Users, Start Your Laptops
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
This is the first morning of the 2008 SSRL/LCLS users' meeting, with about 300 scientists and collaborators expected. The tent went up yesterday, and based on the conversations I had then everyone behind the scenes was in scramble mode getting ready for the first sessions.
This is the second year for LCLS and SSRL to hold their users' meeting jointly. SSRL of course has been at this for a number of years, but the LCLS is just getting off the ground and thus has not yet cultivated a very large user base. The exciting part for me is how scientists I talk to regard the LCLS collaboration as something completely new, a hybrid of sorts with regard to traditional modes of scientific collaboration. The traditional lightsource community is vast, and for the most part user groups operate quite separately from the light source facility itself. As long as things are moving smoothly, there's not a lot of need for the user to worry about the mechanics of accelerator operation. The LCLS is a different beast. Users and accelerator physicists will work much more closely to tailor the machine for each experiment. And being the first light source of its kind, the experiments themselves require new ways of thinking. Over the next few days I hope to explore the nature of this new beast, with a look at the current science of traditional light sources, and how the LCLS is changing the way light source scientists work together. posted by Brad Plummer @ 8:00am
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