Multi-Object Spectroscopy in the Next Decade: A Conference Summary

I present a highly-biased summary of the conference "Multi-Object Spectroscopy in the Next Decade: Big Questions, Large Surveys, and Wide Fields," held 2-6 March 2015 in Santa Cruz de la Palma, Spain. I focus on four issues in this summary: (1) complexity in objects, physics, and instruments is driving the field of large-scale multi-object spectroscopic surveys; (2) statistics is important to drive conclusions, but inference is as or even more important; (3) multi-wavelength surveys are necessary, particularly for understanding galaxies and cosmology; and (4) a large number of new multi-object spectrographs at a wide variety of wavelengths are either already here or will rapidly be available. This conference shows that we are just learning how to get the most (astrophysics) out of these instruments.