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SLUO Annual Meeting: SLUO2008

(SLUO logo)On September 18th, the SLAC Users Organization (SLUO) will convene its Annual Meeting. The meeting will be held in the Kavli Auditorium from 8:00 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., followed by a reception in the Breezeway.

The SLUO Annual Meeting is an invaluable opportunity to learn about the latest plans, new developments and science opportunities in the Particle Physics and Astrophysics (PPA) Directorate at SLAC. It is also a great time to learn about new projects and to interact with other members and potential new colleagues, to discuss the future collaborations between SLAC and the university physics community.

Like the laboratory and the whole field, SLUO is making a major transition this year: after years of supporting users at on-site accelerator-based facilities, the organization now needs to better understand how to represent the research interests of a potentially much broader community of members. It is imperative that we succeed in re-inventing SLUO, in order to contribute to insuring a strong future of excellence in our field!

This year the meeting will have two major foci.

The morning sessions will be dedicated to the new visions and local and national reorganizations that followed recent events affecting our field. Persis Drell will open the day with a presentation, "Vision for SLAC Science." The second part of the morning will feature updates on activities and plans by Dennis Kovar from the Department of Energy, Joe Dehmer from the National Science Foundation and Mike Holland from the Office of Management and Budget.

The afternoon sessions, introduced with a general presentation by Steve Kahn, "The PPA Paradigm," will be organized around two round tables: one addressing the Collider Frontier, the other, the Cosmic Frontier. These discussion panels will bring together representatives of various projects, SLAC based and non-SLAC based users, U.S. and non-U.S. collaborators. The panels will begin with short presentations on projects, giving recent highlights and current status, followed by discussion. The goal of the panels will be to exchange ideas, for example the skills immediately useful to various projects, and to propose a formulation for how SLAC can help.

The SLUO Executive Committee expects the discussions to provide a basis for understanding how best to develop a renewed collaborative culture and future community role for PPA.

This year's SLUO Annual Meeting is a natural followup to the SLUO February meeting on Redefining the User Facility. Please also refer to the User Perspective Summary presented at the P5 sub-panel.

Mark your calendar and plan to come and participate in the 2008 SLUO Annual Meeting! During the lunch break, there will be a chance to propose and discuss nominations for new 2009 SLUO Executive Committee members.

—Gérard Bonneaud, SLUO Chair (on behalf of the SLUO Executive Committee), SLAC Today, July 23, 2008