This weekend, I went to go see Le Tour de France. On Bastille Day, to be exact. It was amazing to see all the riders whiz by. They rode extremely close to each other, but each one maintained focus on the goal and didn’t collide.

What was more amazing to me still was the amount of support personnel for Le Tour. About an hour or so before the cyclists came through, the team representatives, merchandise vendors, police officers, financial supporters, and yet more drove by in their vans and cars setting the crowd abuzz with anticipation.

Even after the riders came through, there were still more support personnel to follow. Cars with bicycle racks were on hand in case of a spill, and emergency vehicles followed closely as well.

The same can be said of CERN, and of any nationally funded laboratory. There are hoards of support personnel, working sometimes in the background and sometimes right in the open.

I am friends with a few people in the publicity office, and they seem to always be busy photographing or schmoozing some foreign head of science. The monetary investors want to be sure that their funds are well spent.

When these political heads of science come, they want to meet with the physicists. They want to hear about their projects and work. They want to find how their money can be better spent.

And we scientists have to be ready. We have to focus on our goal of effectively funding our research and communicating its importance in clear and basic language. We have to learn how to work closely with our support without crashing heads.

-Julia