One thing I like about the BES/SFE conference is that it's so diverse, featuring sessions from computational ecology to conservation management and policy. For somebody like me who has broad interests, this feels like home. Despite the large number of attendants, each session is surprisingly small, hosting its own microcosm of an ecological community.
There are many interesting talks but some talks stood out for me because of their broad relevance or simply because ... I found them cool. Like the talk on using diaries and photographs of Charles Elton to infer vegetation changes in a woodland.