Meeting Reports: 17th Annual ALS Users' Association Meeting and Workshops

It's not exactly Russian roulette, but scheduling October events outdoors is not risk-free, even in usually sunny California. An overflow crowd or more than 400 registered users, ALS staff, and vendors enjoyed a full indoor program featuring science highlights and work-shops spread over two and a half days from October 18 to October 20, 2004. However, a major storm, heralding the onset of the San Francisco Bay Area rainy season, posed a few weather challenges for the events on the ALS patio. Users' Executive Committee chair Dennis Lindle (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) started the meeting off with a warm welcome to new Berkeley Lab Director Stephen Chu. Coming from a laser-based science background, Chu confessed he was not yet intimately familiar with the ALS but was already hearing that it is one of the best facilities for users to do great science.