This podcast is brought to you from the Vitae Researcher Development International Conference 2011, at the Midland Manchester hotel (05/06 September 2011). In the course of this podcast we cover a summary of day 1 of the conference, including some participant interviews, an overview from the Plenary session which includes news from the Research Councils UK and news on the Researcher Development Framework (http://www.vitae.ac.uk/rdf). Also in this podcast, an interview with Dr Nathan Ryder on the Vitae Innovate resource, Non-Zero-Sum and an announcement about the 15 Higher Education Institutions selected to recieve the European Commision HR Exellence in Research Award.