Never driving into the wind again

Emre is a freelance tower technician in Istanbul. He climbs mobile phone masts for the telecom companies. Above fifty kilometres an hour of wind, he cannot climb. Too often he crosses the Bosphorus in two hours of traffic, only to stand under a mast in a gale and drive home again. Each wasted trip is a day he isn’t paid. With xMap Flows, Emre built Maple. An hour before each site visit on his calendar, Maple finds the mast in his list of sites, checks the wind there, looks for closures and accidents around it, weighs it all up, and tells him on Telegram whether to go. On a Thursday, Maple warns him the mast in Sariyer will see winds of sixty-five by noon. He swaps it for the Kadikoy job, where the air is calm. That month, he loses not one day to the wind, and finishes six more jobs. Emre still climbs in Istanbul’s wind. He just never drives into it.

The story in words