The BLAST Conference is the premier venue to hear the latest scientific advances in prokaryotic signal transduction and motility. The meeting consists of 2 keynote talks, ~50 short talks and ~80 posters. The short talks are selected from submitted abstracts, and typically 70% are given by students and postdocs. BLAST is run by a not-for-profit scientific organization, created for the purpose of holding these bi-annual international meetings. Typically there are about 130-170 attendees—the BLAST Community— including faculty, staff scientists, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from academic institutions, private industry, and government agencies. We have an international membership that includes scientists and academicians from North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.