Technology and Carnival

It is Carnival Monday here in Trinidad. Disappointed that the doubles shop was not open this morning. Carnival is on my mind. Technology is on my mind. Trinidad is on my mind. How do we use technology to make carnival better? Some persons think carnival is a waste of money. I think we all have indulgences so we should not be pointing fingers. My indulgence is ordering food and spending time on social media. I am not going to dictate others entertainment choices. That being said I do think that carnival should be made profitable for the country and technology can help.

Firstly we need to use social media, apps, websites, live streaming and other tech to market and sell carnival to the rest of the world. We should be educating partners in carnival on available tech. We can have competitions to crowd source ideas. We should be studying carnival to determine the pain points and problems. We should involve our local content creators and influencers. Develop case studies that others can learn from.

Event management and logistics software can be used. Patrons should be getting the best experience and value for money. Using tech in carnival is an opportunity for local developers, techies and startups. I would like to hear what the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Developers hub has to say. We are seeing more and more use of eticketing and ecommerce that is convenient and efficient. Emoney is an emerging element that will make it easy to do business and make purchases during carnival.

We need to measure the profitability of carnival. We need to have key performance indicators. We have to track income and expenses. We as a country have to treat carnival as a business. Tech, innovation, process engineering and transformation are key elements of big business. The National Carnival Commission needs a Chief Technology Officer.

I did a Google search for "technology carnival trinidad" and want to share some finds that stood out to me as examples. First find was an MIT thesis called improving design through computation and digital technology. I am sure there is more research out there. Let's make use of these. In 2017 loop news wrote about a new platform that seeks to increase sales for Carnival stakeholders. They talked about a complete management solution for carnival bands. It seems that the startup is no longer around. Found out that they rebranded after COVID and are now playmas.app. We need to study these attempts to see what went wrong and what we can learn. My last find was this useful podcast by Jelan Cumberbatch - 10 Technological Tools To Use In A Busy Trinidad Carnival Season.

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