The beginning of September (05.09 & 06.09) saw around 200 ILIAS users, developers and interested participants meet up in beautiful Graz to discuss our open-source learning management system. This 23rd International ILIAS Conference marked the first time that the ILIAS community had met in Austria.

In the spirit of this year's motto, 'Hand in hand - growing together', much networking, exchange of experiences and working hand in hand towards one common goal took place. That goal: a simple and great ILIAS for everyone.

Interest in the conference was high, so much so that the Development Conference, which took place, as always, one day before the International Conference, and in a conference room that could hold 75 participants, was completely 'sold out'. Luckily, the event was live-streamed, so that those who registered too late, were able to follow the event from their hotel rooms. Even the main International ILIAS Conference was pretty much booked out, with around 200 participants from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands meeting together in Graz.

To start things off, the first keynote speech took place in the Schloßbergrestaurant, overlooking the whole of Graz from the highest point (123m up!) in the city. This was also the location of the social event in the evening, during which the participants were treated to a whole selection of local Styrian delicacies in a breathtaking setting. The buffet could especially be considered a worthy reward for those brave and fit individuals who climbed the approx. 260 steps up to the Schloßberg.

The conference was opened with a welcome address from the two board members of the ILIAS Society, Yvonne Fischer and Oliver Samoila. This was followed by some words of welcome and a short introduction to ILIAS in Graz and Austria from the hosts of this year's conference, Sandra Derler from axtesys GmbH and Stefan Vejda from NexxaCon IT-Consulting GmbH. Finally, ILIAS Product Manager Matthias Kunkel reported on the current state and development of ILIAS. In particular, he outlined the main focal points, but also the challenges of current developments. He pointed out that, in addition to the functionality and user-friendliness of the software, the topics of security and sustainability will also play an important role in future ILIAS versions.

As a part of the presentation, and to the surprise of those present, a live-link was established with Cornelis Kater, head of E-Learning Services at the University of Hannover and Chairman of Stud.IP e.V., who briefly reported on the new 'Open Source Development Network'. Financed through dividend payouts from Porsche, the state of Lower Saxony will invest €5m into funding five open-source projects. ILIAS is one of these. This four-year basic funding is intended to improve the security and reliability of the software components as well as their accessibility and usability. Further information will be available shortly at opensource-bildung.de.

After this great news, the day continued in an exciting fashion with the keynote speech of the first day. Frank Karlitschek, managing director of Nextcloud GmbH, gave the audience insights into the Nextcloud software, which can be used as a data protection-compliant communication and collaboration solution. Security, data protection and transparency, as well as performance and user-friendliness, are the focus here and are likely to have given one or two guests food for thought. This was also the case for the employees of the ILIAS Society, who have already used Nextcloud in the past as part of a shared cloud-drive, but not yet for anything more.

In the afternoon, the conference switched venue to the freshly renovated premises of axtesys GmbH. Spread over three floors of an over 200-year-old building opposite Graz Cathedral and equipped with modern technology, here was enough space for all of the participants to follow the six parallel conference slots. That things got a little heated in some of the rooms had less to do with fiery exchanges and more to do with the extremely warm weather, which resulted in the events being held in the cellar rooms proving especially popular.

This year's programme was once again put together by a committee of volunteers: Lars Ewald, Kenji-T. Nishino, Karim Sayed and Eva Unterlechner came up with the motto, planned the keynotes and put together the call for papers. The quality and amount of entries led to a wide-ranging programme that meant that the participants were spoiled for choice. The international guests did not miss out either: as every year, simultaneous translation into English took place in one room throughout the event.

There was also an emotional contribution from Molly Soeby from the USA that deserves a special mention here. Although the connection to the other side of the world wasn't quite as stable as hoped, Molly's presentation was extremely moving. Molly heads the Unitive Education Programms der "Alliance for Unitive Justice". Since the beginning of the year, ILIAS has been used to train teachers at a school in Uganda on the subject of non-violent education. The headteacher of the school said 'The study and practice of Unitive Justice has given me a deeper understanding of the importance of fairness, equality, unity and empathy in my classroom. The impact of learning and practising Unitive Justice has been profound, shaping my approach to teaching and restoring my passion for the profession.' ILIAS has opened up possibilities like this for schools all around the world. Well.... if that isn't both motivational and moving!

Recordings from the conference room on the ground floor and the presentations of all contributors can be found on the official conference website. We will make these available as soon as possible. We would like to thank you for all the great contributions. Each of you contributed to making the conference a success and helped fill the conference theme with life and love - hand in hand.

How well the hosts planned in advance could be seen from the keynote speech on Friday. Irmgard Hoislbauer, managing director of M.I.T e-Solutions in Austria informed the guests about exciting opportunities and trends in the area of artificial intelligence in corporate training. Her keynote speech was quickly streamed live from the ground floor to all other conference rooms so that all participants could listen - and even the QR codes in the presentation worked without any problems in the streams in the other rooms.

To finish off two very successful and exciting days, on which those present were able to work 'hand in hand', inform, learn and also sweat quite a bit, it was time once more for the awarding of the ILIAS Community Award. This honours people who have distinguished themselves through their voluntary work and their efforts to advance the software. This year, the society members voted for the award to be presented to Richard Klees, member of the Technical Board and one of the managing directors of the ILIAS Service Provider CaT Concepts and Training GmbH. Congratulations Richard!

In addition to the sponsors, the contributos and of course the guests, we would like to thank once more the hosts axtesys GmbH und NexxaCon IT-Consulting GmbH, represented in particular by Sandra Derler und Stefan Vejda, for the effort they put in which resulted in an excellently organised conference. From the lovingly design programme booklet to the coffee in the breaks - everything was meticulously planned and puts us perfectly in the mood for the next conference! And that 24th International ILIAS Conference will take place in 2025, in Berlin, and for the very first time in June. The exact date will be released soon via the ILIAS Conference Mailing List.