Today I was invited to speak about the status of the FCC-ee case in terms of physics and detectors at the 2024 Users Meeting at Fermilab. The Annual Users Meeting is a Fermilab tradition—it was meeting number 57—where the status of the lab and in particular matters concerning the users are presented and discussed. As a long time Fermilab user, even working close to 100% on site for eight years (1998-2006), I love Fermilab and have the best memories while doing research with the CDF experiment at the Tevatron collider.
I have never paid too much attention to the Annual Users Meeting except when people from my group presented. I recall in the early 2000 a presentation by students of my group and a short visit to the meeting where an impressive amount of people had showed up in the Ramsey Auditorium. It was a place where a lot of discussion happened and it reflected the activity in the lab and and the collaborating institutions. I cannot say for sure but the meeting must have had several hundred participants and the sessions were lively.
Today my experience was quite different. Fermilab has changed a lot over the last 15+ years with substantial new facilities added to the building park, new research focus in accelerators, neutrinos, g-2, mu2e, quantum experiments and of course the big group working on the CMS experiment.
The Users Meeting, was at an eerily low attendance in the room although 268 people were registered. The presentation was well received and led to a number of good questions and discussions which carried over well into the break. I enjoyed my stay, people did the utmost to accommodate my late registration and somewhat unorganized visit and it went very well, but one has to wonder how well the lab is doing with the users meeting having such a low in person attendance. I think, we need to work together and attract more people to the lab and revive the tradition of users coming to the meeting and having discussions about our future.
