Indeed, every good thing has an end, but I am very fortunate to start a new and great life in Mexico City since I arrived in February 2009.
Just enough time to go back Home for a couple of weeks, and here I am in Mexico already enrolled by the French-Mexican Chamber of Commerce  to work on a project I’ve already been working on in India in 2006: organize a large Business Forum in Mexico and attract a 100 French SME’s to participate and help them make business with local companies. (see video of the Forum PME France-India)

 
You can also watch a video about the concept of Forum that UBIFRANCE, the French Agency for International Development, is keen on putting on: Sorry, it’s in French and don’t have any translation.

More information about the Forum D’ Affaires Mexique 2009 (November 25-27 2009 in Mexico) are to be found on http://forummexique2009.wordpress.com/. More info coming soon. Stay tune and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any question.

Yes, indeed, my contract with the French government at the French American Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Northwest has come to an end last December.

I have had a wonderful time trying to help the organization to develop its activities, ameliorate its strategy of communication, increase its visibility within the local business community etc..

It has been a real pleasure and honor to work with all the people involved in the organization, including the board members, members, staff and volunteers. I had the opportunity to meet interesting and nice people, both from France and the US.

Thank you for your support and working so well with me!

The Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Festival was this year very much different from last year’s.
The FACC indeed decided to turn the black tie dinner into a casual and fun event by following people’s advices.
Over 350 francophiles attended the festival that took place at the Navy Armory, downtown Seattle and had the chance to greatly appreciate the new harvested wine from the Beaujolais wine region, the French food and the wonderful ambiance.

Thank you to the sponsors and vendors who participated in this fantastic evening. We hope to  be working with you next year for an even more successful night.

If you wish to read more information about last year’ s event, I have created a blog http://beaujolaisnouveau.wordpress.com/. It is not the sexiest website ever, however it is a wonderful tool to give guests as many information about the event as possible and ahead of time.

Do not forget that the French-American Chamber of Commerce is a non profit organization with only 3 full time employees (including a trainee) and your support and ideas will always be most welcome.

If you wish to join our organization, please refer to our website at http://www.faccpnw.org/index.php?id=9377.

On September 17, 2008, the French-American Chamber of Commerce organized a breakfast for businesswomen featuring Nicole Onetto. Nicole is French and arrived in Seattle 7 years ago after working in large biotech and pharma companies both in Canada (Montréal) and the US.
The attendance was higher than we had expected, which was a good surprise. Attendees were mostly women working in the same industry and a good part were French nationals.
This breakfast conference is getting more and more successful among the local women community, which demonstrates that there was a need to put this part of the business community together.

Thank you to K&L Gates for hold this event.

Saturday, July 12, 2008 Last updated July 14, 2008 11:23 a.m. PT

LYNSI BURTON P-I REPORTER Nothing screams patriotism and national celebration like duck confit — at least for the French. This weekend, Bastille Day hits Seattle with a lively festival, fancy dinners and dancing — and plenty of confit.. Laure-Alessia Leroy, deputy director of the French-American Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Northwest, says there are 6,000 French nationals in the Puget Sound area. But Bastille Day celebrations are for anyone seeking a taste of la France. 

Bastille Day, officially July 14, is the commemoration of the storming of the Bastille fortress by a Parisian crowd in 1789 that marked the beginning of the end of France’s absolute monarchy. France Education Northwest, under the auspices of the Consular Agency of France, is hosting a two-day celebration starting Saturday with the second annual Bal des Pompiers (Firemen’s Ball). Instead of having a ball at a local firehouse, as is traditional in France, the dance will be held at 6 p.m. in the Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. A four-course dinner prepared by culinary experts, including the famous “Chef in the Hat,” Thierry Rautureau of Rover’s, will be served at 7. DJ music and dancing lasts until midnight. “(In Seattle) there is a young French population that likes to dance,” said Jack Cowan, executive direction of the French-American Chamber. Chef Dominique Place, a culinary fixture in Seattle since 1974 and owner of Crêpe de Paris, Dominique’s Place and G&D Seafoods, will be awarded the Order of Agricultural Merit by Patrice Servantie, deputy consul general of France in San Francisco. The menu includes smoked salmon, duck confit with cherries, assorted cheeses and Basque cake. Admission is $49 and coffee and wine will be sold separately as a fundraiser for the Seattle Nantes Sister City Association and France Education Northwest. Reservations are taken online at seattle-bastille.org. Separate from the Bal des Pompiers, Sunday also is the day of the 13th annual Bastille Festival at Seattle Center, free to the public. The event is part of Festál, a series of multicultural programs hosted by Seattle Center.

Open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., the festival will include food, live music and wine tastings, plus cooking demonstrations and exhibits from French artists and photographers. Children’s activities include a soccer penalty kick tournament, an educational presentation on French culture and tile decorating. Attendees can buy a $5 raffle ticket for the chance to win a pair of round-trip tickets from Seattle to Paris. Featured musicians include Pearl Django, Eric John Kaiser and Bonnie Birch.

On Monday, the official Bastille Day, Bruce and Sarah Naftaly, owners of Le Gourmand restaurant in Ballard, will open for a five-course dinner (the restaurant is usually closed Mondays). In its 24th year of celebrating the holiday at the restaurant, Le Gourmand will serve local sea scallops, salad with locally grown edible wildflowers and dessert among other dishes and feature live music from The Monarch Duo. The dinner is $65 a person and reservations are taken only over the phone. Le Pichet restaurant downtown also will celebrate French independence on Monday with a Bastille Day party from 6 p.m. until “late.” A special menu features popular Parisian street food and special wine selections available by the glass, pichet or bottle. Live music by the Djangomatics starts at 7 p.m., with DJ Darnell Sue taking over at 11. Maximilien restaurant at Pike Place Market is having a fête nationale of its own from 5:30 to 10 p.m., with a classic three-course dinner that includes a choice between duck confit and steamed mussels. Steve Rice will perform live accordion melodies throughout the evening. Dinner is $35 each and reservations are taken over the phone or online. Cafe Campagne on Post Alley is going the extra mile with not only a celebratory dinner but also a street festival in Post Alley from 3 to 10 p.m. Monday. The public can enjoy $5 wine pours and $5-10 menu items such as Brie and onion tarte. There will also be live music and cancan dancers. An extravagant five-course dinner including sea scallops and duck is $80 per person and is served from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Phone reservations are recommended. BASTILLE DAY EVENTS Bal des Pompiers When: 6 p.m.-midnight Saturday Where: Fisher Pavilion, Seattle Center Cost: $49 per person Reservations: seattle-bastille.org Bastille Festival 

When: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday   

Where: Seattle Center Cost: Free 

P-I reporter Lynsi Burton can be reached at 206-448-8246 or lynsiburton@seattlepi.com.

I had the pleasure to welcome and organize last week the visit to Seattle of a delegation of 19 people from Nantes. Their program was pretty full every day. Have a look at it below:

MONDAY
Visit at Microsoft
Meeting with French IT company Adeneo Corporation and its rep Yannick Chammings.

TUESDAY
Presentation and meeting with Michael Killoren, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs for the City of Seattle about creative industries

Visits of several art galleries and lofts

WEDNESDAY
Presentation given by Bill Stafford from the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle giving an overview of the local economic situation
Presenation of the French presence in WA State by Jack A. Cowan, executive director of the FACCPNW
Overview of the High Tech industry given by Karl da Gama Campos
and finally a presentation given by Steve Garritson about the Clean Tech technology.

The presentation session was followed by a visit at the Washington Technology Alliance and a tour of the labs, followed by a meeting and tour at the Washington Convention and Trade Center and Visitors Bureau. We were welcomed by Brad Jones and Michael.

THURSDAY
The day was focused on biotechnologies:
Presentation about the biotechnologies in Washington States by Lee Huntsman, executive director of the Life Sciences Discovery Fund and very famous in the region; followed by a speech given by David Schubert, who works at Accelerator Corp, an investment and development company based in WA.

Visit of the Institute of System Biology where we were honored to be received by Leroy Hood, founder and CEO of ISB and Accelerator Corp.

Meeting with Vulcan Inc. about the South Lake Union Project followed by a visit of facilities of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Presentation of the biotech industry in France and introduction to Atlanpole Cluster given by Georges Igor Chargardieff, biotech attaché at UBIFRANCE in San Francisco and Olivier Kitten, responsible for the biotech sector at Atlanpole (Nantes). Both presentations were followed by a networking evening where people from many different spheres have had a chance to talk to each other and have fun.

FRIDAY
Visit of The Boeing Company plant in Everett before going to the Sea Tac airport.

Everywhere we went, we all had the pleasure to be very welcome and many times by francophones.
The group was also of a great quality, curious, interested, motivated.

I really appreciated being their guide throughout the week. The week was so busy that I even feel a bit lonely now!

Below are a few pictures. More are to be found under the pictures and video gallery tab.

The new fundraiser for the French-American Chamber of Commerce, Soirée Prestige, was held yesterday Saturday, June 7 with a great turnout: 103 guests.
The evening went very well featuring good ambiance, glass of Champagne, good food and wine, live music and dancing in a unusually beautiful venue: The Sunset Club.
The first feedbacks that we had yesterday were all be very positive and I am very glad about it. We put a lot of energy and work to make this elegant gala special to the attendees and I believe we did it!

Pictures will come very soon and you’ll see how everything looked beautiful!

Thank you for everyone who helped make this event a success. Our sponsors Safran Group and Dassault Systemes, Sephora, WJ Deutsch & Sons, Pierre Sparr. Our supporters who bid on auction items. Our guests who made the evening so special.

Watch a documentary about Seattle’s Sister City: Nantes, France broadcasted by Channel 21 Seattle on 5/30/2008.
On this episode of the SEATTLE CHANNEL’s Sister Cities documentary series, producer Susan Han visits Seattle’s Sister City of Nantes, France on the estuary of the Loire River near the Atlantic coast. Nantes is France’s 6th largest city, with a growing population of more than a half-million, and much in common with her Pacific Northwest sister.

Learn more about Seattle-Nantes relation and watch what is being done in Seattle for the Bastille Day Celebration (filmed in 2007). Link: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=4050752

Seattle’s French Underground: Thousands have invaded metro Puget Sound, many of them in search of opportunities and attitudes in technology that simply don’t exist at home in France. Part 1

By Cynthia Rose

Springtime in Paris? You might think, even if you’re just browsing Walgreen’s at Second Avenue and Pike Street in downtown Seattle. You hear a breathy “Je les adore!” A peek around your aisle reveals two young, soignée black women, stuffing their shopping baskets full of Pepperidge Farm cookies. A careful “D’où venez vous?” receives a cordial response. “Why, we’re from Paris …” How do they find Seattle? A little chilly but quite charming. The Market! The seafood! The water! All so bio.  

Bio is the modish French term for green and organic.  

You can have a similar conversation several times a day, as easily in Renton’s Ikea or a Bellevue sushi bar as any tourist hot spot. Especially if you frequent farmers markets or quiet wine bars, it can be surprising how many times a day you hear French speakers – often being surprised by one another’s presence. 

In two years, the French population of metro Puget Sound has exploded. According to Laure-Alessia Leroy, the young deputy director at the French-American Chamber of Commerce (FACC), our region is now home to 6,000 French nationals. Since not everyone needs to register with the consular agency, this is a minimum estimate. 

Leroy, whose actual employer is the French government’s Finance Ministry, is also a trade attaché, dealing with 80 local companies and more in development. “I was assigned,” she says, “because there is so much going on here for French people. Every year, the FACC has an increase of 25 percent.” 

In 2007, according to the French Foreign Ministry, almost 4 percent of the country’s population emigrated and almost half of those who left were under 35. U.S. pundits like to present the numbers as a “brain drain,” a flight of talent thwarted by home’s strict bureaucracy. However, in the context of the whole European Union, “French flight” looks far less singular (a British national, for example, emigrates every three minutes). Five months of exploring our new French underground almost tempts me to side with conservative daily Le Figaro, which proclaims a new “French conquest of the world.” 

For one thing, as Leroy notes, “French people, they stay French. Wherever they go, they remain French. Now it’s not just that you’re coming to work for an American business, no, no, no! It often leads to something more for France and for French business.” 

Absolutely, says Yannick Chamming’s. Chamming’s is CEO of Bellevue’s Adeneo, a satellite he created in 2007 for his French company, Adetel. The key for Chamming’s was leveraging his expertise in Windows Embedded CE development. “I started doing Windows CE work 10 years ago, so I was probably one of the first persons in France to work with it. In 2002, I joined Adetel to help them with it and, by 2004, we were a gold partner of Microsoft.” 

Seeing the value in an office closer to headquarters, Chamming’s set off for Redmond, accompanied by one engineer. By last year’s end, Adeneo had nine employees, four of whom are French and, today, they are still hiring. 

Their founder, who grew up in Lyon, says he discovered much he never expected. “I like Brittany and I like Ireland and, with my feelings, I find so much natural beauty! This is also the first place in America I have seen people walking.”
Business-wise, adds Chamming’s, “There is really the pioneer spirit. Before 1990, Seattle had very few things. Now, you have these histories of people having one good idea – or at least a timely one – then creating something that becomes truly global.” For him, that is the point. “I can come here, make something from nothing and, when I return to France, my position in my own company will be much different. If I had just stayed there, I don’t think this would be possible.”

Although the French job market remains problematic, unemployment in mainland France has decreased — at the end of 2007, it was the lowest seen for 10 years. Nevertheless, work remains standardized and well protected. To found a company, employers must pay social security, pension, and unemployment contributions equal to almost 48 percent of every employee’s salary. Says Chamming’s: “There, it’s not at all simple, you have a constant stream of requirements.” Just as business abroad offers a way around such issues, it has also emerged as a “fast track” to promotion or change. 

Benoît Vialle is a senior planner in Mobile Communications at Microsoft. He is also a graduate of a French “grand école”: one of 500 or so deliberately elite institutions whose diplomas guarantee lifelong employment. But Vialle, who started work in management at Bouygues Telecom, craved a wider vision. He also saw the system’s faults through his wife’s experience – although Gaëlle Vialle holds multiple degrees in mathematics, finance, and business law, they are from French universities, rather than grand écoles. (Here, at Microsoft, she has become the senior program manager for Xbox Live). 

“In our system,” says Vialle, “you must choose a path early on, then you work like crazy and you follow only that path. Psychologically tough or highly gifted students may excel, but more independent, sensitive personalities may not thrive. The system puts them on alternative paths that are not as prestigious – like going to university versus a grande école. The handicaps this can create may follow you throughout a career.”

One of five children from a military family, Vialle sought his MBA at Northwestern University. He was then snapped up to work for Microsoft in Chicago. When the Vialles relocated to Seattle six years ago, Benoît says, they mourned the loss of “Chicago’s culture: all the theater, the cinema, the opera, the art. But we have three kids and, for family life, this is a great place.” 

For instance, here they discovered the Montessori teaching system. “Which is really great for our children. They are discovering and cultivating their strengths, rather than constantly being corrected. Plus we send them back to France every summer, for the language and the culture and to reconnect with family.” 

 Read other series at: http://crosscut.com/culture-ethnicity/13956/

Next: Professional and social cultural differences are a mixed bag.

• Cynthia Rose is a journalist and broadcaster based in London and Seattle. You can reach her in care of editor@crosscut.com.