Delightful Drone Meetup Kicks Off New Issue of Make: Magazine

Huge crowds were in attendance at the HP sponsored Drone Meetup.

HP had representatives on hand to demo the new HP Sprout.

The HP Sprout is quite popular with our youngest guests.

Maker Media CEO Gregg Brockway gives a quick talk on drones and the current issue of Make:

We all love Vol. 44’s cover!

The Maker Media Lab was filled with professional and amateur drone enthusiasts.

Visitors saw a variety of drones including this DJI Phantom 2.

Steve Doll of Hovership shows off his carbon fiber flyer.

Many drones were on display, both commercially available and DIY models!

The Handycopter, our cover drone from Vol. 37, was on display.

Guests were able to get hands on with the Handycopter.

You can build your own Handycopter at home with off the shelf parts and modeling wood.

Marque and Eli of Game of Drones were on-hand with Racer X, cover drone of Vol. 44.

Drone enthusiasts gathered to talk the latest in flying technology.

The Maker Hanger 2 Tricopter from Vol. 44 was a big hit.

Exec Editor Mike Senese hosted a Drone Trivia Contest.

Six lucky contestants competed for an Iris+ Multicopter.

Make: engineers were on hand demoing the new makerspace.com

We gave away several copies of the newest issue.

As always, the 3D Printers were running, and extremely popular with the younger guests.

Make: Volume 44 hit newsstands Tuesday, March 24, and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate our drone-centric issue than hosting a meetup right here in San Francisco.

We welcomed about 200 guests to our Maker Media Lab at the Palace of Fine Arts for food, drinks, and the opportunity to talk about and explore all things drone. The buzz came to life with some amazing demos. We got to play with a variety of drones, and—thanks to our sponsor HP—we got to check out Sprout, their latest immersive computing platform, which has some incredible potential for drone prototype design.

Congratulations to Blake Mitchell, who triumphed in a nail-biting round of drone trivia and earned himself an Iris+ Multicopter from the Maker Shed, and also to the lucky winner of our raffle, who won her very own Sprout courtesy of HP! Check out the gallery to see how much fun we had, and be sure to join our Make: Magazine meetup group to be notified of our upcoming events.