What's Floating Around Cloud 9 This Week? 13 November 2017

Welcome to another week and we start with a fond farewell to Janet who is leaving us for pastures new this coming Friday. Janet has been an excellent member of our team and will be sadly missed, but the nature of the events industry is that people do tend to ebb and flow a little so we wish her well and our search for new talent continues!

In other news this week, its all a bit about Drones. The International Drone Awards are starting to gain some serious momentum and interest and we have just announced the first of our judges who are based in the States, Europe and the UK and we have some additional invitations outstanding too.

Additionally, last week we undertook a site visit for the World Super Drone championships which are being held in Nottingham next April, and there will be 24 international teams competing for a £25,000 prize for the best pilots.

Drone news has been pretty hard to escape just recently - if you book an Uber in  around 10 years’ time, you will probably get a car that drives itself. But then again, you may not be travelling in a car at all as the app is working on technology that would allow airborne passenger drones to fly short distances around cities.

After upending the taxi market with its ride-hailing service, Uber is now looking to the skies for its next venture - flying taxis.The firm has announced that it plans to deploy its flying taxis in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and Dubai by 2020.

Uber's flying taxis will be small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically (VTOL) with zero emissions and quiet enough to operate in cities and flying taxis would cut down travel time between San Francisco's Marina to downtown San Jose to 15 minutes, compared with the more than two hours it takes by road, Uber has estimated.

Amazon’s delivery drones, currently being tested in Cambridgeshire, use a similar technology to cut down on noise and extend their range.

 

Additionally, with Christmas fast approaching, it seems that Drones will also top many a gift list this year. With drones now widely available now at high street stores such as Currys and Argos, many expect the leisurely use of the small aircraft to quite literally soar.

 

The boss of the recently opened drone arena says he wants to make drone racing as popular as football. UKDS Racing, in Nottingham, which launched last March, and with whom we are working here at Cloud 9, are hosting competitions and teaching children and adults how to fly drones.

The site, which is located next to Notts County's Meadow Lane stadium, will be reconfigured every month "to keep pilots on their toes" and the long term plan is to have a drone arena for each city and for people to be able to view drone racing from their homes.

 

With the World Super Drone event being filmed as part of a series, this could happen sooner rather than later! 

 

Have a great week.