The 11th International Surface X-ray and Neutron Scattering (SXNS) Conference was held on July 13-17, 2010, on the Northwestern University (NU) campus, in Evanston Illinois and hosted by the NU Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. This biennial conference brought together a community of 164 attendees from 16 countries. The field now makes use of a broad range of new experimental capabilities that have been made possible through the development of increasingly brilliant X-ray and neutron sources around the world, including third generation synchrotron sources, neutron reactor and spallation sources, as well as the recent development of X-ray lasers.