November 2014 I had the chance to attend the Health Care Infection Society (HIS; www.his.org.uk/ ). I must admit, with my background in engineering and design, attending an event primarily targeted at clinicians and microbiologist was a little daunting. There was a real fear that I was in for three days of talks that would go entirely over my head. Thankfully though this was not the case and over the course of the conference, I managed to attend a wide range of interesting presentations. Topics ranged from those directly related to my work, such as endoscope decontamination and water borne pathogens, to talks more applicable to microbiology as a whole such as the slightly daunting concept of viable-but-non-culturable bacteria (how dead is really dead?!).