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Why GFC explains everything (to Australians)

Ross Dawson, February 26, 2009 1:24 PM US PT

This morning an email from a client mentioned the GFC. Earlier this week another client was talking about the GEC (which has the advantage that you can pronounce it, while GFC has to be spelled out).

When this morning I Twittered about how we have a new acronym that doesn’t need to be explained, I got some interesting responses. @ITSinsider in America said that she had heard it before from someone else in Australia. An Australian initially thought I meant Geelong Football Club, so googled it to find out.

Which gives very interesting results…

If you Google “GFC” in Australia the #3 result is a newspaper story Tough week ends in talk of ‘GFC’, dated from October last year, with four of the top 10 results referring to the planet’s economic woes, including three newspaper headlines.

If you Google “GFC” in the US, aside from a #5 entry from Wikipedia which includes various acronyms including the contemporary one, the first entry which refers to GFC in this way is at #45.

So are Australians particularly acronym-crazy? Are we in the vanguard of what will be a global trend to summarize the state of the world as GFC?

Of course the very best thing about GFC is that it is an easy explanation for everything, in three easy letters. It was all getting very complicated for a while. Now it’s simple again – yay!

3 Comments

Susan Scrupski said:

GFC = global financial crisis

= giddy facebook crowd

= growing fibbers club

= generous fiscal conservatives

oh, i could go on...

February 26, 2009 2:55 PM

Ross Dawson said:

Yes, but the only good acronym is one you don't need to explain, which maybe GFC is now or soon... :-)

It's an old joke now, but I cracked up when I was in a meeting with Tom Stewart and others years ago and we were all engaged in a serious jardon-laden discussion, then Tom mentioned the problem with TLAs. I asked what it meant: Three Letter Acronyms.

February 26, 2009 3:09 PM

Microsoft SharePoint said:

Its not that the people living in some or the particular country are crazy about acronyms. Its just there are some people who try to find short ways for everything.

February 26, 2009 11:00 PM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.