 Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Denver, Colorado at the airwork show put on by DJI and who knew that we would fly like a thousand miles to see the keynote speaker, guest speakers, the Menlo Park Fire Department real close to us in Palo Alto, so we're excited to have them here and also to learn about the practical applications of drone technology for public safety. So we're joined by Michael Ralston. He runs the Crisis Response and Innovation Technology Practice Initiative at Menlo Park Fire. So Michael, great to see you. Thank you, thanks for having me. Absolutely, so you're obviously here on the invitation of DJI, so you guys must be doing some pretty interesting things, not only with drones, but really looking at a broader technology suite of things that you guys can bring to bear to save lives and put out fires. Absolutely, absolutely, we're excited to be here and the thing about DJI is that we've been working with them for years, we've been getting into the whole concept of using drones and using technology in Crisis Response, and so it's all coming together right at the right time. We're excited about the announcements that are going on here because it really represents a culmination of what we've been trying to do. Right, but still you're a real customer and I thought it was interesting that the first part of the story was you guys decided to get drones and use them, you got one, and then it sat on the shelf for two years. Right, I mean it's just not as easy and then I think the other really important message that came out of your talk was you kept kind of stumbling onto all these new requirements, insurance, training, certification, so it wasn't easy but that was years ago and now you guys are really leading the charge and using this technology. There's many, many people in the country who are all uncovering this van go at the same time and so what we really try to do and try to bring across in our program is that it's not all about us and we're not necessarily the leaders, we may be one of the ones who are leading the charge but what we've discovered over the years, over the years in our term, which is really months, is that that initial foundation stage, getting the drone and having it sitting there, we discovered quite a bit, we discovered the fact that you have to do this first, oh wait, you gotta do this first, you gotta do this and once we got to that point where we had the right regulatory and political community support, then we got into this growth stage. This is an exciting time, it was a transition point where now we're starting to, things are moving faster, we're starting to learn, we got out of middle school, we're now in high school, right? But that growth phase, that was as exciting as it was, we started doing more and more missions, use whatever cliche you want, one step forward, or two steps forward, one step back, whatever, we discovered that there's an ecosystem out there. This ecosystem is bigger than we are and it involves all kinds of other critical elements that have to be put in place and have to be developed, have to get deep, things that are beyond our expertise, things such as logistics, such as training or support or other regulatory elements, all those things and technology, obviously. Right. So as we learned about this ecosystem, we started to realize that that's what's going to make all this work. It's not just us, we're like a startup company, we're like a technology startup company within the fire district, but we realize like any startup company, that market has to be made and so we've spent a lot of time, a lot of effort putting together things, bringing people together saying, hey people listen to us, we're the fire department, it's kind of fun to hang out with us. Or we like to think so. It is. But what that means is we say, hey why don't we get everybody together and let's have a conversation together? And is that symbiosis, is that synergy, energy that come together, that new links, new networks are formed and people start to realize, oh wow, you're doing that? We're doing that too, let's work together. Right. And we just stand by and go, this is awesome because it gets us to where we want to be, which is saving lives. It's interesting because you showed a symposium that you guys put on at Slack. Again, not only the ecosystem to enable you, but then you guys took a real active role then in passing that knowledge onto other departments and other institutions. So I wonder if you can explain a little bit how did that come together, how well is it received and is that now part of an ongoing thing that you guys are going to continue to support? Right. Brief answer, absolutely it's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing thing beyond just drones. So we're calling it technology symposium, meaning we start to realize that there's all kinds of different bits of technology. My program, crisis response, innovation and technology is how do we go and leverage, make use of all the things we can put into the fire service to help us do what we do? Now specifically if you're a question, this symposium, we had all these folks there together and it was great, it was very well received and a lot of people came up to us afterwards saying, I'm so glad you did this. Right. And it was because everyone thought it should be done, we are blessed by the fact of where we are, geographically speaking, and by the fact that when we do knock on people's door, they tend to answer, they're excited to go and participate. Right. So we're good at hosting a party, but we were hosting a party, that's what it was. We contributed what we knew which was, hey we're trying to climb this mountain and we took this path. But there's lots of other people who have just as important programs and they've learned a lot of other things we haven't learned because they took this path. Right, right. Let's get them all together and the only way we can get to the mountain top together is to share that information. So give us some specific examples of things that you guys do with drones that you just could not do before that have been some of the really like, wow, aha moments when you deploy these things. Give me your top couple. We got time. Okay. They're the fire department, we got time. All right, appreciate it. Nothing's burning, they are running drones back there. You could probably hear it in the background. No, there's quite a bit. I mean, the first place that I would start is we are the fire department and we do regular fire department things. We put out fires, we go to auto accidents, we go to medical things. All those things, everything that we do, you can come up with the use case for a drone because when you think about it, as Chief Calvert mentioned earlier on in our presentation, our fire district, like any other fire department around the country, around the world, we protect life, we protect property, we protect the environment, right? Well, but if you think about what can a drone do? What can technology do in general? It can do three main things, right? And these are critical things to us. One is provide more safety. One is provide better situational awareness. Two, and three is of course, better response time. Well, response time, situational awareness and safety, that applies to medical calls, applies to car accidents, applies to fire. A more specific example is you have a fire and conceptually we live, I don't know what the traffic is like, where are you from? I live right by you, I'm Palo Alto, so it's not good. Yeah, picture yourself needing the fire department to get there, you call 911 and there's traffic. Now lights and sirens are going to let people know but you can't go anywhere if you're in a traffic jam, right? So in some cases, that's the same challenge. What if a drone could go straight overhead, line a site, and get there? Now, in some cases, that's life saving stuff, bring an AED, right? An AED, a defibrillator. That's one way that you can actually make use of a drone to get life saving stuff there faster. Or what happens if someone calls 911 as a car accident because you're supposed to do that, but it's a minor accident? Well, it's safer for us to drive code to what we call, you know, to drive without lights and sirens just to go there and check it out, but it's not an emergency. It's safer for the citizens, it's safer for us. Send a drone there and you see right away that this is a fender bender off the side of the road, go there and check it out, but don't go lights and sirens. It's safer for them, it's safer for us. Or, hey, this is a fire, it's getting bigger and bigger, not just send one engine, but send the cavalry, right? So another example is situational awareness. If you're unseen somewhere, if you think about it, and for those of us who are parents out there, we know what it's like to run a zone defense on your kids, right? You've got to, you're processing a lot of things at once. Well, the act of a battalion chief or incident commander on scene of a fire or of a large incident, it's chaos. There's a lot of stuff going through that person's mind. He or she has to remain focused on their mission, but also taking a lot of information. And they're constantly looking around, they're constantly moving. What if they had eyes in the sky? What if instead of them having to walk around the building and get a 360 view, you know, they had a screen here, and you have a drone that's just circling. It would provide tremendous amount of information for them. It'd be a game changer. Yeah, and then it really came up in the keynote, too, about having somebody who's trained looking at the picture, who knows what to look for, what are the key signs they want to check out. So again, really, really invaluable service. Yeah, yeah. Well, very exciting times, and congrats for being highlighted and keep doing the good work that you do. Great, thanks for having us. All right, he's Michael Ross and I'm Jeff Rick from Menlo Fire. I'm from theCUBE. Thanks for watching. See you next time.