Open Access

Matjaž Kuntner

• Almost four years ago, during the 2009 congress in Greece, I was called away from the Russian party only to be cornered by the esteemed colleagues of the ESA council and be asked the unnerving question, to which, of course, a negative response was not an option: “Matjaž, how would you feel about organizing a future European congress”? Three years later, in September 2012, not only European arachnologists, but also many overseas colleagues came to Ljubljana with huge expectations from me and my crowd of enthusiastic, yet inexperienced, sidekicks, of which only one was a professional researcher, and the rest were graduate or undergraduate students. 2012 was a recession year, and with hundreds of our letters asking for sponsorship of this “unique and prestigious scientific event” ignored (though with a handful of exceptions, see below), we had to pull the event off on a shoestring. We did, however, keep the fees low for numerous colleagues to be able to attend, and in addition we sponsored an unprecedented number of students that would otherwise be unable to attend the meeting; no fewer than 30 lucky international students were thus awarded grants that in addition to waived fees also covered their accommodation. And so we (EZ lab) hosted, at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) in Ljubljana, between 2nd and 7th September 2012, 156 colleagues from 39 countries.