How Control Theory Saved Christmas (Again): Insights from the 2024 Control Advent Calendar

This paper presents a series of insights and recommendations that follow the design, implementation and execution of the Control Advent Calendar (CAC) 2024, an outreach initiative that was originally introduced in 2023 and that was continued in 2024. The event, consisting of 24 problems open to the general public (one for each day of December leading up to Christmas), was designed with the goal of highlighting the significance and ubiquity of control theory in diverse applications. As an ancillary goal, the 2024 edition has been also serving as a testbed for the mechanisms that should run behind implementing a journal dedicated to sharing and pooling control engineering exercises. This paper thus discusses how challenges encountered in 2023 informed improvements in 2024, which improvements actually met the intended goals and which not, and share key gained insights. Finally, the plans for the 2025 edition, aiming for an even more engaging and impactful CAC, are outlined.