We now know that soil harbors the largest, most diverse, mostly unknown biological diversity on Earth. It is the ultimate frontier for biological discovery. Our progress has been to learn the enormity of our challenge, but we have also gained substantial insight into nature and framework the soil microbial world. If we remember that 85% of prokaryotic evolutionary history occurred before Pangea broke up, we can understand why there is so much resident diversity in soil. We understand many of the major jobs microbes do, but we don't understand the nuances of many of their brethren, i.e. phenotype, most of which is important to ecological function. Probably the major goal for sometime will be to link microbial diversity…at the genetic level… to function, so that the basis for function can be understood and detected. In the recent past, microbial ecologists were enamored with trees – they have beauty, informative structure and some function – but trees are no longer so satisfying; we want more. Enter circles (the genomic era), now we are attracted to circles – they have even more beauty, usually in color, also have structure and suggest function. Genomic-based approaches, both at the organism and metagenome level will be a foundation of soil molecular ecology probably for the next decade. But, it will also become passé, so what will be next? Ask Alice.