A Drone’s View of Flooding After California’s Storm

Drones

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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@dalepd

February 2nd, 2017February 2nd, 2017

In January 2017, the Russian River flooded its banks. Ryan Kunde, my son-in-law who is a winemaker and drone enthusiast, flew his 3DR Solo drone above a stretch of the Russian River and shared this video with me. The drone provides a beautiful view of the brown river, which runs through a forest of redwoods and oaks in Northern California.

The video highlights our curiosity with nature and seeing it from new angles. Through these flying platforms, we’ve watched a new form of content develop over just a few short years — from Eric Cheng’s early surfing videos in Santa Cruz and volcano exploration in Iceland, to Space X rocket launches, to a wide variety of amateur and professional content shared at many film festivals, we’re seeing things we’ve never been able to access before.