Linz is a town in Austria with an industrial heritage.
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Yet these days it is known for a thriving arts and music culture and prides itself as being a city of innovation.
Sound familiar?
In 2014, Linz was named as one of UNESCO's Creative CIties, a honour bestowed on only another seven more cities around the world.
A major factor in Linz's transformation has been the Ars Electronica festival. The festival is an annual event which fuses art, technology and society. It has now grown to be ingrained in the city's culture and actions.
Ars Electronica has put digital innovation and the arts on a pinnacle, awarding prizes to international leaders of the kind of Pixar's John Lasseter.
The festival and innovative culture has become a part of the city and the spectacular Ars Electronica Centre now sits on the banks of the Danube.
It is no small thing that Ars Electronia has chosen Wollongong as its Australian home.
The NSW Government, the Wollongong City Council and the University of Wollongong have partnered to bring Ars Electronica to life in this country in February next year.
The concept is unlike anything we've seen before in this region or country in fact.
Yet to this city it is a massive opportunity.
This city carries the City of Innovation tag with pride.
There is a lot of things when you scratch under the surface we are doing in that space.
Yet, more broadly sometimes as a community, we are adverse or scared of truly innovative concepts and thinking.
We need to challenge that thinking on every level.
Anytime someone says "you can't do that" we should ask ourselves one question.
"Why the hell not?'
This is a chance to tear up our City of Innovation slogan.
It's a chance instead to truly start living and breathing it.
Let's become the City of Innovation, not as a slogan, but in what we eat, sleep and breathe.
Let's tear innovation apart.