My first maths conference was The 36th Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing. I had just finished my honours thesis, Generalising the Clique-Coclique Bound, and I had travelled to Sydney to present my results to a room full of people much smarter than me. I’m no longer working in graph theory or finite geometry, but every year since 2012 I have attended the ACCMCC. I keep up to date with the research, and I maintain contact with some of the best mathematicians I’ve ever met.