Long Beach hosted this year's annual congress of the Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO). In addition to the numerous sessions, talks and poster presentations organized by HUPO itself, several events were arranged by the HUPO initiatives. The Brain Proteome Project (HUPO BPP) was very active, initiating three pre-congress workshops: (i) the kick-off meeting of the EU-funded ProDaC consortium (Proteomics Data Collection) that is aiming at the bioinformatics Standardization in the proteomics field; (ii) the workshop "Standardization Issues in Proteomics: Perspectives from Vendors" giving an overview about the lessons learned by proteomics industrial partners; (iii) the 6th HUPO BPP Workshop "New Proteomics Approaches for further HUPO BPP Studies" offering new concepts for brain-related proteomics studies.