Can a festival save you?

Yesterday I spent the day doing some qualitative research in Frederikshavn. They’re preparing the Tordenskjold Festival. I think it’s going to be pretty cool. I will be there. I interviewed and talked to a dozen of people. People love this city project. It’s the whole community engaged. I might give you a summary next week. For this 12th edition, they expect 40.000 visitors.

Looking at other numbers, the picture does not look that good. We all know that tourism figures all around the world are doing bad. Here the thing seems to come in the worse moment. Since 2003 the tourists coming by ferry (most Norwegians and Swedish) has been declining from 3.545.000 to a around 2.000.000, with a steady yearly decrease. This year will probably be the worse.

A worker in a downtown restaurant was telling me that the last year they made, 35-40.000 dkk (5.000 €) a day. Now they’re down to 7.000 dkk a day. That’s quite a thumping. Needless to say, they’re quite excited about the Tordenskiold Festival starting tomorrow.

1st Year Presentation

At Aalborg University PhD students are required to give a 1 Year progress report. A professor (different from the supervisor/s) acts as opponent. A discussion about the project usually follows with other professors and students. In my case there were 15 people and I obtained critical feedback for my project, from professors and students. For these I’m very grateful.

Here it is my presentation, not all slides were presented as I didn’t want to surpass the 25 minutes. I had some technical problems, but of course with presentations, we always have to count on Murphy’s Law.

Anyways, I welcome any other idea.