- The 11th Annual Meeting of the European Synchrotron and FEL User Organisation (ESUO) which was hold on April 9th – 10th, 2018, was kindly hosted by the SOLARIS synchrotron in Krakow (Poland). From 30 ESUO countries, 26 ESUO countries and their corresponding national user representative(s), together with CALIPSOplus participating members and invited guests took part in this two-days SOLARIS meeting.
- On the first day of the meeting, the participants (i) were introduced to the new SOLARIS synchrotron, which opened its first call for user proposals on April 9th, 2018, (ii) were updated on the national activities of the ESUO delegates and (iii) could be informed about the Russian user community which was invited to participate for the first time. The status of the CALIPSOplus project as well ESUO related activities within CALIPSOplus, e.g. the first results of the CALIPSOplus Twinning Programme and the new developments of the wayforlight.eu portal, were presented and discussed.
- On the second day, information was shared with the ESUO members about e.g. the status of the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS), of the Umbrella federated identity system for the users of the (European) large neutron and photon facilities, the SESAME user community, and of the Open Data Policy. ESUO members discussed their future role in LEAPS, made a decision on starting the ESUO – SESAME twinning programme and discussed actions towards ESUO sustainability beyond CALIPSOplus. Invited by ESUO, Paulina Sekula and co-workers from the Jagiellonian University Institute of Sociology reported on their results obtained in the frame of the Gender Equality Network in European Research Area (GENERA) project. Such results are foreseen to serve as basis for future discussions related to the promotion of the gender balance in the user community.
- Thanks to Alicja Górkiewicz from SOLARIS for her great support in the co-organisation of the meeting, to the speakers and to all meeting participants for their valuable contributions. Looking forward to the 12th Annual Meeting of the European Synchrotron and FEL User Organisation (ESUO) at FELIX Laboratory in 2019!