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How was your Labor Day holiday, Friend?
Yes, one of my friends pointed out to me that I referred to the wrong holiday in my last message to you. That is embarrassing... but also funny, considering I forgot that it was Labor Day. It's the holiday where Americans celebrate the American worker. I was so consumed with my work that I wasn't paying attention to which holiday it was!
Funny, right?! But when you love your work so much that you don't really care if there's another holiday or not - because you would spend your day exactly the same as any other day -- that's the kind of "work" we should all strive for.
While I know the traditional "American worker" lifestyle is getting squeezed or transformed out of existence, I also know that each of us now have more opportunities than any other time in history to redefine and reclaim the kind of work and lifestyle that we want to pursue. That's my mission, and if you want it to be yours then I'm here to help you achieve success on that big, important project too.
Pardon the little diversion there. I do hope you made the most of your holiday, whatever you might have called it.
Last week, I got to do the kind of "work" I call fun by going to the InterDrone expo in Las Vegas. While it was awesome to see so many people excited about working in the commercial drone business, with so many exhibitors, there is one lesson that struck me quite hard as a project manager. It relates closely to your goal to bring drones into your business too, so I think you'll appreciate me sharing this with you.
But first, let me share a few pictures of the event to give you a sense of it.
Here is one of the keynote speakers in the main hall. This was Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics.
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| Here I am with a friend and commercial drone operator / entrepreneur from San Antonio, Texas, Justin Moore:
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| I'm the one in the hard hat and safety vest. :-) That was my get-up for the entire time I was at the expo. You probably would have laughed and thought I was crazy to do that if I had told you about it ahead of time. But it gave me a visceral sense of customer empathy (for the construction and engineering people out in the field who will be using drones). And it was also some pretty effective guerrilla marketing. I was an easy person to find and notice. :-) It got me a video interview for one of the major company's media outlets. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn and Twitter yet (@BrettRocketSci) please do that if you want to see how that turned out after they share it with me.
Last picture, here was a very impressive drone that was straight out of a Terminator movie. It has two long arms with C-clamp claws that can rotate and grab objects. They had motors turned on, putting the arms and claws in a constant state of motion. It gave the impression that it was a cyborg flexing its muscles.
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| | What's my biggest takeaway from all of this, Friend?
Well, many of the exhibitors were entrepreneurs or companies with brand new drone hardware or software. One of them said they just finished putting their prototype together last week! And they didn't have their website up yet.
Another exhibitor said their drone app was still being tested by their beta group and wouldn't be on the Apple and Android store for another month at least!
And this ProDrone exhibitor was from Japan. They apparently have started selling there. But their appearance at this event was before they have established any U.S. distribution and sales channels!
There were several drone designs there which looked cool and had great capabilities. But in talking with one of their employees or owners, testimonials of paying customers was often a future hope or plan...
What's my big lesson in all of this? Sadly, it's a symptom I recognize in myself as an engineer and creative person who loves to build things.
Many of the people and companies at this event have designed and built things before they had specific customers asking for their product. They jumped into the drone game without knowing a real customer who had specific needs, requirements, operating conditions, and goals to achieve.
That monster drone with two claws sure does look exciting and impressive. So did other designs that looked elegant and well engineered.
But how many people have requirements that are so demanding and unique that they need one of those new products to solve them?
For those customers and requirements that would benefit from a drone, why not just go to Best Buy and get a DJI Phantom with HD video camera for $500? That system is on the shelf right now. Connect your existing tablet to it and you are in business for a lot of aerial photography and surveying work that is benefitting survey and construction companies today already.
So that was my biggest takeaway. Even though I'm a huge fan and proponent of drones and the unmanned revolution, I felt like I was in a drone wonderland. There was a lot of money and anticipation in the exhibit hall, but precious little money coming out from customers who gained value from what was there.
That's a lot like the casinos that surrounded us in the rest of Las Vegas! Which is either very ironic or appropriate, depending on how you might look at it.
So, Friend, I think it comes down to this.
Do you have any real, genuine need and requirements for a drone in your business?
Or is it going to be a big, expensive, and complex system of machinery and software that is still looking for a problem to solve?
It's much smarter to start with the specific requirements and use cases ahead of time. Then you can decide if a drone would really have value in your business. And, you can decide if you need a custom-designed and built machine. Or maybe the pro-sumer type of drone is adequate for your needs.
Project management success to use a drone needs to get the requirements clear up front. Have you started to collect and document what those would be for you?
That's my recommendation and request to you, Friend. Sound like a good plan to you?
When you think you have a complete list of requirements, I'd love to hear back from you. Not just the technical specs, but the operational conditions. Think about all of the 10 project management knowledge areas: cost, schedule, staffing, etc.
If you run into questions or roadblocks you can't answer along the way, reply to me here and I'll do my best to help you get unstuck.
I'll sign off for now and let you think about your requirements. Later we can start shopping for a solution.
Thanks for reading my recap and thoughts from InterDrone 2016. I hope it was worth your time. Any honest feedback on that would be great to read too. :-)
Best regards,
Brett
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