My last few days in Germany were packed with excitement, and I will write about those in another entry.

After successfully avoiding a 180 euros excess baggage penalty (by offloading clothes in favour of bitter chocolate and salami), I returned to Bangalore on Tuesday night (well, actually Wednesday morning).

Once here, I immediately got thrown into FOSS.IN/2006 related stuff. The talks are piling up as people are responding to the Call for Participation and are registering as speakers and submitting talk/workshop/tutorial proposals (note – last date is October 8th). I am also happy to note that our FOSS.IN ambassadors outside India have been successfully recruiting well known FOSS developers, hackers and contributors for the event. We are going to have fun!

Thursday, I was at InfoVision 2006, where I had the honour of being invited to share the stage with Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, the man behind Wikipedia, as co-panelist in a discussion about “New Cyber Genres: Wikis, Blogs, Collaborative Tools and Models”. I doubt that the organisers knew what to expect when you let two “Information wants to be free” evangelists loose on a corporate audience, but we had a tremendous response, and we were quite thrilled with ourselves.

Friday, Jimbo had called for a wikipedians meet at Coconut Grove on Church Street. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but it was a riot, and we had a ball. Jimbo was very involving, focussing on Indian Language wikipedias, and brainstorming on how we could extend these. Recognising that awareness is half the problem, I invited the Indian Wikipedia community to participate at FOSS.IN/2006, and have offered them free expo space, with connectivity, computers, etc. that they may require to highlight their work. I have also invited them to submit talks on the subject.

After the meet, I had a birthday party to attend for two very good friends – one of whom is gorgeous (the other one is also gorgeous – well, at least my dogs think so .

It turns out that I was the host of the party – which suited me fine, given that it’s been a while since the last one at my place. Jimbo came along as well, and a good time was had by all. It’s amazing what a judicious mix of friends, good food, ample spirit(s), good music and bandwidth can achieve.

BTW – Wikipedians in Mumbai: Jimbo is in Mumbai this evening and a small get-together with him is being arranged. If you are an active Wikipedia editor living in Mumbai, get in touch with Dr.Nagarjuna pronto. Didn’t happen – Jimbo was forced to go through immigration here in Bangalore, and wasn’t allowed to leave the Mumbai airport. That so sucks!

There have been more happenings at home, but I am afraid that calls for another entry as well. Stay tuned!