Challenges at FEL facilities: The Stanford Picosecond FEL Center

There are now six FEL facilities in the United States and Europe, each delivering more than 2000 h of FEL beam time per year. Others, especially in Japan, will soon follow. At the present time approximately 100 papers are published each year in refereed scientific journals describing optical science experiments performed with FELs. Although the credibility of FELs has grown markedly in the past year, there are important challenges that FEL facilities must now address. In this paper we trace the recent history of the Stanford Picosecond FEL Center and discuss some of the most important challenges we now face.