool human who cares deeply about our beautiful planet and its inhabitants. She is a mother of three and grandmother of three.

She is also a fighter. In the last month, she has lost her father Don, who passed away this week, her cat of 20 years Monty, and she was the victim of a nasty dog attack. But she keeps battling every day to grow her business and brighten the lives of those around her. She is an inspirational leader to her family, colleagues, and business associates.

Laurie is a Distinguished Lecturer with a great sense of humour, and she is a gifted writer. Her articles published at BIG Media are always exceptional in their depth and accuracy. She has no formal journalism training, but you will be hard pressed to find anything close to the calibre of her stories on the big issues:

Science – there is method to the madness

Manipulating science – activism and advocacy

Science and morality – ethics and judgment

Putting global emissions in perspective

Funeral for a glacier

Climate change and energy: context for the great debate

Power struggle – data analysis puts Texas energy debacle in perspective

COVID-19 is definitely not the flu

Assessing the relative lethality of COVID-19: a Canadian case study

COVID clarification – a tale of two tales

COVID calculations – applying statistics to COVID-19 testing

AI: Where are we and where are we going?

Homemade burger fries competition in price war

Richard Branson realizes dream of spaceflight in live-streamed voyage

Where did the flu go – and do we miss it?

Is flu vaccination important this year?

Congratulations, Laurie Weston, on being named BIG Media’s inaugural Person of the Year!

Disclosure: Laurie Weston is co-founder, contributor, and scientific strategist for BIG Media … but she had no idea that BIG Media was even going to have a person of the year, and, therefore, had no influence on the decision to name her the winner.