The Drone Pitch: Payson, the Marine Editor and a Birds Eye View

In 2010 at the ripe old age of 60 I hung up my regular gig as a golf packager at a golf resort in Scottsdale, Arizona (official title: PVP – Personal Vacation Planner) and semi-retired, relocated from “the Valley of the Sun” and moved up to Payson, Arizona — White Mountains, tall pines, high country elevation 5,000 feet along the Mogollon Rim, with a population of 15,000 permanent residents that swelled to 25,000 during the summer months as people from Phoenix (just 90 minutes away on a scenic highway, AZ 87) came up to camp, fish, hike, escape the summer heat of the valley and enjoy the cooler temps that made Payson so popular.

I needed something to do to make a few bucks and ended up renting a little retail space, opened a video shop and named it Got Memories of Payson. The job: take whatever folks kept in closets, out of storage in shoe boxes, foot lockers in attics, old memories preserved on VHS tapes, slides, photos, 8mm, 16mm film, memory cards — and taught myself to transfer their contents to DVDs so their families could easily access their precious memories on a much better and easier to store platform, DVD’s and players had just reached mainstream acceptance. I had no previous experience with this, just learned as I went along with the help of Google and YouTube. Besides just normal family memories on VHS or film you would not believe some of the stuff people brought me: police chases from cop dash cams, murder scenes from retired homicide detectives, wild animal encounters from hunters, scenes from the great Alaska earthquake of 1964, and an endless assortment of interesting stuff.

During this time, while out on the streets visiting Payson businesses to promote my shop, I introduced myself to the editor of the Payson Roundup, Payson’s newspaper. Turned out that he was a former Marine, a Vietnam veteran, and not just any Marine — a survivor of the Siege of Khe Sanh, a six- month long battle in 1968 where approximately 6,000 marines and allied forces withstood a siege by nearly overwhelming odds, against 20,000 North Vietnamese enemy troops, marking one of the most intense battles of the Vietnam War. As a Marine and Vietnam veteran myself, that bond sealed it. We swapped war stories, compared scars, and drank coffee that could strip paint.

Back then social media was in it’s infancy, just exploding were platforms such as: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, all came of age during this time. I’d been on the internet blogging since 2000, way before anyone knew what a blog was, primarily about things I knew from personal experience, subjects like golf, RV’ing, Marines and learning how to use WordPress, a content management system, which is now world famous. It’s where I learned to post articles, images and video. I could see which way the wind was blowing, digital media was the future, smart phones were on the horizon. My editor friend wasn’t thrilled. He was old school, resistant to change, and convinced the internet was going to kill the printed word and put his newspaper out of business. I told him straight: embrace it — take the “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach, add a digital edition and meet readers where they’re standing.

One afternoon after lunch at our favorite slop chute (Marine slang for restaurant), still jawing about Marine days, he changed the subject and asked me to come work for him. I said no thanks, sell advertising? Are you kidding me? I was having too much fun running my own shop where I was the boss and a place where nobody ever heard me say “I can’t do that” So instead, I offered my suggestions for getting new subscribers, a new wrinkle in emerging technology, something I’d just seen in a YouTube clip: a guy flying a drone with an iPad mini.

“Think about it,” I said. “A camera drone flying over an event like our rodeo or a tourist traffic jam would give readers a view they’ve never had — a bird’s-eye of the community, the Rim after a storm, frustrated Phoenicians fleeing the Valley heat stuck in traffic, wildland fires (safely), even high school games. Put videos on your digital edition, If pictures tell a story, this tells it from the sky.”

He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “A drone? You can’t be serious, no thanks.” I even offered my services to fly it and edit the video but he turned me down flat. So much for thinking he might have an open mind to new ideas.

I’ll admit, that surprised me. I wasn’t claiming video from drones would save newspapers, but I knew it could make a local paper feel alive — rooted in place, showing people their town from a new perspective.

Time did what time does. Drones got cheaper, then everywhere — tools for police, fire, and search-and-rescue, military, and yes, toys for weekend pilots mowing the sky. Newsrooms ended up using them, too.

What I learned running a little transfer shop in a little town is this: being early is lonely. Sometimes you’re wrong. Sometimes you’re right, and it just takes the world a while to catch up. In Payson, the sky was right there, waiting. All we had to do was look up.

Your turn: What “crazy” tech idea did you pitch that people laughed at — and later came true?