(clicking) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Denver, Colorado. It's our first trip actually to Denver for theCUBE, so we're excited to be here. It's DJI AirWorks show. It's the second show they've ever had, about 500, 600 people here talking about the commercial applications for drone. There's no conversation really about consumer stuff here, the spark is not here. This is really about commercial applications for drones technology, the platform, the software. We're really excited about the keynote speaker today. He's Michael Perry. He's a Director of Strategic Partnerships for DJI. Michael, welcome. >> Thanks for having me, Jeff. Absolutely, and great job on the keynote. Really enthusiastic crowd. I think you pretty much had their wrapped attention the entire time. (laughs) So before we get into today, talk a little bit about why DJI has invested in this conference, and kind of what are your high level objectives in doing AirWorks. >> Yeah, so over the last several years we started seeing more and more maturity in how people are using drones for commercial work. Ultimately what we found though, is that a lot of these conversations were happening one to one, and often they were coming to DJI to have that conversation and then we'd connect them to somebody else in the network. Instead, a year ago, we decided, why don't we just connect everybody together so they can have those conversations directly? And that was a huge success. We had end users, developers, and dealers all coming together to think about how we can push forward the future of enterprise with drones. And this year, it's even bigger. We've now included not just end users and developers, but also training companies and financial service providers, hardware providers. Everyone's coming together to look at what's the future of this industry and how we can push it forward. >> Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So really the high light of verticals if you will, so agriculture, energy, construction, public safety, and infrastructure, and of course media as well, but those are really hardcore industrial sectors where you've already seen a lot of pretty advanced solutions, and you're really pushing the solution messaging as opposed to the point products or even talking about the drones themselves. >> Yeah, that's right. So I think if we had this conversation five years ago, we'd be trying to tell everybody why drones are so useful. That's no longer the issue. The question is, how can we take these drones and operate them at scale? How can we move them from an R&D project where everyone understands the value proposition, but how can we make sure that it's able to use by the guys in the field on a daily basis? And that's what everybody here in this room is here to decide. >> Now you guys take a really interesting approach. You've really broke the drone up into pieces. So you've got the actual platform itself, the thing that flies, and you guys have spent a lot of time and effort in letting it fly itself if you will, really, with instruction. Then there's the sensors, whether that be a camera, the axsensors, infrared, all type. I mean Hasselblad is here, one of the oldest camera companies around. And then there's the software, and you opened up your API both on the mobile device side, the control side, as well as, sounds like this year, even giving the raw access to the most fundamental sensor data. So that's a pretty bold kind of path to choose. How did that go down, and obviously the results are huge. You're building an ecosystem across all of those units. >> Yeah, when we started seeing the applications for drones in the commercial space, we ultimately realized that we can't develop end to end solutions for every application for drones. It's just too big. So what we started seeing is, hey, look, there's a company that already doing fantastic work in GIS mapping. Let's just enable them to use our platform. And ultimately we're starting to look at how we can use the base core of DJI technology as a platform for other people to build on top of, to really expand the potential of drones. And that's true for everybody here in this room. >> So now you've got really a wide range of platforms if you will, but the other thing that you announced today that I thought was pretty interesting, and I'm relatively new to this space, but getting beyond kind of the one person, one drone concept, and really enabling an enterprise operation. One of the guys was up talking about their customer, Komatsu, says, we love it, can you put 20,000 of these things in the air for us? >> Yeah, that's right. >> So that's a whole different way to think about your aerial assets if you will. I think back to the early military days, right? We didn't have an air force, right? It was part of the army. But to actually now have the ability to have kind of an aerial branch within your business process that feeds into your other business process, a very different way to think about the world. >> That's exactly right. So FlightHub is the answer to that exact question. If I'm a business and I want to operate drones at scale, how am I going to do that? So FlightHub does multiple things simultaneously. Allows you to see the live feeds from multiple drones. Allows you to assign tasks to individual drone pilots. Allows you to monitor all of the drones in your fleet and see how are they performing, where have they flown, what kind of missions are they optimized for, and use all of that information to be able to operate drones across an enterprise. >> Yeah, and then you talked about the other side of the equation, which is, investors still concerns about safety and privacy and this and that. And you're coming up with another product that's really for law enforcement and airports and those types of people so they have a better view of what's happening around there airspace that they're responsible for managing. Not really for the consumers or even for the operators, but really for more of the control and the trust if you will within this bigger ecosystem. >> That's exactly right. One of the barriers to broader adoption is the perception of drones, if there's drone flying by, whose drone is that? What is it doing? Is it doing the thing that it's supposed to be doing? Is there an accountability mechanism? So with AeroScope we've designed an easy to implement accountability mechanism for law enforcement, for airspace regulators, and between the two of them, they can start saying, hey, look, there's a category of drones that can just fly and we can make sure that they're not flying in anyway that's effecting safety or security, and if they are, then there's a follow up mechanism. >> Right, right. Okay, so I got to ask you a fun question. Of all the crazy applications that the ecosystem has delivered, what are some of your favorites that either just seem, wow, who would have ever thought of that, or just really leveraging the power of the platform in a way that, again, you would of never thought of on your own? >> Honestly, every week there's a new, exciting application. The one that always brings to mind though is the Ocean Alliance had a problem in that they need to collect information about whale pods in order to assess their health and their diet and how they're faring. The best way to do that is collecting whale snot. >> Jeff: Whale snot? >> Whale snot. So previously-- >> Jeff: Who knew whales had snot? >> Exactly, so previously they would row in dinghies next to whale pods as they breach, try to collect the snot as they go up the spout. Now they're using drones to do that. It's much more time efficient, allows them to better assess the health of the whales that they're trying conserve, and it also doesn't put the researchers in harm's way. >> Yeah, it's bad news for what's his name with the dirty job show because-- >> Yup. (laughs) >> Really the drones are taking a lot of these dirty jobs. It's really a safety issue when you're inspecting. I talked to somebody over coffee inspecting oil refineries. You don't have to send somebody up a 200 foot tower anymore. You can send the drone, use software, and you can get a better indication than you could from somebody that maybe missed a spot. >> Yeah, you can decrease the amount of hazardous work hours and increase the efficiency. You can not only do the inspection faster, but I can do it more frequently and get a bigger data set so that you can take that intelligence and make your business operate a lot more effectively. >> Alright, so the goals for 2018. What will be talking about at AirWorks 2018? >> I think next year you'll see a lot more mature applications within the different protocols that you've just mentioned. There're already software providers and hardware providers trying to address them, but I think today you'll start seeing all of those solutions coming together into one platform that can easily be sold and easily scaled in these business. So you'll probably see a lot more players here talking about that. >> Alright, well Michael, again, congratulations on the show. Congratulations on the keynote. Exciting times at DJI. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Alright, Michael Ferry, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from DJI AirWorks. Thanks for watching. (clicking)