PANTOPIX at the tcword Conference 2026

10. August 2026

From November 10 to 12, 2026, the tcworld Conference will take place at the ICS at Messe Stuttgart, alongside the tekom trade fair. As one of the most important industry events for technical communication, the event brings together experts, companies, and solution providers and offers a forum for exchange, new ideas, and the latest industry developments.

PANTOPIX will once again be exhibiting this year. Visit us at our booth 2B14 and talk with our team. In addition, our experts are actively contributing to the conference program with several technical presentations, offering insights into current issues, specific projects, and practical solutions.

Even before the annual conference, we’ll also be participating in the Technology Days on November 2 and 3, 2026. PANTOPIX will be presenting its own talk there as well.

We look forward to three exciting days in Stuttgart, interesting conversations, and the opportunity to connect with you in person.

Good to know: Early-bird tickets for the tekom Annual Conference are currently available through October 12, 2026.

Our expert presentations

November 10 | 15:00 – 15:10 PM | C6.2
Do We Still Need Metadata in the Age of AI?
Speakers: Karsten Schrempp & Jörg Schmidt (RWS Group)

AI can understand content and answer complex questions with ease. Modern search systems deliver relevant results even when the search terms don’t match exactly. And classifications can increasingly be generated automatically.

So it’s no wonder that many experts in the field of technical communication are asking themselves: Do we even need metadata anymore?

What at first glance appears to be a substitute turns out, in practice, to be a crucial foundation: AI cannot function without context, structure, and clear semantics—and that is exactly what metadata provides.

In this presentation, Karsten Schrempp (PANTOPIX) and Jörg Schmidt (RWS) will explain why metadata remains indispensable in technical communication even today. You’ll learn how metadata serves as a link between content, systems, and publication channels, and what role taxonomies, ontologies, and semantic AI play in this process. We will also examine when the use of knowledge graphs actually makes sense in technical communication.

November 12 | 9:00 – 9:45 a.m. | Plenary Session 1
More Context for AI Agents: MCP and Ontologies in Enterprise Applications
Speaker: Maximilian Gärber

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) establishes a new standard for connecting AI agents to enterprise systems. Instead of individual integrations, agents communicate with data sources and tools via a unified interface. But standardization alone is not enough: without semantic context, AI agents remain limited to raw data and technical structures.

Only enterprise ontologies provide the domain-specific meaning behind data, processes, and relationships. For example, they define how invoices, suppliers, and purchase orders are related, thereby enabling robust, context-based reasoning. At the same time, ontologies help to selectively restrict data access, reduce token consumption, and prevent hallucinations. When combined with MCP, this results in scalable, secure, and governable AI architectures for enterprise use.

This presentation provides a practical demonstration of why MCP reaches its limits without semantic models and how ontologies become a key enabler for enterprise-wide AI applications.

November 12 | 11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. | C6.1
The Digital Product Passport: Walking the Tightrope Between Standards and Technology
Speakers: Dr. Martin Ley & Sebastian Jaquet

The urgency of addressing the Digital Product Passport (DPP) is more than obvious. The general concepts behind it are well known. So it’s time to take an in-depth look at the relevant standards. What do the relevant documents actually say? And what implications can be drawn from them from an information technology perspective?

In our presentation, we’ll demonstrate this using a concrete example—from data inventory and data preparation to making the data available in a portal. Along the way, we’ll take a look at the relevant DIN standards, identify their requirements, and highlight specific implementation options within a company’s IT infrastructure. There’s still plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with the DPP. But we have major tasks ahead of us—let’s get to work!

Solution & Application Stage

In addition to the technical presentations, we will also be featured on the Application Stage with two brief exhibitor presentations:

November 10 | 3:00–3:20 p.m.
Ending Information Silos: Connecting Product Knowledge for Technical Communication
Speaker: Maximilian Gärber

PANTOPIX SPHERE integrates technical information across systems into a semantic knowledge base—and makes it usable for reliable AI, modern content delivery, and the Digital Product Passport.

November 11 | 1:00–1:30 p.m.
Digital Product Passport Live: How Interconnected Product Data Makes the DPP Possible
Speaker: Dr. Martin Ley

One QR code, multiple data sources, and a Digital Product Passport: This presentation demonstrates how information from ERP, PIM, and technical documentation can be linked to form a semantic knowledge base, which can then be used to create a functional DPP.

Meet us on site