In Australia, the authors learned it is common to ask one or more conference participants to summarize and assess the conference in a final "closing" session. They found the experience of serving as "closers" strangely similar to what students are asked to do in providing an overall assessment of a course or instructor at the end of a semester. By that point, much has been covered and discussed, but inevitably there are also many issues that were not covered or at least not fully answered. At a conference with many speakers and a large, voluble audience, the range of topics, presentation styles, and discussion is naturally even more varied than in courses taught by one instructor. In this article, the authors discuss how a meaningful evaluation of the overall program can be offered. Although most of the participants were from Australia, even for U.S. participants it was clearly worth the opportunity cost of travel to attend the three-day conference. Their comments provide more perspective on what they felt was emphasized, deemphasized, or missing at the conference. (Contains 2 notes.)