The International Society for Computational Biology, ISCB, organizes the largest event in the field of computational biology and bioinformatics, namely the annual international conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, the ISMB. This year at ISMB 2012 in Long Beach, ISCB celebrated the 20th anniversary of its flagship meeting. ISCB is a young, lean and efficient society that aspires to make a significant impact with only limited resources. Many constraints make the choice of venues for ISMB a tough challenge. Here, we describe those challenges and invite the contribution of ideas for solutions.