Why do we attend conferences? To share and to learn, to analyse and reflect, to meet new people and get together with old colleagues and friends. I had the most extraordinary meeting today which surprised me once and again how small the world is. I have just completed an e-moderators training course at Consultants-E and known my tutors will be at the conference. But can you imagine what I learned when I met Kristina Smith (E-Consultants) here? Read on to learn.

My father is a physicist and worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory (NY, USA) for several years. Guess what? Kristina's father is ... a physicist too who worked until his retirement just recently in... Brookhaven National Laboratory. We are now curious to learn if they know each other personally. But this is not all. Long Island is a large place but not so large in the end. There is a chance we could sit in the same café or steak house in Stony Brook or Port Jefferson, places where my parents went out and where Kristina and her family could have been at the same time as we were. Isn't the world a small place?