Prologue: A behind the scenes view of the 'UV Universe' conference

These Proceedings culminate an exciting year of brainstorming, collaborating, and communicating. Our primary aim for the “UV Universe” conference was to bring together researchers of the local and remote universe with the hope that the two cultures would gain new insights on the evolution of galaxies and the intergalactic medium (IGM) through cosmic time. The UV theme came from the fact that recent deep views of extremely distant galaxies are revealing restframe UV emission that has been redshifted into the visible spectrum. By comparing the UV properties of local galaxies and the IGM with the restframe UV properties of their high-redshift counterparts, we hoped to address whether or not there is compelling evidence for significant evolution of galaxies over the last 10–15 billion years. Fortunately, the conference itself evolved over a much shorter timescale. The following are some recollections along the way.