BlogCamp drew to a close yesterday. Successful? Yes. I managed to spend some time there, yesterday.

What I came back with is a sense that the online scene is “manned” by sensible people. This bright spark dawned on me not at the sessions but at the smokers’ corner. The conservations that smokers strike when confined to a small enclosure can be truly enlightening.

I’m not joking. And, indeed, smoking is injurious to health.

But it was there that I met Dr. Subho Ray of the Internet & Mobile Association of India. In our extended conversation I came away with a sense that, yes, we can do something by being a part of their efforts. In the coming days we should get a better sense of what’s possible.

Then there was Siva Prasad V. Cotipalli of Oracle, Samrat Choudhury of HT, Jai Shankar and Nikhil Kulkarni of PlanetRead, who told us about the interesting stuff their are doing.

It was nice bumping into Osama Manzar of Digital Empowerment Foundation too. Got to have a closer look at what they are doing. Osama’s 8-year-old, who was a full participant at the unconference, was a big draw.

Meeting Deepak Karambelkar and Preetesh S. Chouhan brought memories of our days in indya.com.

It is necessary to network like this but I guess the show must travel to other places to make it pan-Indian. Great job guys! Sunil and Kiruba need special mention here, but surely there were a whole lot of enthusiasts who made this possible.

So, has blogging become mainstream?

Well, if you go by some of the views aired at the meet, yes. But no, one had to listen to those views on the sidelines. There is great quite a lot of conversation going on. That’s is certainly something to be happy about. Talking and sharing hasn’t exactly been the strength of Indians. That definitely has changed.

Ok, off to a meeting now. The debriefing will continue.