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Extracellular micro- and nano-scale membrane vesicles produced by different cells are recognized as an essential entity of physiological fluids in a variety of organisms and function as mediators of intercellular communication employed for the regulation of multiple systemic and local processes. In the last decade, an exponential amount of experimental work was dedicated to exploring the biogenesis and secretion mechanisms, physiological and pathological functions and potential applications of the extracellular vesicles (EVs). Noteworthy is the large heterogeneity of in vitro and in vivo models applied, technical approaches developed in these studies and the diversity of designations assigned to different or similar types of EVs. Hence, there is a clear necessity for a uniform nomenclature and standardization of methods to isolate and characterize these vesicles. In April 2012, the first meeting of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) took place bringing together this exponentially grown scientific community. The University of Gothenburg (Krefting Research Centre) together with the Interim Board of the Society created in September 2011 (Jan Lotvall, Clotilde Thery, Xandra Breakefield, Marca Wauben, Yong Song Gho, Lawrence Rajendran, Graca Raposo, Douglas Taylor, Margareta Sjostrand and Esbjorn Telemo) organized this fantastic event that counted 488 registered and contributing participants. This meeting report provides a retrospective summary of the broad spectrum of ISEV-2012 sessions. Again, we emphasize novel findings, discussions and decisions met by the community during the meeting. 2012 Elisa Araldi et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited