Hi, I'm Joey. You seem to know who I am, here at this (future) DebConf. I'm familiar with your work in Debian, I probably know broadly what packages you maintain; you've fixed some bugs I filed, and vice-versa. Maybe we collaborated on something or other, exchanged some emails (I'm joeyh@debian.org), worked on something in svn. I might even sometimes hang out in a channel with you on irc (I'm joeyh there), and with occasional difficulty, I can probably connect the nickname you use there with your email address. Maybe we met once or twice at previous DebConfs or elsewhere. Maybe I signed your GPG key. Hell, maybe we saunaed together.

And I'm trying to get a look at your nametag, and it's too far away; I need to update the prescription on my glasses. Yes, I might know you on email, irc, and other tcp based protocols, but I have to confess, right now, standing in front of you, I have no idea who you are. And Real Life lacks both google and grep-available. Please, please don't take this the wrong way. Please try to see it as an opportunity to help me connect the you I know with the real you, to merge those two currently completly separate concepts in my head together into one heady cocktail. Some of my best friends here started out this exact same way. Please mention your name, irc nick and/or two or three of the things I should know you for.

And please don't be offended if it takes me two or three tries before the association sticks. Once I finally really do make the connection, it'll be unbreakable (that's why I'll be so happy to see Manoj after 6+ years!) but in all other ways my wetware stinks at this.

(I'd print this out on a card, but it's too long, so I'll just write the URL to the blog entry in on my nametag, I guess..)