Aarhus may be the "second city" of Denmark behind Copenhagen, but all eyes this week were on this cultural and tech hub during Internet Week Denmark.
The festival included music, food, beer (hey, it's Denmark), a mobile 3D printing lab in a pimped-out bus, a hackathon for developers in a university community of 50,000, the IWDK Foosball Tournament for geeks and dozens of tech seminars and networking events focused on the global digital economy.
The broad themes included startups, the dark side of the internet, social media, mobile, Big Data, digital leadership, children's education in the digital future and business,marketing and commerce.
Tnooz joined William Bakker, co-founder of Think! Social Media, and Heidi Sorvig of Visit Sorlandet in Norway as keynote presenters to a gathering of 60 DMOs and tourism professionals. The day-long conference was organized by Visit Aarhus and the Seismonaut digital consultancy.
The presenters provoked a conversation about the evolving role of DMOs in the digital travel economy, Bakker challenged DMOs to re-think their legacy focus on creating of content for visitors and morph into facilitators building strong links to user-generated content by managing social media relationships.
Sorvig, who has built an impressive coalition of 92 travel-related businesses in her southern Norway region, delivered a blunt message to foot-dragging DMOs: shun social media and digital marketing at your peril.
Tnooz presented Destination: Selfie, a case for user-generated content alliances and distribution through mobile-centric social networks.
The jury's out on how many DMOs will adapt – or even survive – as extensions of governments in a post-digital world.
Here is the presentation: