A "conference" is a familiar mode of work for academics. Conferences provide opportunities to bring professionals working in a field together to share and build knowledge. As common as conferences are, however, they are quite challenging to design in ways that truly succeed in galvanizing the attention of an academic community on a shared problem, in generating powerful new understandings, and in energizing and shaping an agenda for future research and development work that will move a field forward. Conferences may aspire to these ends, but as typically designed, rarely achieve them. This paper presents a case study of a conference that provided an exceptionally powerful experience for the participants--both individually and as a professional community--and is pushing forward important work in the field. Dubbed the "PCK Summit," this conference brought together an international group of 22 researchers working in the area of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in science. The group met for five+ days--from dinner on Saturday through lunch on Thursday--in Colorado Springs, CO, in October 2012. The meeting achieved these outcomes: (1) Formation of professional community; (2) Conceptual advancement; and (3) Field development. This paper elucidates the key elements of the PCK Summit's design and the reasons for its success. The hope is that others in NSF and beyond may derive practical lessons about how to conceptualize, prepare for, facilitate, and follow up on academic conferences so that they succeed in building individual, community, and field capacity. Appended are: (1) PCK Summit Participants; and (2) Graphical Depictions of PCK. [Additional funding for this conference was provided by an NSF grant housed at the University of Missouri.]