A comprehensive report from our previous world conference. Besides the scientific meeting and its achievements, duly published in the proceedings which is in the very experienced hands of the AusIMM, WSCB8 was a special event in that a highpoint was the launching of the International Pierre Gy Sampling Association (IPGSA). For the first time since the first WCSB1 (2003), our community now has the form of a scientific organisation which will handle organisational matters for which such a formal entity is necessary. The historic background for the proposal to inaugurate a formal scientific organisation was outlined in the previous TOS Forum issue—and the first president of the IPGSA takes this development further in the present report. The inaugural IPGSA Council, and its advisory committee, is duly announced here as well. In a coming issue we will present the Council further, complete with biographies and declarations-of-intent, all so that we can all fully appreciate the collective we have now elected to run our administrative, organisational and other matters.