The 2012 Goldschmidt conference took place between the 24th and 29th June in Montréal, Quebec. Conferences are interesting beasts for all involved. For the new PhD students, this may be the first time to present their work in public, which brings a whole raft of stress-related baggage. For intermediates such as late-stage PhD students and Post-Docs, the stress is more due to imminent cessations of funding. The stress for Professors and other advanced academics is due to trying to synthesize the work of a research group into a ground-breaking presentation without taking the glory away from individual students. This hot pot of stress-inducing factors often means that the week prior to a conference is a busy time. Abstracts are written long before the presentation, which means that often a degree of clairvoyance is needed to second-guess how the results will pan out in the meantime. If someone has ever successfully done this, I don’t know about it! Machines are run into the night to get the last bit of data, printers are overwhelmed by poster printing at the last possible moment, and supervisors are swamped with 11th hour information from students.

Done correctly, conferences are inspiring experiences. All scientists know that for a considerable amount of our time, self-motivation is all that keeps our work ticking over. Geo-apathy has been known to strike even the most studious of people, be it because the ICP machine has refused to work, the computer model won’t run because of a rogue comma on a command line, or personal circumstances that life seems to throw our way at most inopportune times. A conference is the ideal medication for Geo-apathy. There are old friends to catch up with, the realisation that your work is of interest to more people than just your supervisor, the two or three talks you see during the week that send your brain into a fizz of ideas of how you could further your own scientific exploration, the talks with prospective employers that reassure you that all this work is not for nothing, and the memorable nights out with peers that remind you why we are so privileged and lucky to work in such a friendly and open scientific community. Often it is these nights out that prove most scientifically fruitful. I owe at least one post-doctoral position and two scientific papers to random conversations in a bar. Goldschmidt this year was no exception, and was particularly interesting for us Europeans to be exposed to a more North American weighted conference. There were several new friends/colleagues made throughout the week.

In summary, the conference was a resounding success. The general mood on Friday afternoon was that of happiness and exhaustion, the latter is understandable as an event such as this provides a perfect alternative metaphor for “burning the candle at both ends.” However, none of this exhaustion seemed to be Geo-apathy related. Geo-saturated perhaps, but that affliction doesn’t last long. Goldschmidt reminds me why I love science. We are lucky to have such a vibrant, studious, complementary, and cutting edge group of scientists around us. I feel privileged and inspired by the conversations I have had this week and hope the other delegates feel the same. Conferences primarily allow us to disseminate our data and results, but in reality they provide so much more than that. Long may it continue, so I hope see old and new friends alike in Florence in 2013.