ECCO 2021 will be the sixteenth annual instalment of this conference for pre-clinical medical students at the University of Otago. This year, the theme is “Thriving Beyond Medical School” and will be all about practical skills. We would like to introduce students to the skills they will use in their clinical practice in years to come, with a strong focus on how these skills will be beneficial in a real-life setting. The conference will achieve this through talks from world class speakers, and a variety of workshops, which will be more hands-on than ever before and will spark excitement about students’ future in medicine.