Almost exactly twenty years ago, the first of a series of conferences dedicated to cosmic masers took place in Arlington, Virginia in the USA (March 9–11, 1992). Two more followed, each on a different continent, in Mangaratiba, near Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (March 5–10, 2001) and in Alice Springs, Australia (March 12–16, 2007). As at all others, a large part of the international maser community convened from January 29 to February 3, 2012 in splendid Stellenbosch, South Africa, to discuss the state of the art of the field.