The 1998 Young Malacologists' Forum took place on the 24th of September at The Natural History Museum, London. The Forum was originally conceived as a venue for post-graduates and young post-docs to present their research in an informal setting and to meet each other and potential future employers. I'm not sure to what extentwe have succeeded on the second count, but as a meeting point, I think we have been very successful. The first year's Forum ran very smoothly, attracted a good range of speakers, a largeraudience than we were anticipating and generally left us with a nice warm feeling that perhaps this was going to work after all. In contrast to '97, by August of 1998 I was experiencing cold flushes every time I thought about the forum. I had very few applicants and was starting to wonder whether I was going to have enough speakers. To make matters worse (in my mind) I had accepted speakers from Canada and Australia and was wondering how I was going to break it to them that there were (at that stage) only six speakers and that I might have to call the whole thing off! Fortunately, as with all these things, throughout August and September I received a lot more applications, and was able to relax and just get on with pestering people for abstracts, sorting out accommodation and arranging for visits to the collections for early arrivals. In the end we had 14 speakers from seven different countries and this year no-one wanted to talk about littorinids (sorry David)!

At the 1997 meeting we were pleasantly surprised by the range of subjects but there were still several groups of researchers discussing similar topics. However, this year was much more diverse, with only two talks being even vaguely related to each other. This variety makes for a great conference as you find yourself listening to talks on subjects which you would never normally be exposed to - which was one of our original aims when we first discussed the idea of the Young Malacologists' Forum. Everyone was impressed by two things; firstly, the standard of talks and posters this year was even higher than the previous year and secondly that everyone seemed to mix really well. The talks themselves covered subjects as diverse as palaeontology, distribution and ecology of molluscs, slug control in agriculture, a technical explanation of reconstruction techniques, the interrelationships between carabid beetles and mollusc prey, molecular phylogeny work,conservation efforts for partulids on Moorea and the inheritance of mitochondrial DNA in Mytilus. Each speaker was given about 15 minutes to talk and then a few minutes for questions afterwards. The morning session was chaired by Neil Monks (NHM), whilst I handled the afternoon session. Fortunately our intervention was hardly required as the majority of our speakers kept well within their time limit. We scheduled several tea and coffee breaks during the day and it was gratifying to see how many different discussions were going on around the room during these times and over lunch, when most of us decamped to the steps outside the Museum to sit in the sun and talk. This sociable atmosphere extended into the evening when, after the stress of a hard day we had some wine and food to help everyone unwind. Quite a number of us stayed on until we were thrown out by Museum security whereupon we decamped to one of the local pubs. I hope that everyone else found the whole day as enjoyable and absorbing as I did and that the Young Malacologists' Forum continues to be as successful as it has been these last two years.

So where do we go from here?

I was very surprised at how "international" the Forum had become this time round, but when I talked to the speakers from overseas I realised that the combination of a one-day conference and a chance to explore the Collections and library at the Museum enabled many of them to apply for special funding to attend, or just prompted them to reschedule a planned visit to the Museum in order to speak at the Forum. Originally we had just assumed that the Museum and its collections would be an additional draw for speakers, now I am beginning to suspect that it may be a major part of the attraction. So I think we will continue to use the Museum as a venue, since travel to London is relatively straightforward and we have been able to find a number of places offerring budget accommodation close to the Museum.

After discussions with several of the speakers, I think that it would make more sense to move the date back to November. This gives PhD students and MSc students some breathing space if they are close to deadlines for submitting theses or annual reports. In addition it gives newly appointed researchers a chance to get some reading and organisation behind them before attending, either as a speaker with a fresh project to discuss, or simply as a member of the audience.

We felt that those showing posters were a little disadvantaged this year. Next year we will have a poster session where each presenter will discuss their poster for five minutes or so and then be open to questions from the audience.

This year we had arranged for a display of books, back issues and Supplements of the Journal and other merchandise to be available, some at very attractively discounted prices. These all disappeared very rapidly and we would like to organise a more extensive book sale, incorporating discounted current books and very reasonably priced donated scientific volumes. See the related appeal within this issue of the Bulletin.

Alex Ball, EM Unit, NHM, London

A.Ball@nhm.ac.uk