The European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM-28) at Warwick University in August this year marked my personal return to the world of crystallographic conferences after a gap of some eleven years. I recently returned to work at the CCDC, having left in 2002, and spent the intervening 11 years working in the drug discovery software industry which, although related and relevant, is quite a different community.
ECM events take place every year, except for those in which there is an IUCr Congress. Hence the last event took place in 2012 in Bergen, Norway, and it is some considerable time since the UK hosted an ECM, in 1977. The last major international crystallographic event in the UK took place in 1999, when the IUCr Congress was hosted in Glasgow – I had the honour of being on the organising committee on that occasion, and I’m delighted to say that the professional organisers for the Warwick ECM were the same people as at Glasgow – Northern Networking, run by Gill Moore. It was great to see her again after all this time.
