So last Thursday lunchtime, a group of us, armed with cake and sandwiches, met to take a first look at the talks and posters to be presented at the Meteoritical Society Meeting, to be held in New York later this summer. As is usual practice, each presentation is summarised in a short abstract and it is these, plus the overall program, that went live a week or so ago. Our job, before the lunchtime meeting, was to each select a few highlights that we could then all discuss together.

After an initial glance at the program, things were not looking too promising. This is going to be the biggest MetSoc ever, with the largest number of presentations, and I was struggling. Would I be able to find at least a few gems to interest the others? It was the usual problem. A lot of meteorite research comes loaded down with some fairly impenetrable jargon. But gradually, once I started to dig a little, I discovered a lot of relevant and interesting contributions. Happily, I was not going to the discussion empty handed.

Once the chocolate brownies and lemon cake had been distributed, we got down to business. Each person in turn gave a little introduction to their picks and everyone else then piled in. As the meeting progressed, we started to identify masses that would be relevant and important to our work. In the end, it was clear, MetSoc 2010, the Big Meeting in the Big Apple, was going to be OK.