This is my first post here since April. I’ve spent much of the last three months travelling, holidaying, workshopping and attending two conferences. I had a wonderful time in Adelaide at the Genetics Society of AustralAsia’s 2015 conference and learned about some fascinating new science at the Boden Reseach Conference on Comparative Animal Genomics. But what I thought I’d write about here is the week I spent in Białowieża in Poland, for the 2015 Metabarcoding Spring School (#metabar2015 on Twitter). This was organised by the metabarcoding.org team, in conjunction with the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Apart from being a chance to meet lots of new people and spend time in an amazing part of the world, I also learned a great deal. The perfect mixture! There’s no way I can report back on everything here (and in a coincidence of timing, this overview has just been published), so I’ll outline some of the key issues discussed at the workshop and provide links to relevant papers for those who want to learn more.