 think tech away civil engagement lives here it is a noon hour in Honolulu folks and rossin here with our think tech studio show where the drone leads and by amazing circumstances we have online with us all the way from Washington DC mr. brian win who is the president and CEO of a uvsi a little bit hard to pronounce but a lot to remember the association for unmanned vehicle systems international big operation anyway brian you're here with us again thanks for coming on last year near before we were just talking before the show began about the kind of the role that the conferences play in pulling together people who are people and ideas and things in academia and and the fabrication companies that are dealing with the emerging domain of unmanned earth systems and you sit on top of that brand running exponential the largest of these drone related uas related conferences in the in the world frankly and you just came off the last one and you're heading for the next one so in the middle of all this you got to keep your eye on the ball of all these new developments that are happening and new trends and somehow pull those strings together into an annual conference how does that go brian well first off Ted thanks for the invitation it's great to be back and and as you can see I've worn my Hawaiian my Hawaiian garb I'll not turn around and show you the rooster that I've got because I'm a year out of date but bought this shirt I think about two years ago now because we're getting ready for Robot X in Honolulu our foundation I should say Robo Nation is getting ready and Darrell Anderson who Darrell Davidson excuse me who runs that organization and used to run a VSI is pressing me to come with to be out there so always looking for an opportunity and thanks for bringing up Exponential it's a great show it's used to call the unmanned systems we changed the name of it in 2015 to Exponential that seemed to be the word that captured what's going on in our community the best and you're right the planning for that event is essentially perpetual we've been working on our event for in Chicago which will be the next venue in May late April early May of 2019 for about two years now and already started working on the event that starts after that in Boston and and somewhere in there through the magic of people collaborating with one another we end up with some very very timely presentations and I like to think we we have the best platform for folks coming together that need to collaborate with one another so in general terms when you say I sit at the top of it that means I'm really a good host I like to say I'm hosting 8,000 of my closest friends which is about where the attendance stands at this point but it's getting bigger every year and I would say the number of people kinds of people that are coming to the event are getting more diverse that's a good thing given all the work that needs to be done and the the talent that we need to draw from to get it done you know and mentioning that the issue of the talent and such and the direction things are going all people that I interviewed who had been at the last event were struck by the emergence of standards and best practices and this type of semi-regulation if you will that's starting to percolate the domain of business and and academia and that's just one example of the kind of new theme that's coming into the into the business but there must be other themes as well for example I just got a note this morning from Honolulu fire department very proud of their COA they've arrived at and very proud of their first use of UAS in public safety we've got a lot of work going on down at the volcano in Kilauea where UAS have been essential so as these new themes come together the conference has to sort of somehow grab them and embrace them and and allow a vector to form around that around those these new dimensions so keeping it all current and and dealing with how fast things change but certainly must be an interesting challenge for you. It's one that we welcome and the way I think about public safety is actually a really good example of a community that is embracing on that systems what if we're just talking about the airside but not just and whether it's for search and rescue whether it's for on-site so you've got all the different folks in law enforcement you've got the fire fighters you got wild and fire prevention and and fighting and and there's there's search and rescue etc. We did the way we use our platform as we invite communities like that to come in they they use it to share information about best practices some of those things ultimately will become standards and I'll come back to that just a quick second but I think the power of what it is that we're able to do on a platform like that because remember it's only four days out of a year and we work you know the year-round is we can get these different communities talking to each other and learning from one another public safety is such a broad category of course and and I think you know those guys interestingly have been learning also from the defense side which I know you're connected to as well they're in some ways using best practices from some of the early adopters of this technology and and that's really gratifying to see when those communities start talking to one another and they can kind of give each other a leg up so we we actually put an entire it wasn't just a track of public safety we actually had a separate event that we did in conjunction with the national chapter the national capital sorry I'm gonna not quite get this exactly right but it was public safety UAS basically and and we did do a separate track that we also had separate events where so folks could come in and work with one another so that but that goes on all the time or not just exponential isn't the only event that we run we also saw that quite significantly at another event that we have been building over time and that's on man systems defense protection security there seems to be those communities the defense community the public safety community and and those that are interested in and for example mitigation of potential bad drones etc so counter UAS we've been getting those folks together on yet another platform that that occurs here in the Washington DC area so there's a lot to different ways that we do that and and frankly it's one of us gratifying things about the Association businesses seeing people come together and and helping on another and and creating shortcuts so that one community can get up to speed faster now that's a really great approach to putting it all together and I'll tell you as a as a attendee of several exponentials and even before it was called exponential I can I can tell you that it is a almost an overwhelming experience or especially for first-timers because you're not quite sure which direction to go and there's stuff everywhere it's all attractive it all something you want to pay attention to and and yet there's also side conferences going on at the same time side meetings so it's a it's a it's a challenge to the to the user to get as much out of it as they possibly can and when you're done you say my God there's I did one out of ten things I had anticipated doing but one thing I would like to to suggest or maybe discuss is another factor that's coming around is sort of standardization and legislation or or good best practices in legislation I know I work with our legislature here and I know other people do Charles Warner does and others involved in and getting a good set of rules that permit and control UAS is an important thing to a lot of our legislative people the trouble is they don't have much time to study anything they've got to give it have it given to them kind of packaged and if it references Pennsylvania and Arizona and something else that all looks good it goes much better what is that something reasonable to to have any in the in the conference a continuing visit of where effective legislation is it can be discussed you know I think we do cover some of that in our policy tracks but the you raise an interesting point because I think we have increasingly been working at in state legislatures directly as you know we have very good chapters around the country and a couple places outside the country for our chapters in the US many of them have been our boots on the ground if you will in educating legislators about what a great opportunity this is how it can be a great benefit to both jobs as well as a variety of other things that are important to them in their state and and so I think how do we bring that together so we've been talking about that in our our chapter council we have our chapter presidents council and that group has gotten very sophisticated over time is now being twice a year once a year it meets that exponential and we're going to host it during our our hill day which is coming up in September on 26 here in Washington DC so increasingly we are looking for where the opportunity where we can provide those best practices and of course that merges into the conversation about if we're talking about the airside what's the role of state and local and tribal authorities in in helping to develop a framework that and the tools that we can only use because most of the flying for small uas courses local flying so that's been a very robust conversation as you know not always a happy one because we don't really have too many ways of of attacking that but now we do and that's the the integrated pilot project that are going on and and I think you know we'll be hearing a lot more about that over time so I've been of course supporting that from the beginning and as a member of both the DAC drone advisory committee and the Mac the management advisory council for the administrator we've really been emphasizing how important we think that is that's really cool and then the IPP is really a good example of where these things all come together the best practices and the the rules can be tested in that IPP environment we are part of Alaska in their IPP solicitation and we've made an independent one as Hawaii didn't get didn't get selected on the first round but we did incredibly get a call from the FAA saying you didn't get selected but guess what we're here to help so if there's a way you want to apply some of these IPP concepts going forward let's work together and actually our example our experience over at Kilauea and the volcano is leading in the direction of of trying to find a way to air boss our way in through a system that respects everyone respects the manned aviation that's in the area respects the need of the new services to get in and get information that the isn't necessarily available otherwise and also there's got to be a place where the where the experimentation people can play so we really haven't achieved that but I think following under an IPP like structured thinking would let us at least consider what what might be an appropriate way to go forward but it once again like we were saying it to be earlier on standards are coming ADSV is coming there are just a no end of things that are happening coming forward and and and we trust you to keep your eye on all that stuff and get and package it in such a way that it's easy for us to access access through the through the conferences so but let's get back to the standard thing in a minute we'll take a break here for about a minute and then get back and talk about how the whole standards world is moving forward I'm Ethan Allen host on think tech Hawaii of Pacific partnerships in education every other Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. I hope you'll join us as we explore the value the accomplishments and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Islands I'm Jay Fidel think tech think tech loves energy I'm the host of Mina Marco and me which is Mina marita former chair of the PUC former legislator and energy dynamics a consulting organization in energy Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of provision solar in Hilo every two weeks we talk about energy everything about energy come around and watch us we're on at noon on Mondays every two weeks on think tech Aloha I'm Yukari Kunisue I'm your host of new Japanese language show on think tech Hawaii called Konnichiwa Hawaii broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 p.m. please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii the show will be all in Japanese hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 p.m. Aloha still the noon hour folks Ted Rawson here on Honolulu and Brian Wynn in Washington DC Brian joining us on the where the drone leads speaking from the very top of the business and the profession of drone ism as chair as president and CEO of AUV SI Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International we had a robust discussion about how exciting the exponential conferences are that Brian's organization puts on bringing this all together and bringing information to the folks who are looking for it but we're talking a little bit about standards and again one of my guys who is at the conference this year was struck by the by the strong emergence of standards and best practices throughout the conference and he heard that mentioned and saw it in discussion items so talk about what your perspective is Brian of the emerging and sort of coalescing standards that are going to be driving this what do we call it the self-regulated industry well we hope it's self-regulated increasingly I think it it's it's very interesting to me as an aviator that how much of what goes on in aviation is well beyond the regulatory environment it's driven by just safety considerations good practice best practices and safety and so forth so you've got all kinds of certification programs that that that go forward and then insurance starts to have their own requirements that they kind of layer on as best practices become more obvious and we're trying to do the same thing essentially in the world of drones we're basically saying hey give us the basic framework please FAA give us the kind of safety considerations that you think are critical and then let us as an industry go forward and meet those performance requirements with best practices and allow us to incorporate advanced technologies as they become available because that's the tricky part I mean this industry is moving so fast the technology is advancing so quickly that will get better and better at this and if we try to be too if the FAA is too too prescriptive then we're probably going to fall behind they will certainly fall further behind I would argue they're already behind but let me give one good example of how the community has come together you mentioned the ASTM I know F-38 has been working on on you know what kinds of requirements should there be out there for pilots of course in the man community we have these things you know the books that say you know if you want to be a commercial pilot here are the standards that you need to meet we don't have those things for the unmanned systems community and so we've kind of taken it upon ourselves in AUVSI to get together the folks that are doing that training or putting together those standards to see if we can get everybody into alignment and what we're calling the trusted operator program and there's more on the AVSI.org website about the trusted operating program which is about to actually roll out into the marketplace and it's not to supplant anything that's out there it's actually meant to bring things together so that those that are putting the other training programs whether it is in the public safety community as we were talking about before or in the utility community or in the oil and gas industry or some of the scientific communities they've got something that can reach for and when they their pilots are trained to that level or they go through training programs that are at that that are basically recognized under the trusted operator program the market will be able to recognize that it's not meant to supplant the FAA it's meant to take control in an area where the community can help itself and raise the levels of professionalism and that we all need in order to actually get this technology and its applications to the mainstream. You know education is the underlying term in what you just went through and an education vector or theme at the conference at exponential would be a really interesting and attractive element to participate in. Just a couple of examples here we found that at the University we have an obligation to our community colleges and the University itself to provide some form of education to people who bought UAS and don't quite know how to take them out of the box yet so we've got a we ran a couple of boot camps that are basically about that how do you take it out of the box what do you do next. Sometimes these things I guess are intimidating and so it stays in a box when they buy it but we've found that to be a necessary element of the education. Another piece that was incredible was the FAA here, our good friends at the FISDO would like very much to be able to reach out to the communities that are around the Bravo airspace and Delta airspace in the airports thinking that the schools in those areas are where the people are who are going to be operating drones in that area so why not have a connection between the local FAA the Tower will say and the local community collected at the school you get the teachers the kids the parents the siblings and start passing the word and lo and behold we actually had one of those events a couple of months ago and 200 people showed up FAA was part of it from the tower and they found a means to connect directly with the community that's using their airspace and the community got to see live living human beings called the FAA which is something you don't often see so we're going to continue that in fact on this show the next time we have the show we're going to be talking about sharing the airspace with the tour helicopter people and FAA would will be part of that so anyway education in all forms seems to be and something that is not even achievable there's so much education required we and one of our one of my peers Josh Levy is leading that activity for the University but we'll look for every opportunity we can to steal from anybody who's got bright educational ideas and this trusted operator concept that you brought up sounds like a great one to bring into our own programs so is there a way that we as a university can somehow link in with that yeah absolutely and before we I can't let it go by so gratifying what it is that you just described having people interact with each other you know it's so gratifying to see that happen the trusted operator program actually came out of a series of meetings I want to say listening tour that I did with Michael Wilbur our membership manager where I think we were in ultimately in about 12 different places I might have participated in missed one of those meetings but I was in as many of them as possible we always had someone there from the FAA I called him the bravest guy working for the FAA because he came out to meet the remote pilots and in some instances you know got some feedback that well you know typical feedback that the FAA is probably used to from us man flyers as well so but he was really great about welcoming that feedback he's a member of the fast team FAA safety team and so we're looking at how this program fits into wings and so forth and so on we're trying to leverage the best practices that are already out there for manned aviation and the structures that are there as well but to your point I know that your university probably does a great job doing the education the question is is it benefiting from what's happening in other places as well so it's kind of how we get the top the bottom up that you just described and I participated saw some of those connections being made in a number of different locations with the top down where people are working together to get the into alignment what we like to call the protocols of safety at different levels so that the marketplace has the ability to test the veracity when you say hey I'm one of the best flyers out there I went to this fantastic cracker jack training program I probably utility guy and you're gonna fly near my substation I want to make sure you're not gonna crash and not get my grid give me something that allows me to test the veracity of what you're saying that's kind of the top down approach but when I say top down I think we had a hundred and seventy odd maybe a hundred eighty people who are in the training business in the certification business in the from the flight safety arena come together to put these protocols together and we leveraged the standards that were already being worked on so that manual is going to be coming out it will be available to you and others and we hope that mark will become recognized so that the marketplace in general will be able to say okay I see that you've been trained to those kinds of levels and protocols I can trust you to fly around my oil platform or fly around my utility grid or whatever that's an essentially critical element of this whole activity is getting that kind of standardization in awareness education and and information because I think of all the certifications you can take in the FAA unmanned remote pilot the 107 is the only one that doesn't have practical experience associated with it since you don't have the practical experience since you don't have to do flight testing or even you take any classes you don't have that that social transfer of information that comes from people who operate and you can sort out things on your own you have this book learning you did and you passed an hours test but it slips away pretty quickly and it doesn't have practical application until you put something together like you've done so we are looking forward to jumping in on that we've worked with AOPA and AMA also who have both forms of educational at all three together would probably be the the best mix here so we're nearing the end of our time here but we first run out of time before we run out of subjects to talk about in this game but education and standard practices including legislation those are would be really it to me really important elements of going going forward in the future in the conferences and looking forward to participating in that sort of thing but the standards what other standards do you see coming are we going to see standards in in radio communication and in spectrum and in in other technical aspects materials how do you see it unfolding let's use radio I sorry remote identification which you brought up a little bit earlier as a good example of this now we we all agree that anonymous flying is making folks nervous we've had security agencies weigh in at the federal level slow down efforts to get flight over people for example so the industry came together in an arc aviation rulemaking committee provided feedback to the FA on how we would do remote identification in the end this is a class one of those classic examples of something that we need to do and we need to do it in a way that's performance-based because the way we will do it will get better over time and we also need to leave room for multiple solutions here rather than being prescriptive and saying everybody needs to use this particular approach so but I think in there is is the kind of give and take that we're looking for from the regulator a codified what it is that you need from a performance basis so that whether it's a cop on the beat or somebody who's trying to protect critical infrastructure has the ability to identify a drone and who's flying that drone and satisfy themselves that it's an authorized operation and the industry is able to comply with that using standards that it has come together and put together for purposes of that remote identification performance requirement so those are the kinds of things that are going on I would say remote identification in the regulatory environment because of what I described with flight over people is probably the most important thing that we're waiting on right now and once we've got it it's going to it's going to demand that we as an industry come up with some standards for doing it so that people who need to know who's flying a particular drone can get access to that information that people don't need to know will not be able to get access to that information we know how to do that we know how to do basic IFF technologies but in this case we need we need to promulgate that rule throughout the United States and frankly if we can figure out a way to get it done in the United States we can figure out a way to get it done in other parts of the world as well that's a really good example because it brings together personal responsibility behavior regulation technology and advancing the state of the art it all that's that's that one element the electronic identification really touches all aspects and so that's a third vector to have in the in the conference series is these innovative ways to go ahead and and protect the future but expand it and at this point in time we are absolutely have shot our 30 minute time period here and Brian Wynn president and CEO of AUVSI thank you very much for your great insight on the show and we'll see you in Boston and then see you on the show after that again well don't forget Chicago Chicago Chicago then Boston right then a little okay okay thanks so much for coming on Brian my great pleasure thank you