For a long time, I haven't been able to write anything. There was a lot of grunt work to do in preparation for the GNU/Linuxtag, which will start on Wednesday in Karlsruhe, Germany. Between now and then, however, still lies the second part of WIPO's intersessional intergovernmental meeting (that'll be IIM/2 for the rest of this blog). I'm curious to see what has become of the processes that started in April and receded behind closed doors after that meeting was over.

Last week brought some great news: Markus Beckedahl from Berlin was awarded the title "Best Blog, International" for netzpolitik.org by Reporters sans Frontieres. Markus: Congratulations. Please keep on with your important work.

As all the world-saving will start only tomorrow, that leaves me today's sunday for strolling through Geneva. Maybe I'll even go swimming in the lake. The weather is so fine as to not really make me look forward to spending three days of my (more and more relative) youth in a big room with 200 guys in suits.

Notwithstanding, I'll do the same thing I did in April: Keeping track of what's going on in the negotiations, and summing it up for you. Don't worry, this is not a work of pure altruism. I've decided to write my master's thesis on "Free Software and Access to Knowledge", and following this meeting will be an important part of the preparation process.

But now I've had enough of sitting inside typing. I'll take my swimming trunks and move towards the lake. Let's see what I will find there.

A long day is almost over. As I'm writing this, Georg is sitting on a panel discussing about Free Software in public administrations. It's the conclusion of a day he started with his keynote, much too early: at 9:15.

This was not easy, since yesterday we had been out and about with kyrah. The evening was a sort of crash course in Vienna culture: Schnitzel and Ottakringer beer. Actually a lot of beer. At least, neither me nor Georg fell asleep during the day.

I got to meet a number of interesting people I had until now known only through mailing lists. As the weather was the best since a very long time, we tried to spend as much of the day outside as possible. It was there that I actually became a CAcert assurer - but hold your horses, I still have to activate my account. I'll probably be ready to certify you next week.

With the Fellowship Cryptocards around our necks, Georg and I attracted some attention. The corporate identity will soon get even better: This morning, we ordered lanyards in the Fellowship design. We should have them ready at the GNU/Linuxtag, and will start selling them there.

This week is especially tough for me, since I had no weekend. There was an interesting class in my university, about "the order of the information society". The teacher was Barbara van Schewick, a young scientist from Berlin and doctorand of Lawrence Lessig. For my taste, there was too much "open source" fudgy terminology in there; but that detail aside, I learned a lot of interesting things.

One of those was the end-to-end-argument: The principle that a network should be laid out in the most generalized way possible, while everything specific to an application is running only on the end hosts only. For me being the example of a non-techie, that was a bit of informatics to swallow. It went down surprisingly smoothly, though.

Speaking of going down smoothly: This day defenitely warrants a beer or five. Right now, I am waiting for kyrah to pick us up, take us somewhere where there is food - and a generous supply of cold Ottakringer beer.

After flying back to Hamburg tomorrow evening, I will take Friday and Monday off. I'm looking forward to a long weekend with my girlfriend. See you then.

Just as I was going to turn off my machine now, the best quote I heard all day was pronounced on the panel. A representative of the Austrian social security administration said: "There really are a lot of great Linux companies in Vienna. There is no operating system in Vienna for which I get better support than for Linux. The trouble is: I get it only from ten o'clock onwards."