 Folks, Ted Rawlson here, downtown Honolulu will our show, think tech show, I should say, not my show necessarily, called Where the Drone Leads, and today we're talking about drones leading right into the heart of STEM education and STEM education leading right into the heart of the future. So drones taking us to the future, once again, a very common theme on this program. Today we welcome on our show from across the Pacific John Stevens, who's standing by in the state of Oregon. John, you there? I am, Ted. Good evening. Today we see a picture of you up here. What's in the background in that picture? Oh, I think we're looking at a nice ponderosa pine or maybe a big juniper behind my head there. There kind of ubiquitous around here, but a gorgeous day in beautiful Bend, Oregon. Actually, I wish we had some more of that sunshine. We're covered in snow right now, but that was a good day. OK, well, that's great. Well, the background here we've got, of course, is the Sunsetting in Waikiki, which is about an hour or so away from Sunset for real here. Anyway, John, welcome aboard. This is kind of interesting because we have Oregon and Hawaii working together across the Pacific here on our show. And we, the two of us, represent two of the four states in the Penn Pacific unmanned air systems test range complex. So if we had folks from Mississippi and Alaska on, we'd have the whole four all together here talking that once. Well, what's interesting to me, John, is that we've not really had a lot of state-to-state conversation at the real operational level. And maybe we can use this as a very entry into that kind of dialogue, because you represent the state of Oregon and the Pendleton Test Range and SOAR. Tell us a little bit about the whole UAS test range setup in Oregon, John. Sure, I'd be happy to, Ted. So again, I represent SOAR Oregon, Chief Operations Officer for SOAR Oregon. And one of the hats that I wear here at SOAR is to promote and support the three FAA-designated UAS test ranges that we have in Oregon as a component of the Penn Pacific UAS test range complex. And proud to do so during the great state of Oregon. We have three FAA-designated test ranges under the Pan Pacific, one at Tillamook, Oregon, one at Warm Springs, Oregon, and one at Pendleton. And again, privileged to look out for all of them. That's just one component of our mission, Ted. We are actually a nonprofit trade association that supports and promotes the drone industry within the state. That's really our primary mission here. It's about economic development. It's about growth of the drone industry within the state of Oregon. Obviously, the test ranges are a huge component of that. They offer a diverse set of testing environments, approved airspace usage, and some really, really skilled range management personnel that can help our customers, our drone customers get up and flying with a minimal amount of fuss where they can evaluate their platforms, the UAS themselves, sensors, payloads, data links, data processing, evaluations, dissemination systems. We take a very broad and vertically integrated view of the entire value chain for drones. We also have, at SOAR, a significant marketing and outreach capability. We are active on social media. It's easy to follow us at SOAR Oregon on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, we're fairly well plugged in. And then we have this public outreach component, which is near and dear to my heart, certainly both professionally and personally. Key component of that is reaching out to the educational community. And obviously STEM is a key component of that. It's a key enabler, unmanned aircraft are just a fantastic enabler for getting into the STEM community, the educational community through STEM hub, STEM coordinators because of the diverse nature of the technology, the diverse nature of the applications. It really gets young people hooked into the science and the technology across the board and we're really excited about moving forward with the integration of unmanned aircraft and drones into STEM programs. So that's a long-winded introduction to what we do here at SOAR and, again, excited to be here chatting with you, you know, one of our partners in the pan-Pacific. That's pretty cool, John. You guys have a lot of stuff going on there and I think we're going to have to find some way to drill into that and tap into your experience to accelerate us down the learning curve. We're a bit later than you getting started here in Hawaii, but we've got a pretty active program at the university. We've got quite a network across the state here of commercial operators and experimental technology being developed and such. Things like video feature extraction is automatic and kind of high-end work. But as I, as you and I go to conferences where we first met, by the way, years ago in probably either Alaska or New Mexico, and the peers we have that come to these conferences and the conversations we have all are based on the knowledge we've created and developed over time and we all are aficionados and believers in this strength aspect of the future. One thing that I've discovered, even got reminded of very heavily yesterday in a conference out here in Hawaii, is that how we have to take that and break it down into pieces, much smaller pieces that are understandable and digestible at the individual level of people who are in the larger community who may not really understand the technological aspects or the operational aspects or the even the benefits statement and dealing with any of the potential faults and such. That is our business and it's hard to convey that to people who would be ultimately affected in some way or other by what we do. So I really appreciate your, your, your expression of the outreach and the decision to get done in the educational level and we've got a lot of peers here in Hawaii that are thinking the same way. None of them are on the podium with me. We've got about six that I would turn to immediately for a kind of a conversation or maybe even a meeting in that regard, but I'll try to work it from my perspective. But again, breaking these things down over and over again into progressively smaller pieces that fit in the, in the hand of the people who are out there in our communities, community outreach, community involvement, educational participation, the kids instructing their parents through education. Those are, are important components of the technical work we do and the range work we do. So I was just, again, as I said reminded yesterday, we had a conference here in Hawaii ahead of it with triage management and it was the various aspects of disaster health and medical care and the group gathered was professional responder type people, fire police and, and medical folks and other in that domain and certainly the application of UAS and drones to them is very, very, very positive, has a very good result. However, just as all the equipment they've got is trusted and tested and works are things that we do have to be trusted, tested and work in their hands without a lot of training and but produce the changes in outcome that we are expecting. I mean, you, you couldn't put a, a Scott air pack on a fireman and send him into a situation and say, well, it probably will work. We probably have to have a higher level of credibility than that. We probably have to have a, a, a well thought through straightforward operation. We have to have something that can be maintained and can be inspected by eye to verify that it's going to function and warnings and such when, when we're getting towards the end of the service life. So a lot of that kind of expectation, I think, is in the minds of the users that systems will fit comfortably in their hands. And I think that's the interesting challenge we have. And I do think, as you think, John, that the future workforce, the kids in school today are the people who are going to be making that transformation for us. Absolutely, Ted. I, you know, it fascinates me and I guess one of the most compelling motivations for myself to be involved in unmanned aircraft. And I've, I've been around aviation for about 33 years now, started in the Marine Corps and migrated into manned aviation to the civil sector. I just remember that day that I actually saw a fairly sophisticated unmanned aircraft first fly. And let me tell you, my friend, I was hooked from that point on. And what astonished me about the environment, the manned machine interface that goes on between a pilot and command and unmanned aircraft was the interaction between that carbon-based life form and that unmanned aircraft through what amounted to a two-dimensional screen. And it just immediately dawned on me that our young air vehicle operator, in this particular case, was a former Army shadow pilot. And that individual had the same capability to look at a two-dimensional representation of what was going on with his unmanned aircraft and immediately translate that into a three-dimensional airspace and do it extremely effectively. I was immediately reminded of my young son who just destroys me every time I play any video game with him. And you and I, Ted, are growing up, are helping the gender generation grow up with these technologies. And it's just so encouraging to see their ability to take these technologies and work with them so effectively and so quickly, just based on their life experiences today. So it's certainly always been one of my great pleasures to work with younger folks and bring them up and develop them to understand the principles of what they're dealing with. A little bit of some of the harsh realities of the effects of what the technologies that they're working with can do if misused. I think that's an important lesson that has to be communicated. But the inspiration for getting into unmanned aircraft is just ubiquitous. It's all around us. I see it all the time in the young folks who I've worked with, the younger K-212 students who are just fascinated by the technology. And there's just nothing like the smile on the face of these people when they get it. And they're operating that thing effectively. And they're operating that thing safely. It's tremendously rewarding. We're going to take our first break here, John. But when we come back from that, let's talk about how we in the test ranges, especially with the FAA educational interpretation, can accelerate that and broaden that horizon of that penetration of UAS and STEM into the educational system. We'll get back to our first break. Hey, has your signal just been taken over or am I supposed to be here? This is Andrew, the security guy, your co-host on Hibachi Talk. Please join us every Friday on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha and happy new year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at 1 o'clock. Mahalo. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 PM, you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world, scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. And you'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, a way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 PM here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science. With me, your host, Ethan Allen. Still Friday afternoon, folks here in downtown Honolulu and in Bend, Oregon, where our partner, John Stevens of the SOAR in Oregon is standing by our show where the drone leads. We're talking about the fascinating opportunity for the technology that is so rapidly expanding and is available, working through the educational system to empower and generate our future workforce that can take this technology and make it start to solve problems that are all around us, that are not being worked on today necessarily. And John Stevens joining us from SOAR. John, thanks for coming on the show for the first time. My pleasure, Ken. Thank you. And once you're on once a year, you know, you've got to come on again. That's how it works in this show. We trust our frequent flyers to return frequently. So we were talking through your leadership in the section just before the break about that expanding technology, the ability of the younger generation to catch on to it and to do something with it in ways that maybe certainly we can't describe as I would consider myself an elderly person. You know, I woke up on Tuesday morning and the molten slag the night before had solidified as the earth crossed it over. And then went about my business. So I'm on that old, John. But anyway, the young kids are picking on this stuff really quick. So how do we take that appreciation they have, which I don't think I could define. I've seen it happen here, just as you've seen it happen there. How do we take that capability that the 15, 16, 17 year olds can see, maybe the 12 year olds and expose them to the problems, say that the fire department has in wildfire and see what kind of a problem solution couple we can generate here. How would how would that work in your area? That's a great question. That I, you know, a part of what has happened here in Oregon and part of what I'm actively involved in and very excited about is a an effort, a consortium, if you will. And that's probably a loose knit term of sore organ in conjunction with Oregon Department of Education and in conjunction with Oregon State University. We took a look based in large part on some great efforts at the grassroots level to really cultivate the interest and the inspiration in the kids and in their, frankly, in their teachers as well and begin to harness that energy and begin to wrap a helpful but not constraining program around it to enable the word to get out. We started identifying right off the bat some of the issues that as recently as as August of last year that the education community was faced with, even in the face of the release of part 107, the small US rules. There were still some some issues that had to be dealt with in order to establish these programs that would be effective and safe and compliant for keeping these kids moving on the right track. But that grassroots effort was contagious. And thanks in large part to a former colleague of mine, Aileen Levine, she did a great job of pulling together folks at the grassroots level and beginning to move things forward. And then we kind of wrapped this umbrella around it of again, major organizations within the state to provide some resources and some structure to move forward US in the STEM environment. The neat thing about that is that as you begin to it's infectious and as you begin to spread that enthusiasm around again, some of the folks who've been involved in formally and education begin to lend their experience and their structure around the program. And we've had some really good successes with that. I think I mentioned to you the other day we've already conducted one webinar for educators within the state. We've got to actually we have another one scheduled for next Monday. We are actively pursuing industry partnership and involvement. In fact, the webinar next week will involve a major US player and they will be informing us as to the industry perspective on drones and where things are headed. And and what do we need to do? What should we invest in these young people to ensure that we were giving them the right skills to succeed in the US world, whether that's in the actual manufacturing, design, manufacturing, selling the drone, sports, it's in the applications area. We're going to follow that up with probably a couple more webinars before the summer and we are actively pursuing a workshop in June to be hosted by Oregon State University in June. Actually, a Western workshop week on program where educators and administrators can come to Corvallis and learn more about drones and how to how to roll them into their STEM curriculum. We're very excited about it. And again, it wouldn't it wouldn't have this level of energy if it hadn't started with that enthusiasm from from the ground up. That's really great. Now, I've got to I just react into a lot of things you said there. I've got a meeting this coming Thursday with one of our community colleges. The university arrangement here is the state university has itself. And plus it also manages and maintains all the city colleges and such that are community colleges that are wrapped around it. We've got one meeting with one of those groups on Thursday morning. And I'd almost like to dial you in on that meeting. It's it's the same basic direction and vectors that you're speaking of in terms of that first level of excitement and then how do we how do we guide it and and and prevent it from from falling back on itself but also don't constrain it in some untoward way. And so your experience would be very helpful, I think, for this group at the Kapiolani Community College to hear. This is part of a state development of how we're going to generate this outreach. And you're there ahead of us and I'd love to invite you to join in on that. But you also talked earlier in the conversation about the FAA 107 rule and such. And I just wanted to take my hat off the FAA for getting 107 out, which I think a lot of us were really pleasantly surprised by how well that was done. But beyond that is the educational interpretation that came out in May. It really enables the primary and secondary, even academic level of education to use US within or UAVs within the educational domain unconstrained by a lot of the formal certification requirements as long as they obey a community based organization behavior pattern and safety of operation and such. But it really opens the door, I think, to the mission that the FAA has, which is to help generate that workforce of the future. So people shouldn't be concerned about the regulations being in a deterrent in any way. There's many ways to work with the regulations and have a very active program. And in fact, the FAA is very happy to hear feedback from educational programs because it helps them decide what is working, what's not working. I think, John, people are very concerned that we don't have the workforce in the United States at this point in time to catch up with the rest of the world in where all this is going. So I think we do have the obligation and to collectively push it forward and really give my hats off to the FAA for recognizing that and allowing us to go forward in educational work with UAS. So people shouldn't be intimidated by the regulations. They can be worked and maybe one of the things we should be doing, John, within the PPUTRC is coming up with an educational framework, just a simple handbook that everybody can use and refer to. I love the idea of Ted. And as a matter of fact, when the administrator, the FAA administrator, Mr. where to announce the educational memorandum in May, we were all actually at the exposition, the UBSI exponential in New Orleans and we were absolutely thrilled. It began to open that door to allow and facilitate these educational programs and we are making tremendous strides we're making tremendous progress. It's great to be able to get the word out keep again, keep that enthusiasm, keep that grassroots passion for understanding and getting into these technologies. We've had nothing but the best successes with sitting down with the educators, with the administrators and explaining to them, now this is not cumbersome, it's not onerous, it's just the way of doing business to make sure that everybody's safe and generally, it's always, the response is very favorable, it's very positive and very receptive. So, yeah, we're excited. I think we're, we certainly have hit the inflection point of getting these educational programs off and running. You know, there's a component here that I wanna introduce to the conversation but your statements and such are taking me back to when I was 14 and I hadn't thought about this for a long time but just as the kids of today are being enabled to move forward by the educational exposure they're getting through the UAS exposure to education, I had that benefit when I was 14, I was in the Civil War Patrol here in Hawaii and I was struggling to learn to fly and sticking rudder work and such and keeping the ball in the middle and paying attention to everything and getting it all right and I was just at the early stage of the learning curve working that all out and I just asked the instructor once, I said, you know, this is really tough keeping the ball in the middle, the rudder and stick and everything and what if I just let go of the controls? What happened? He said, give it a try, see what happens? Well, I go with the controls, ball comes right in the middle, airplane stabilizes right out, flew perfectly hands off and I thought to myself, my God, somebody actually designed this thing with all the moments and the forces and the throttles and the controls and all and it flies without any human touching it. This is pretty darn incredible. Anyway, that was the episode in my life that turned me into, our electrical engineering for the rest of my life. So maybe we'll sign that kid, 14, who picks up a drone and does something with it in the same way and helps the fire department, helps the police department, helps the Department of Health, environmental people and such and can see that connection. So age of 14 is not a bad age to get people involved in this stuff, John. I remember it well, you know, I started RC aircraft back when I was a kid. There was always that kindly gentleman at the hobby shop that helped propel me on my way. You know, the model rocket thing that we all remember from way back when, you know, all of these tools and all of these capabilities and these great hobbies that ultimately morph into a passion for aviation and a passion for technology. That's what we've got to leverage and we've got to continue to get these kids into the pipeline. They have to understand and appreciate how fundamentally critical these kind of technologies are. It's the future. It's such a, it's so rewarding Ted to look back and say, you know, hey, if there was a legacy that we did, we got X number of kids involved in this pipeline and look at them. They're the next pilots and engineers and information technology gurus in the future. It's tremendously satisfying and I'd encourage everybody in the industry and there's a lot going on even within the FAA that's the further stem at the test ranges. There's a lot going on in industry right now. CEOs who are very passionate about making sure that we push this into the STEM education pipeline. So great things are happening and I'm delighted that you asked me to be on your show today. Great and we're almost out of time here but I want to throw one more thing on the table. We don't have time to discuss it but the feeling I have that we have to get these kids thinking about is the expression of safety and reliability in a really complex system. We now have, when we have a pilot sitting in an airplane you have one thing. Now we have a communication scheme and a ground controller on the ground and a lot of additional complications that come into the mix. We've got to figure out how to let them determine what the mathematical modeling or the system modeling, whatever it might be that allows us to represent that really complex system and then come up with design rules and principles that ensure that it operates in and out day in, day out for five years without maintenance and this sort of thing and performs fallacy. So that's the real challenge I see on the table. And we'll take whatever ideas you can get John to help that out but I would like to invite you to our telecom meeting on Thursday coming up. I'll send that information to you offline and thank you very much John for your exciting renovation of what's going on in Oregon and we'll need to combine these two efforts together and then bring in the other two states and have our whole four state PPUTRC have a sort of a common operating picture going ahead here in the educational outreach. Hey Ted, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. I look forward to working with you further. We'll do it man. Thanks a lot. We'll see you later.