Should I stay or Should I go?

[Av8Chuck]

I don't pretend that anyone cares whether I stay or go, more of a rhetorical question.

I didn't always agree with Bart but you have to give him a lot of credit for starting Multirotor.com when he did. At that time multirotors where beginning to have a profound effect on the RC hobby and there was a growing
divide between hobbyist and commercialists. Multirotor.com provided a great forum for those who aspired to use drones commercially.

Unfortunately, and maybe its just me, but it seems like interest in multirotors has subsided on all forums over the past year.

I don't know what plans the new management has for this site, but I would really like to see it return to its roots and start to foster dialog about commercial drone applications.

 

[violetwolf]

Stick around Chuck! It's the people that make the forum, not the page headers. And I agree on the commercial aspect. Perhaps a dedicated forum mods? (And ya I know that I'm the guy who was suggesting fewer pages lol)

 

[nathan]

You would probably enjoy listening to the podcast: http://www.dronevibes.com/category/podcast/

@Petr Hejl , @Erick Royer and @camflite all have years of commercial and professional experience in r/c and drones... But I'll let them chime in here for themselves. Having been around MRF for the past 5 years yourself, I'm sure you've seen your share of people come and go here— we aim to change that as we believe the world of drones is just starting to take off. Our goal is to truly give you and other drone enthusiast's a great place to hang out, helping and being helped along the way.

 

[Av8Chuck]

The point I was trying to make was that initially MRF was great because this was the place people came to discuss commercial drone business. HoverFly Pro had what was considered to be one of the first commercial flight controllers and most of their support was done through this site.

Then the product reviews started, which seemed to shift the focus from commercial operators kibitzing about how you make money with these things to "enthusiast" arguing over who had the better product and beginners wanting to find out why their Phantom flew away...

There are a lot of forums dedicated to drone enthusiasts but not so many places for people who are serious about figuring out how to incorporate drones in education, integrate them into variety of industries for collecting data, or anything more than being able to fly a GoPro.

This is all a rues so that I could pimp my video of teaching high schoolers how to fly drones.

 

[violetwolf]

Hence my suggestion to create a commercial users section

 

[Petr Hejl]

Quite a few good points in here. I don't really feel that the interest in multirotors has subsided over the last few years, I would say it got "diluted" between growing number of outlets available for people to participate in Facebook pulled a lot, but aside of a handful of groups, they are mostly flooded with the "where did my Phantom fly away" crowd mixed with some pretty unruly "keyboard ninjas". Good or sharing some pictures, videos, or stories, but not too good to have a longer evolving discussion about topics - I think that's where the power of a well organized forum is.
Don't forget that the Part 107 is not out yet, if it ever gets there, I think we'll see another slew of commercial players entering the industry - the "party" is just getting started.
The forum does indeed deserve a dedicated commercial op section, as well as sections that provide outlet for new folks and enthusiasts. The industry is getting pretty diversified, and we plan to evolve with it. As no one person can't be an expert on everything in the drone world, I think it's great to bring together people from all different corners and provide them with a place to interact, learn from each other, and find drone related content, hopefully interesting to them.

 

[nathan]

What type of content would you suggest for a Commercial forum? Are you thinking legal, 333, marketing, sales, education, etc?

Maybe a Commerical / Professional forum for all the above and to include firefighters, rescue, police, inspection, etc.?

 

[Petr Hejl]

I would say that the Commercial Users forum should include:
Aerial Photography/Video Production
Mapping/3D modelling/Volumetric
Inspections - thermal, special sensor applications
Business resources - insurance, networking, marketing, business resources
Legal, FAA, State and Local Laws

I don't think that SAR (Search and Rescue) should be in commercial section, it should have it's own.

 

[Av8Chuck]

I agree with Petr's suggestion with the exception that I'd recommend including USAR with the other commercial applications. Like the other categories most of the discussion will probably be about how to conduct business. Drones have given rise to aerial remote sensing. They're quickly becoming ubiquitous, connected, intelligent devices that can provide new insights for all of the categories mentioned.

The challenge for all of us, IMHO, is that we need a better understanding of the applications needed to provide a more direct linkage between analytical technologies and real world problems. We can't all be expected to be experts in all of these categories so a forum that could bring professionals together, much like a trade organization would have considerable value. We wanted to do that with ACUAS.org but ALL the forums at the time pretty much catered to hobbyists and we didn't have the resources to go it on our own.

I don't want to go too far afield comparing hobbyists and professionals, its not about whether you charge money or not. Consumer drone manufactures develop their products to be highly integrated, closed systems. This gives their drones the highest probability for a successful deployment of a VERY narrowly defined mission. For commercial applications there is no "one size fits all" so commercial drone manufactures have to provide application specific solutions that are open and extensible, that are simple to use, easy to deploy, and provide the most resolute data possible, in a timely, actionable manner. Although these two "cultures" are not mutually exclusive they are antithetical to one another.

Another thing to consider when defining your forum, amid all of the excitement over the impending regulations there is little, if any, discussion about value-added-resellers, systems integrators and sUAS service providers. For the commercial application of drones to achieve significant success, a large ecosystem of system integrators, resellers and service providers will need to be created. The regulatory process is severely retarded the development of a meaningful infrastructure. This industry is still small enough that a dedicated forum (trade organization) could have a profound effect on the future of this industry.

If your simply planning on having a better organized forum that tries to cater to both groups then your going head to head with other well established forums like RCGroups. If you focus specifically on the needs of the emerging professional market then your not RCGroups and the market is wide open.

 

[nathan]

Professional Drone Operators forum has been created:
http://www.dronevibes.com/forums/forums/professional-drone-operators.154/

As discussion builds, we can prefix the categories (FAA, Mapping, Inspections, Insurance, Marketing, Legal, SAR) or setup sub-forums if we truly get overwhelmed with new threads.

 

[Av8Chuck]

Professional Drone Operators forum has been created:
http://www.dronevibes.com/forums/forums/professional-drone-operators.154/

As discussion builds, we can prefix the categories (FAA, Mapping, Inspections, Insurance, Marketing, Legal, SAR) or setup sub-forums if we truly get overwhelmed with new threads.

Curious what the percentage of threads are more for the hobbyist or the professional. I suspect that the overall numbers of threads about hobbyist related support question, how do I tune this or which controller should I use for that, have increased significantly and a potential result of that is that the professionals have either left or reduced their participation on this forum. I don't see any way that this trend will reverse itself on its own.

As Wayne Gretzky used to say, "you don't skate to the puck, you skate to where the puck's going to be." Curious if there are other pros still frequenting MRF and what you guys think? Personally I'm a bit disappointed in your response, I think you have a much bigger opportunity if you support the professional market. The consumer market is flattening out. Even though its still a significant part of the market there's very little room, its a pretty crowded space, the majority of the growth will be in the professional market and I think the consumer and professional markets are antithetical to one another.

This is just my opinion but I don't think professional discussions will build. It appears to me that most of the pro's have left.

 

[nathan]

Curious what the percentage of threads are more for the hobbyist or the professional. I suspect that the overall numbers of threads about hobbyist related support question, how do I tune this or which controller should I use for that, have increased significantly and a potential result of that is that the professionals have either left or reduced their participation on this forum. I don't see any way that this trend will reverse itself on its own.

As Wayne Gretzky used to say, "you don't skate to the puck, you skate to where the puck's going to be." Curious if there are other pros still frequenting MRF and what you guys think? Personally I'm a bit disappointed in your response, I think you have a much bigger opportunity if you support the professional market. The consumer market is flattening out. Even though its still a significant part of the market there's very little room, its a pretty crowded space, the majority of the growth will be in the professional market and I think the consumer and professional markets are antithetical to one another.

This is just my opinion but I don't think professional discussions will build. It appears to me that most of the pro's have left.

Every opinion counts, and your well thought out posts are appreciated. We aim to get the enthusiast, professional, racer, beginner and everyone in between.