--- title: "What Is Context/26?" url: "https://atlan.com/know/what-is-context-26/" description: "Context/26 is Atlan's free, virtual AI context conference on October 14, 2026. See what it covers, who should attend, and how it differs from Activate." author: "Heather Devane" author_role: "Lead Content Strategist" published: "2026-07-30" updated: "2026-07-30T00:00:00.000Z" --- --- Context/26 is Atlan's free, virtual community conference on AI context, taking place October 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM ET. It's a separate event from Atlan Activate, the company's larger annual product and customer conference. You can [register or learn more here](https://atlan.com/context-26/?utm_source=seo&utm_medium=side_cta&utm_campaign=context-26&utm_content=seo-pages). Where Activate centers on Atlan's own roadmap, Context/26 asks a single industry-wide question: what does it actually take to give AI systems the business context they're missing? According to S&P Global Market Intelligence (2025), 42% of companies scrapped most of their AI initiatives in 2025, up from 17% the year before. Context/26 exists to work through why, in one room, without a sales pitch attached. Atlan is hosting the conference, not selling at it. There are no sponsored slots and no product demos in disguise. This guide walks through what Context/26 actually is, how it differs from Activate, the three themes on the agenda, who it's built for, and how to register. - A free, virtual, one-day community conference on AI context, hosted by Atlan - Distinct from Atlan Activate, which is Atlan's product and customer conference - Structured around three themes: settling the vocabulary of context, context as IP, and context in production - Built for AI leaders, CIOs/CTOs/CDOs, and enterprise architects, not general practitioners | Field | Detail | | ----- | ----- | | What it is | A free, virtual community conference on AI context, hosted by Atlan | | When | October 14, 2026, 11:00 AM ET | | Format | Curated, unfiltered, connected: no sponsored slots, no product demos | | Not to be confused with | Atlan Activate (Atlan's separate product/customer conference) | | Who it's for | AI leaders, CIOs/CTOs/CDOs, enterprise architects | | Core themes | Vocabulary of context, context as IP, context in production | --- ## Why does Context/26 exist? Model quality stopped being the constraint on enterprise AI a while ago. Frontier models write production code, pass graduate exams, and power consumer apps millions of people already trust with real work. What breaks down is what happens next, inside a specific company, once the model has to act on that company's own knowledge instead of the open internet's. That gap shows up in the numbers. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence (2025), the share of companies scrapping most of their AI initiatives before production rose to 42% in 2025, up from 17% the year before, based on a survey of more than 1,000 enterprises across North America and Europe. Separately, MIT NANDA's "The GenAI Divide" (2025) found that roughly 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots have delivered no measurable profit-and-loss return so far. That report is preliminary and has drawn criticism over its measurement window, so treat the exact figure as directional rather than settled. Neither number describes a model problem. It describes a context problem: the model has no reliable way to know how a specific business actually works, what its terms mean, or what's already been decided. Atlan calls this the next frontier "contextual intelligence," and Context/26 is built to give the people solving it a shared vocabulary and a room to compare notes in, instead of everyone rediscovering the same gaps alone. --- ## How is Context/26 different from Atlan Activate? Atlan already runs Activate, its flagship product and customer conference, so the first thing worth settling is that Context/26 is not a rebrand or a second version of it. They're built for different jobs. | | Context/26 | Atlan Activate | |---|---|---| | What it is | Community conference on AI context as an emerging discipline | Flagship product and customer conference | | Focus | Industry-wide vocabulary, ownership, and production patterns for context | Product announcements and customer stories | | Sponsored content | None, by design | Product-focused, as expected for a company event | | Audience | Anyone building or thinking seriously about AI context | Primarily existing customers and prospects | | Cost | Free | Varies by format and year | The distinction matters because Context/26 is deliberately not a place to hear about Atlan's roadmap. It's a curated, unfiltered, connected room instead: no sponsored slots, open AMAs with speakers, peer roundtables rather than a keynote-and-breakouts format. A reader who wants Atlan's product news, like the [enterprise AI questions Atlan Activate 2026 actually surfaced](https://atlan.com/know/atlan-activate-2026-enterprise-ai-questions/) or how the [context layer stopped being theoretical at Activate 2026](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-stopped-being-theoretical-activate-2026/), should look for Activate. A reader who wants the industry's current best thinking on context should look for Context/26. --- ## What will Context/26 cover? Context/26 is organized around three themes, each built to answer questions nobody has settled at an industry level yet. ### 1. WTF is context: settling the debate The industry currently conflates half a dozen things under the word "context": context platforms, semantic layers, ontologies, knowledge graphs, memory, and data catalogs. This theme brings together thought leaders from each of those spaces to converge on a shared, ratified lexicon attendees can standardize on internally. Questions this theme takes on: - How does a [semantic layer](https://atlan.com/know/semantic-layer/) actually differ from a [knowledge graph](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-a-knowledge-graph/), and where does an [ontology](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-ontology-in-ai/) fit between the two? - Are [ontology and semantic layer](https://atlan.com/know/ontology-vs-semantic-layer/) really the same decision wearing two names? - What are the different types of AI [memory](https://atlan.com/know/best-ai-agent-memory-frameworks-2026/), and where does each sit [relative to a knowledge graph](https://atlan.com/know/ai-memory-vs-rag-vs-knowledge-graph/)? - Do agent skills even count as a form of context, and does that question actually belong to [context engineering vs. prompt engineering](https://atlan.com/know/context-engineering-vs-prompt-engineering/), or to [harness engineering](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-harness-engineering/) instead? For a shared starting vocabulary before the event, the [context layer glossary](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-glossary/), the breakdown of [context graphs vs. knowledge graphs](https://atlan.com/know/context-graph-vs-knowledge-graph/), and the explainer on [what active ontology actually does](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-active-ontology/) cover the same ground this theme opens with. Anyone building agents already leaning on [context engineering](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-context-engineering/) or trying to [build an agent harness](https://atlan.com/know/how-to-build-ai-agent-harness/) will recognize the skills-as-context question immediately. This is the session that decides whether the rest of the event's vocabulary sticks. ### 2. Context is IP: the path to owning your moat The knowledge that makes an AI system act like it understands a specific business belongs to that business's people. It's arguably an organization's biggest differentiator right now, which is exactly why the single most consequential strategic choice enterprises face is whether they keep that context open and portable, or let it become locked inside whichever platform happens to hold their data. Questions this theme takes on: - What format is the industry actually converging on for portable context, and is an [**MCP Server** delivering business context](https://atlan.com/know/mcp-delivers-business-context/) closer to the answer than [MCP vs. function calling](https://atlan.com/know/mcp-vs-function-calling/) suggests? - Should context live inside an organization's own [system of data](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-a-data-graph/) rather than a vendor's? - How does an [enterprise data graph](https://atlan.com/know/enterprise-data-graph/) differ from a narrower [context graph](https://atlan.com/know/what-is-a-context-graph/)? - How much should a company's AI strategy be shaped, from day one, by the fact that frontier model leadership now rotates every few months? One view on this, laid out in [context layer ownership: data vs. AI teams](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-ownership-data-vs-ai-teams/), is that this decision gets made by default, quietly, unless someone makes it on purpose. It's also why [semantic layers alone failed to become context graphs](https://atlan.com/know/semantic-layers-failed-context-graphs/), and how to actually measure [context layer ROI](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-roi/) rather than assume it. Context is IP only stays true if it survives contact with a real production system, which is exactly what the third theme is built to test. ### 3. Context in production: reference architectures and implementation stories Theory is cheap. This theme is built around organizations that are actually leading the charge on building AI agents with open context, showing what they built rather than what they'd recommend in the abstract. Questions this theme takes on: - What do real [reference architectures](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-for-ai-agents/) for agent context actually look like, and how do [agent memory architectures](https://atlan.com/know/agent-memory-architectures/) hold up once a fifth or sixth agent joins the stack? - Which agentic use cases have gone from pilot to genuinely successful in production? - What actually separates working [context engineering for AI agents](https://atlan.com/know/context-engineering-for-ai-agents/) from a demo? - What are the concrete steps to [build a context engineering framework](https://atlan.com/know/how-to-build-context-engineering-framework/) end to end, rather than bolting it on after the fact? Writing on [context layer harness engineering](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-harness-engineering/), [ontology-first AI architecture](https://atlan.com/know/ontology-first-ai-architecture/), and the [failure modes an agent harness runs into](https://atlan.com/know/agent-harness-failures-anti-patterns/) covers similar ground for anyone who wants a head start before the sessions. The vertical breakdowns for [financial services](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-for-financial-services/) and [healthcare AI](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-for-healthcare-ai/) show what the same architecture looks like once it's regulated. The gap between a demo and a production system that survives a model swap is exactly what this theme is built to close. --- Context Layer ROI Calculator Estimate what an ungoverned context gap is actually costing your AI initiatives before you sit down for Theme 2's ownership discussion. Try the calculator --- ## Who should attend Context/26? Context/26 is built for three roles that, inside Atlan's own buying-committee taxonomy, tend to route to the same conversation: the strategic buyer deciding how their organization handles AI context, not a general practitioner audience. | Persona | Why attend | |---|---| | AI leader | Building an agent takes minutes; giving it real business context takes months, and every new agent means starting over. Context/26 leaves you with a shared context foundation and a working reference architecture, not another framework to go evaluate. | | CIO / CTO / CDO | Hundreds of AI pilots, none in production, and spend that keeps climbing without a matching ROI story for the board. Context/26 leaves you with a framework for the ownership decision before it gets made for you by default. | | Enterprise architect | Five parallel tools, no clear owner, and a leadership team asking for an architecture diagram that doesn't exist yet. Context/26 leaves you with a reference architecture and the open-standards case for saying yes to new tools without adding more lock-in. | Three properties hold across all three personas: - **Curated.** The biggest voices in AI and the deepest thinkers on context, in one room. Every session earns its place by teaching something a leader can actually use, not by filling a sponsored slot. - **Unfiltered.** Leaders say what's actually broken in their own AI programs, not just what worked. - **Connected.** Open AMAs with speakers and peer roundtables, not a one-way keynote. --- ## Why Atlan is the one hosting this Atlan is hosting Context/26, not sponsoring a slot at someone else's, so it's fair to ask what's in it for Atlan. The short answer: Context/26 is downstream of a position Atlan already holds, not a new claim invented for the event. Atlan calls that position "contextual intelligence": the constraint on enterprise AI isn't how capable the model is, but how well it understands the specific business running it. That's the same idea behind Atlan's own [Context Layer](https://atlan.com/know/context-layer-enterprise-ai/). Hosting a conference that argues for open, industry-wide vocabulary rather than a vendor-owned one is a direct extension of that position, not a departure from it. --- Get the Context Layer Ebook A field guide to why context, not model quality, is the current bottleneck in enterprise AI, and what a working context layer actually looks like. Get the ebook --- ## Real stories from real customers: context as a strategic asset Theme 2 argues context is IP worth owning deliberately. These are two enterprises already acting on that, ahead of any conference telling them to. "We're excited to build the future of AI governance with Atlan. All of the work that we did to get to a shared language at Workday can be leveraged by AI via Atlan's MCP server…as part of Atlan's AI Labs, we're co-building the semantic layer that AI needs with new constructs, like context products." Joe DosSantos, VP of Enterprise Data & Analytics, Workday Watch Now → "AI initiatives require more context than ever. Atlan's metadata lakehouse is configurable, intuitive, and able to scale to hundreds of millions of assets. As we're doing this, we're making life easier for data scientists and speeding up innovation." Andrew Reiskind, Chief Data Officer, Mastercard Watch Now → Register Free for Context/26 Save your seat for October 14, 2026, 11:00 AM ET. Free, virtual, and open to anyone building or thinking seriously about AI context. Register free --- ## Context is becoming its own discipline, and Context/26 is where it gets named Every enterprise crossing from a handful of AI agents to dozens is already hitting the same wall: the model works, but the business context underneath it doesn't exist in a form the model can use. Context/26 doesn't try to sell a fix for that. It puts the people actually solving it, at different companies, in the same room to compare notes on vocabulary, ownership, and what's actually working in production. The reason to attend isn't a single answer. It's the shared starting point that's been missing: a name for context as its own discipline, a defensible stance on who owns it, and reference architectures from teams already past the pilot stage. Book a Demo --- ## FAQs about Context/26 ### 1. What is Context/26? Context/26 is Atlan's free, virtual community conference on AI context, running October 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM ET. It brings together AI leaders, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and enterprise architects to converge on a shared vocabulary for context, a framework for owning it as IP, and real reference architectures for building it in production. ### 2. Is Context/26 the same as Atlan Activate? No. Context/26 is a separate, standalone community conference focused entirely on AI context as an emerging discipline, with no sponsored slots or product demos. Atlan Activate is Atlan's own flagship product and customer conference, focused on Atlan's roadmap and customer stories. ### 3. When is Context/26 and is it free to attend? Context/26 runs October 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM ET as a virtual, free event. Registration is open on the official Context/26 event page, and there is no cost to attend any part of the program. ### 4. Who should attend Context/26? Context/26 is built for AI leaders, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and enterprise architects who are actively deciding how their organization handles AI context, ownership, and production architecture. It's a strategic leadership summit, not an introductory session for AI newcomers. ### 5. What is "contextual intelligence"? Contextual intelligence is Atlan's term for the next frontier of enterprise AI: the belief that the constraint on what AI systems can do is no longer model capability, but how well that model understands a specific organization's own knowledge, terms, and decisions. Context/26 is built around advancing that discipline industry-wide. ### 6. How do I register for Context/26? Registration for Context/26 is free and open now on Atlan's official Context/26 event page at atlan.com/context-26. Spots are confirmed on a first-registered basis for the October 14, 2026 session. --- ## Sources 1. S&P Global Market Intelligence, "Generative AI shows rapid growth but yields mixed results," October 2025. https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2025/10/generative-ai-shows-rapid-growth-but-yields-mixed-results 2. MIT NANDA, "The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025," August 2025 (preliminary research). https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonsnyder/2025/08/26/mit-finds-95-of-genai-pilots-fail-because-companies-avoid-friction/ 3. Foundation Capital, "AI's Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: Context Graphs," Jaya Gupta and Ashu Garg. https://foundationcapital.com/ideas/context-graphs-ais-trillion-dollar-opportunity