The French Guy from New Jersey sees the light in Austin: French is not Dead!

I am not big on raising the flag on the barn, be it the French or US one but today I have to confess being The French Guy from New Jersey does get people attention, if only for a minute or two.

While in Austin for South by Southwest, my accented English made me stand out from the crowd I guess. I also discovered that a number of attendees and even some head honchos spoke French with various degrees of fluency.

It started with Beatrice Tarka of Mobissimo  who like me is a French expat. Gil Penchina  of Wikia spontaneously addressed me in French, another one was Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void  who confessed  having a French girlfriend. 

At the well attended closing party hosted by Media Temple, I met Alex de Carvalho, a Brazilian who proved to be a very fluent French speaker. He is part of the team launching Scrapblog whose aim is to ‘Create a world for your pictures‘.

Maybe there is a trend there after all. Wouldn’t you rather walk around wearing a ‘French’s not Dead‘ T-Shirt rather than a ‘Punk’s not Dead‘ one.

I have to give credit to Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency for inspiring me to write this piece. I introduced myself as  ‘The French Guy from New Jersey‘ and she suggested it was funny enough that I should use the line.
Now I have to live with it at least until I come up with a better one.

To conclude, I have to apologize to Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users for the shameless name dropping I did just now. I know it is a sign of bad manners for you but maybe I am just un ours mal leche.