Book excerpt: The 22nd International Free Electron Laser Conference and 7th FEL User Workshop were held August 13-18, 2000 at Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The conference and the workshop were hosted by Duke University's Free Electron laser (FEL) Laboratory. Following tradition, the FEL prize award was announced at the banquet. The year 2000 FEL prize was awarded to three scientists propelling the limits of high power FELs: Steven Benson, Eisuke Minehara and George Neill. The conference program was comprised of traditional oral sessions on First Lasing, FEL theory, storage ring FELs, linac and high power FELs, long wavelength FELs, SASE FELs, accelerator and FEL physics and technology, and new developments and proposals. Two sessions on accelerator and FEL physics and technology reflected the emphasis on the high quality of accelerators and components for modern FELs. The breadth of the applications was presented in the workshop oral sessions on materials processing, biomedical and surgical applications, physics and chemistry as well as on instrumentation and methods for FEL applications. A special oral session was dedicated to FEL center status reports for users to learn more about the opportunities with FELs. As usual, the oral sessions were supplemented by poster sessions with in-depth discussions and communications. The FEL physicists and FEL users had excellent opportunities to interact throughout the duration of the event, culminating a Joint Sessions. The year 2000 was very successful being marked by lasing with two SASE and one storage ring short-wavelength FELs, and by the first human surgery with the use of FEL, to mention but a few. The International Program Committee and chairs of the sessions had the challenging and exciting problem of selecting invived and contributed talks for the conferences and the workshop from the influx of abstracts mentioning new results and ideas. The success of the conference was determined by these contributions. Scientists from 15 countries gave 70 talks, presented 176 posters and submitted 146 papers, which are published in the present volume of proceedings.