What a long time it has been!

Here I come to let you know that recently, I had the opportunity to attend ICDAR 2026 in Vienna, my first ever academic conference, alongside one of my colleagues from Veridas.

I already had this post drafted in my head before even boarding the plane, but what I experienced there completely flipped the script. I anticipated a standard event: checking out a few posters, listening to a couple of keynotes, and making two or three new connections. However, it turned out to exceed my expectations by far.

The scientific community is truly a community: seeing researchers connect across editions and engage in a constant give-and-take of ideas was extraordinary. Having direct discussions with authors during the poster sessions was especially enlightening, night and day compared to just reading papers on arXiv. Every interaction was insightful and brought real value to both my own development and our work at Veridas.

Now that I'm back home, I'm really looking forward to attending more conferences in the future, and hopefully taking on a more active role in the community next time!