The 19th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS 2011) is the latest in a series of annual conferences that have been held in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America since 1993. The focus of these conferences has been the representation and analysis of conceptual knowledge for research and business applications. ICCS brings together researchers in information technology, arts, humanities and social science to explore novel ways that can conceptual structures can be employed in information systems.

Arising originally out of the work of IBM in Conceptual Graphs, over the years ICCS has broadened its scope to include a wider range of theories and practices, among them Formal Concept Analysis, Description Logics, the Semantic Web, the Pragmatic Web, Ontologies, Multi-agent Systems, Concept Mapping, and more. Accordingly conceptual structures represent a family of approaches that builds on the successes of artificial intelligence, business intelligence, computational linguistics, conceptual modelling, information and web technologies, user modelling, and knowledge management.

ICCS 2011's theme is "Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge". More and more data is being captured in electronic format (particularly through the Web) and it is emerging that this data is reaching such a critical mass that it is becoming the most recorded form of the world around us. It now represents our business, economic, arts, social, and scientific endeavours to such an extent that we require smart applications that can discover the hitherto hidden knowledge that this mass of data is busily capturing. By bringing together the way computers work with the way humans think, conceptual structures align the productivity of computer processing with the ingenuity of individuals and organisations in a meaningful digital future.