Surveys using VLBI – the past, present, and its bright future

For over 20 years, a significant effort has been made to map the milliarcsecond sky with VLBI. The largest surveys are targeted and require many years of observations to build up an extensive sample. However, computational improvements have enabled us to map the entire primary beam of VLBI arrays and push into the lower frequency regime through the International LOFAR telescope. In this talk, I will talk about the scientific and technical discoveries arising from such surveys and focus on the bright future of VLBI surveys. This includes the transition from the current modus operandi of a small number of surveys of a few "famous" deep fields to a ubiquitous VLBI survey instrument. I will touch on other developments, such as the incorporation of SKA and MeerKAT, ultra-wideband receivers, and GPU-accelerated correlation and calibration