From May 22nd to 24th, students from the Niessing lab and the group of Micha Drukker (ISF, Helmholtz Zentrum München) organized a minisymposium on “RNA- and chromatin-based gene regulation in differentiation and disease”. The event took place at 2650 meter altitude at the Schneefernerhaus, close to the peak of the Zugpitze. The goal of this event was to bring together scientists from very different fields who are normally unlikely to discuss their research with each other. Stem cell researchers, geneticists, biochemists and structural biologists convened at high altitude and learnt about the current state of each others research. Besides talks from the two organizing labs, speakers came from different Helmholtz labs including the Schneider, Bonev and Lickert lab. Additionally, external speakers from the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Erasmus University in Rotterdam and from the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz. It was rewarding to see that intensive discussions between these scientists with very different expertise picked up from the beginning of the conference.