trendpreneur

…entrepreneurs find any excuse to work outdoors instead of indoors. If only a laptop existed that wasn’t entirely unusable in a bit of sun, with an infinite battery, and with the ability to pick up WiFi signals from the middle of the Meadows.

Fortunately, I’ve been doing a lot of planning lately, and planning is something I do best on a piece of paper with a pen. Another important task that can be done outdoors is thinking; not to be underestimated in its value!

I’ve been thinking about data, see.

My Pavlovian association of “sunshine” and “Edinburgh” awakes a deep-seated belief in me that it’s somehow August. Which means Festival time. And what does the Festival mean to a sentiment analysis company? Why, tons and tons of data!

What I’ll dub the “Festivals problem” is an interesting one. Thousands of people. Thousands of shows. Thousands of opinions. Thousands of options. How do you unite the opinions with the people to define the best option for someone wondering what to see? Is this even a valuable piece of information? Do people like the pot luck aspect that you usually get? (Answer: yes.)

I mean, I’m never, ever going to forget the time I decided Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds was a good choice of show. Look, I’d vaguely heard of him from TV and the description sounded OK. But had I had access to even one review of the show, I would have saved myself an hour of excruciating torture and a tenner.

So I’m now beavering away on, let’s rename it, the Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds Problem. The DCP is defined thus: How do I get the opinions of everyone at the Festivals, crunch and process them, and deliver that back to Festivalgoers?

Stay tuned for the answer!

It’s funny, being British. The one thing you can guarantee is that everyone’s always happy to talk about: the weather. However, the hilarity only really sets in when I get an invite to a Facebook snowball fight event in London (there’s even a twitter account for it) before I even notice it’s snowing up here.

As well as quite literally every Facebook status entry today commenting on the weather, Twitterers have been having fun as well, inventing the #uksnow tag and generally posting pictures, videos and commentary. It’s funny, though; there’s only so much of this you can take before it becomes tiresome, especially when it’s already snowed up here a few times recently. Yet it’s not irritating — yet — because the childlike delight in this magic white stuff is coming through loud and clear, and we’re all united by it.

This isn’t a new thing, of course. Back in the day (here goes) I remember commentary flying back and forth on IRC about snow whenever it would visit Cambridge for a nanosecond. But this is the first time it’s really hit me with the full force of every social network I’m tapped into. Let’s just hope it doesn’t snow again for a while.

[Image is a mosaic from flickr photos tagged with uksnow]