As some of my friends know, I started blogging  in French a few months ago. I decided to give it a try just before my French book got published. In spite of being located in France, I feel and work mostly like an Anglo-Saxon: I always get mildly irritated by the French way of doing business, their slowness in understanding social media and Web 2.0 strategies. But I must admit things are improving a bit and I look forward to confirming this impression during the European Wine Bloggers Conference held in Vienna from October 22nd to 24th. Why is that? I was checking the list of attendees today and I saw much more people from France than last year. There are also many Europeans attending, coming from UK, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Sweden. But the most striking thing is the number of people coming from outside Europe : China, USA, Thailand, India, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and even Mauritius.

What does it mean ? Just that the EWBC is becoming a recognized event among the international blogging community.  It also means the blogging community recognizes the need to gather regularly to discuss issues, strategies, new tools and maybe just meet up. I am looking forward to meeting people in real life I’ve been in contact with for months, sometimes years to put a face and a voice on this blog URL and name on Twitter.

Blogging has now been the topic of various studies. We all know the outstanding study conducted by Prof. Liz Thach on 222 wine blogs in English as well as her article on : “Do Wine Blogs Impact Your Brand?” in WineBusiness.com. There is also a very recent one conducted by a young French marketer, Jean-David Camus, on French blogs and bloggers. It shows that 80% of French bloggers write about wine when Dr Thach’s study showed 9 major blog types.

Chart created by Prof. Liz Thach

English-speaking wine bloggers are less focused on tasting notes than their French counterparts. Is this trend true for all European countries? This is one of the points I’ll try to find an answer to while in Vienna, because I’m convinced that the blogging world has undergone tremendous changes in only one year. See you in Vienna, Austria?

October 30th-November 1st, 2009,

The European Wine Bloggers Conference takes place in Lisbon.  I am part of a panel on the Social Wine Brand.