My area of interest is multilingual ontologies and ontology localisation. The conference, Language, Data and Knowledge (LDK), is very relevant to my research topic. This year I had a paper accepted at the main conference. LDK was held as a hybrid conference, and initially I had just intended to join online as my conference funds for 2023 were already depleted. I was a little heartsore about this, as I have attended LDK in previous years, and the community is very welcoming and friendly.

I applied for the ACM-W scholarship – and I was so thrilled when I was accepted. These funds, combined with the fact that there was no registration fee for LDK (due to the conference being funded by COST), meant that I was able to attend in person!

LDK was extremely well-attended and organised, and it was wonderful to be reacquainted with researchers I have not had the opportunity to meet and speak with during Covid. The main conference ran over two days, with workshops and tutorials held beforehand. I attended the W3C Language Technology Community Group day, conducted by the Chairs of the W3C community group for the linguistic model, OntoLex-Lemon and Best Practices for Multilingual Linked Open Data (BPMLOD). This day was held in-person only. It was very exciting to see the latest developments of OntoLex-Lemon. After presenting my paper, I also had the opportunity to speak with several researchers, and potentially collaborate on future work.

In closing, it was my first time in Vienna (and Austria), and it was an absolute joy to take in all the magnificent architecture.

Thank you to ACM-W for making this possible.