The Sunshine Bridge

Elizabeth Eads: Thanks for hitting Play and welcome to The Sunshine Bridge - a show dedicated to community and diverse perspectives in Louisiana. I’m Elizabeth Eads.

We’re in the full swing of Mardi Gras season as Fat Tuesday is next week. In Louisiana and surrounding areas, Mardi Gras is a time to let your hair down and have some fun before the upcoming Lenten season, and for anyone who doesn’t isn’t in the geographic parade area or of a faith that observes Lent, the intended purpose of Mardi Gras is to make an excuse to… let your hair down and have some fun. Parades are full of beautiful floats, costumed riders, and colorful throws like beads and doubloons. If you’re headed to a parade or even if you live or work in the area of a parade, knowing where the parade is can mean the difference between enjoying the festivities or grumbling in a stopped line of traffic.

Jason Devillier is a mobile app developer who has created some apps to help make Mardi Gras more enjoyable: He’s developed a couple of parade tracker apps, which are called “Throw Me Something Bacchus” and “NOLA Parades,” both of which are available to the public. He’s also made a behind-the-scenes emergency messaging app which allows members to communicate with each other more effectively should an emergency or problem occur during a parade.

When I asked him how he came to the idea for these apps, he pointed to his many years as a member of Bacchus.

Jason Devillier: I've always wanted to make an app for our krewe that allowed us to kind of communicate together. Um, so I talk with the krewe about, uh, two years ago and, uh, they were all excited about it, and also wanted to do a public app, something just for the public to be able to catch things that were too big for us to throw off of a regular float: things like bikes, uh, wagons, chairs, things like....

EE: You can't throw a bike off of a, off of a float very well.

JD: Without hurting someone.

EE: The coconuts are about as far as you can take that, and you still have to hand those off, right.

JD: Right, right. And so, uh, COVID hit, and, um, in 2021, we were not, uh, permitted to parade on the street. And so we pivoted our app to be virtual, and we were able to throw 250 bikes in the app and about 30 silver doubloons, which are real silver, uh, through the app that people could collect or win in the app and then come to the den after Mardi Gras and collect in real life.

EE: It's kind of like a Pokemon go situation.

JD: Kind of, yes. Uh, because we had videos and, um, it would start at a specific time. I think we had four different parades on Bacchus, what they call "Bacchus Sunday." And there were specific intervals where those were the only times that you could catch.

EE: And so you have the, this part of this app where you're able to catch these cool items like bikes and, you know, these special doubloons and this sort of thing, and then, um, you also have this component where it is tracking the parade, which is useful for anyone who's just trying to get to a parade and figure out traffic sort of situations and, and, um, where the parade is even. Tell me a little bit about that.

JD: We do, um, so we're the only parade tracker in New Orleans Mardi Gras that actually tracks every individual float, not just the front and or end of the parade. And the way that we do that is we've purchased these routers, that work, uh, with, um, [00:04:00] both AT&T and Verizon, and will constantly broadcast their GPS into our app and anyone having our app, uh, is able to see the map, uh, of the parade in real time, as the little markers kind of marched down, you can see how fast the floats are going, you can see where they are specifically in the, in the app, uh, in real time.

EE: Right. And so you've got, um, it's just, it's basically the same parade tracker. There are other parade trackers that are out there. Um, but this one is just way more specific, basically.

JD: It is. And so the other parade trackers usually have a car that's at the front of the parade, but that car can be miles ahead of the front of the parade. So where they're showing the front of the parade and their app, we're showing the actual front, the first float miles behind. Plus if you ever, if you know someone who's riding a, the most, you know, often asked question is what float are you on? And what side of the float are you on? And where can I see you? So when you're on the street, you know, parade. Just naturally stall and you never know if there's something wrong, if there's an emergency or if the parade has just stopped for some reason, you just don't know, especially if you're on the street, you can't tell where the float is that you're looking for. You can whip out the app now and you can see exactly where that float is and track it on the map until it gets in front of you.

EE: Is there any way for the public to know why something has stopped or anything like that?

JD: We don't. No, we don't notify the public as to why something is, if something has happened. They can just see that the, the floats are either moving or not moving.

EE: And is there a reason for that?

JD: No, we, we never really intended to, um, to communicate any krewe communications to the public. We are just allowing the public to, uh, to see the floats on the map.

EE: And I would kind of think that maybe there is just sort of, um, uh, sort of a sense of safety in that maybe just for, for, for the parade itself, kind of knowing where the parade is.
Um, When, you know where it is in some sort of general sense, you can kind of guess some things, but maybe if there is something that is going on, um, in the parade itself, maybe there's a question of, is that something that you want to broadcast to the world or not?

JD: I think, um, that's definitely something we can look to in the future. Um, in order for our app to work, we have to have permits to board the floats, uh, that we're tracking. And that requires the krewes permission and authorization. And so if the, if a krewe, and all of the krewes are individual, right. Most people think of Mardi Gras as this monolith of parades, where it's like a central organization doing all of this stuff, but it's actually very decentralized. It's very parochial. Every is different. They're all set up different. The way that you get into them is different. Everything about them is different. They look the same, but they're really different. And so if a krewe wanted to share emergency information with the public, then that is definitely something that our app could do maybe in the future.

EE: Right. But it would be up to them.

JD: It would be up to the krewe and it would be up to, uh, any of the, um, public safety people who are in the app.

EE: You also have this, uh, emergency message app, which is a separate app, but is, uh, is for the krewe members only. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

JD: Sure. Originally, whenever I had approached the krewe, it was really for messaging. It was really for riders, such as myself to be able to talk [00:08:00] to other riders in the app. We've got riders that come in from all over the world, and you may not want, you may not feel comfortable sharing, you know, phone numbers to text each other and that kind of stuff, but we're all in this brotherhood of the krewe, and, uh, we all belong to the krewe. So, if we had to where we could just text each other through the app, you could do that very anonymously. Outside of that, um, one of the krewes that we were working with asked if they could offer public safety, first responders, access to the messaging, especially after the 2020 Mardi Gras season, where there were two fatalities. And, um, the problem that happens during....

EE: Can you tell me a little bit about the, the, the fatalities that happened? That was with the tandem float. Yeah.

JD: Yeah, so some of the floats are linked together kind of like, you know, big 18 Wheeler trucks, like the big shipping trucks, where they have multiple cars behind a cab. Or this case, they have multiple floats behind a tractor, and they are separated just by, you know, a ball in a, in a, what they call, uh, uh, the tongue or the, I don't even know what....

EE: Oh, I don't know either. It's just where they're hitched together, basically.

JD: Right. Exactly. And we've never had a problem really. Um, but in 2020 we had two parade goers going in-between the floats to catch stuff, and for whatever reason, and I don't know why or how, but somehow, um, they were hit by the parade, by the float, and they didn't survive.

EE: Right.

JD: And so when that happens, you know, there's so much going on at a Mardi Gras parade. It's very loud. It's very, it seemingly chaotic because people are throwing things back and forth. And when some...when an emergency happens, you can't really tell if somebody is screaming to stop, or if they are screaming 'cause they're having a good time. And so, um, we wanted a way to be able to quickly send a message to anybody who was responsible for public safety, to be able to know exactly what has happened and where it has happened. And so, so that they could act however they needed to act or react to take care of the situation. And that's where the messaging component of the member app, uh, plays a part.

EE: Right. And again, some of this isn't happening just via text message, um, because it's so hard to text message even sometimes during a parade. I'm not sure if, uh, if people, at least outside of Louisiana recognize that. When you go to a parade, and you try to text message, it'll get through. Eventually.

JD: Yeah. So, so what happens in New Orleans is, you know, just like anywhere else, I guess...when you have an influx, a congestion in the cellular networks, um, you start losing connectivity. So we had to, um, get data plans on our routers that kind of rose above just the regular public in order to guarantee that all of the messaging in the emergency messaging channel would get through.

EE: And I understand that, um, the way that it's kind of set up it, it shows it, um, does it show it through the float? Like what float something has happened on? Or how does that messaging work?

JD: Yeah. It's individual. So let's say, uh I'm so.... Every float has at least one what they call a float Lieutenant, someone in charge of that float, who is also a rider, but [00:12:00] in charge of the float. And so if something were to happen to the float and anything can happen, right? A tractor can break down. The float can have a flat tire, or something worse could happen. If someone, uh, someone could drive into the crowd. There could be a shooting. There could be a fire. Any of these things are what we consider emergency events. The float Lieutenant can pull their app, um, off of their phone, open the app in the phone and, um, record exactly what has happened in the app. As soon as he does that, a notification is sent to everybody in the emergency channel of that member app so that everybody knows which float something has happened on, what has happened and where the float is.

EE: Right. And that may be, uh, might even help the mood of some of the parade 'cause when you have this parade that's forever long, and you don't know what's holding it up, even some of the people that are in the parade can get a little upset of "What's going on?" And so now they know.

JD: Yeah. If you're a rider and you're sitting in the back of the parade that hasn't moved in 30 minutes, you kind of get restless 'cause you're, you're staring at people staring back at you and...(laughs).

EE: (laughs) Where are my beads?

JD: Right, exactly. Um, so yeah, it's, it's a nice feature to have, uh, for the members. And it's something that I think that we've long needed. Um, in a public space, we have, especially down Canal Street where you've got, you know, crowds upon crowds, and you're shoulder to shoulder, if something should happen. Um, the, the public safety, um, or, or first responders need to know exactly what's happened and where to go.

EE: Right. You have a couple of apps that are going, and this is the first time that they're going to go live, right?

JD: Yes, we've actually already tracked five parades and, um, we've been very successful. Uh, we have four more this weekend. This is the last weekend of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. And we will finish our last one on Lundi Gras on Monday.

EE: Okay. And what had, what were the problems that you've anticipated, and how has it how's it gone so far?

JD: Uh, the technology is working flawlessly. One problem that we did have, uh, with one of the parades last weekend, was that... so parades the, the parade routes this year have been shortened because, uh, New Orleans Police Department are understaffed this year. And so in order to handle just being able to parade, they've had to reduce the distance that the parades travel. That has affected everything. At the very beginning of the parade, the floats have to line up somewhere, and because all of the parade routes have been basically shortened to the exact same route for every parade, if you have parades that roll back to back, then you're going to have a bottleneck lining up. And what happened last year, last weekend was we had one parade that lined up on one street, and we assumed that the other parade would line up after that parade left, and it ended up not happening. And so we missed the entire parade tracking because we, we didn't know where the parade was, and we couldn't put our routers on the, on the floats.

EE: Wait. You didn't know where the parade was that you were going to be tracking?

JD: Right. Because, because of the, the understaffing this year.... No one knows for sure exactly where you're going to be at what time, unlike in a regular year. And so, things changed last minute. And we can't, we can't board a float once it starts rolling, right? [00:16:00] They're not going to wait for us. So, um, we have to try to anticipate where they're going to be to the best of our ability and, uh, and get on and get off.

EE: That's great. That almost highlights the need for the app in the first place(laughs).

JD: You're right. You're right. Exactly.

EE: That's great.

JD: I would like to say, uh, that, um, none of this would have been possible without the Krewe of Bacchus us initially sponsoring this and making this happen. Jennifer Burke and George Schiaffino and our captain, Clark Brennan, have been totally supportive of everything that we've done and really kind of moving all of the, all of the other krewes, uh, ahead in, in technology and all of the other krewes that we're working with, um, that have participated this year, uh, they've done this, but, you know, voluntarily. We offered it to them, uh, as a service, and they jumped on board in the first year. Also, um, our technology partners. I mean, none of this was ever, has ever been done before in a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade. And so, uh, we had to kind of figure all of this out on our own. And so our partners with AT&T and Cradle Point and RCN. Big shout out to those guys because, uh, as I said, none of it, none of this could have happened all of these guys working together.

EE: How do you see the tech scene in Baton Rouge? And how do you see it developing within the next, you know, I don't know, maybe decade or so?

JD: I think actually over the last decade, there's been a concerted effort to bring more tech development, not just use it. Tech development into Baton Rouge. And I think they're like five cities in the state of Louisiana that have made investments to kind of attract programmers and designers and so forth and so on. And I think Baton Rouge is, is a great place, uh, for any, uh, programmer. Of course we're always looking for more, always, always, always, there's a, there's a lack of, of, of, uh, of talent in that department. Both from programming, but you can't just be a programmer, right? So, um, it, we, we have programmers, and we have graphic artists, and those two have to work together. You can't have one without the other.

EE: Because you have to have a nice looking app.

JD: You have to have a nice looking app, because like, for me personally, I can make an app sing, but it's going to be ugly. So, without a graphic artist you're not going to want to use one of my apps.

EE: Understand. So as far as the tech scene is here, how easy or how difficult is it to get together... to, to put together an app? You know, how, what does that take... like as a developer here?

JD: There's so many tools...open source tools, um, that are out there for a developer these days, that you can literally learn this on your own. If you have the interest and the skill, um, you can learn pretty much all of the tools by yourself. Thank God for the internet. Um, and all you really need is, you know, if you're doing a simple app, then you just need yourself and, and a graphic artist.

EE: Okay. What do you think might be the difference between a place like here and a place like Silicon Valley?

JD: Well, the biggest difference between, you know, the state of Louisiana and the state of California really is, is money, investment. Um, all of the biggest investors are obviously outside of Louisiana. So the talent, we, we don't have as much of a talent pool because talent follows money. And so if we were to graduate, you know, a hundred coders today. If half of them stayed, I think that would be a success because, um....

EE: Would money follow talent?

JD: If there, if once, once it gets [00:20:00] concentrated enough, right? It's, you know, it's a chicken or the egg kind of thing.

EE: Uh-huh. Interesting. What, uh, what are your, what are your plans for the weekend if you're, if you're tracking apps? Are you, are you tracking apps and then not doing anything else? Or are you having fun outside of that? How does that go?

JD: I'm actually looking forward to riding in Bacchus this year.

EE: Really.

JD: I am considered a riding Lieutenant. I'm on a horse. Uh, we, you know, ceremoniously guard our king, uh, and the king float. And, um, you know, it's been two years since any of us have been in a parade, and I like being in Bacchus, because of Bacchus, the reputation of Bacchus, you know, the quality of Bacchus, but also, um, because they allow us, um, really unique access to the public. I mean, I can't tell you. How excited I get, uh, when I see a kid, and his or her parents come up to me to take a picture while I'm on the horse in a Roman costume. I mean, it's just, it's just the best feeling in the world. And, and to me, there's nothing better than riding on a horse of Mardi Gras under the oaks of St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans.

EE: Nice. So will you have your...will you have your phone out? Will you be looking at your app's process, progress?

JD: I will not. I have, I have a great ground crew, and they have been training, uh, these last couple of weekends. And so I'm depending on them to do everything on Bacchus Sunday for me.

EE: Nice. So you have a chance to have some fun, cut loose and uh, make sure that your stuff is still going at the same time.

JD: Yes. Yes.

EE: Nice. Well, I hope you have a wonderful Mardi Gras.

JD: Thank you.

EE: And um, Jason Devillier, thank you so much for talking with me today.

JD: Thank you.

EE: If you are headed out to any of the parades, be safe, and have fun! Jason and I covered more than one app in our conversation, so I’ll go over the ones available to the public:

“Throw Me Something Bacchus” is the app which includes a parade tracker for the actual Bacchus parade and also some scheduled virtual parades - so if you can’t physically be at a parade, you can still enjoy a little Mardi Gras fun. The other parade tracking app is called “NOLA Parades.” Both NOLA Parades and Throw Me Something Bacchus are available in the usual App and Play Stores.

Thanks for checking out The Sunshine Bridge, a show about community in Louisiana and all of the people who make it work. If you haven’t done so yet, take a listen to some of the other interviews, and go ahead and hit “Subscribe” so you don’t miss any upcoming conversations.

Show music is by Arnav Srivistav. Special thanks and dedication of this show go to Jessica. If you have questions, comments, or even have a story you’d like to share, please email thesunshinebridge@gmail.com. Happy Mardi Gras! And much love!