At the moment this blog post goes live I will be on a train towards London as part of the first leg of my journey to Bangor for the annual Venom Day conference that takes place there. It will be my 3rd conference in as many weeks – as you may have noticed I may have a problem. Time to attend academics anonymous? The first conference I attend was the 20th Young Systematists Forum held at the Natural History Museum, London on the 23rd November. Now some of you will recognise that I don’t really delve much into the world of systematics much but it’s always good to attend conferences to learn about techniques and tools you can use in your own research. It’s also a great way to network and find out about other cool research going on. Despite the fact that I’m not a systematist or a taxonomist I still had a great time and with the meeting behind held in my favourite building in London, I couldn’t have been any happier!

The second conference was more familiar ground, being the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust and British Herpetological Society Join Scientific Meeting held at the Bournemouth Natural Sciences Society on Saturday 1st December. It was only the second time that I’d been to the JSM in Bournemouth but it didn’t disappoint! There were a range of talks on all topics including my old nemesis – chytrid! I also had the chance to chat science with a number of fellow herpetologists – some of which I had only just met. My favourite talk of the event was by James Hicks on how climate change and habitat modification in the tropics may affect reptile assemblages in the future.

I’ll provide a more in-depth review of Venom Day once it’s over and keep an eye out for my herpetological conference transcripts/notes coming to a blog post near you soon!