COLLOQUIUM
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Carolina

Controlling Drones across the World with Javascript
Chase Gray
DroneDeploy

Date: November 14
Time: 1530-1630 (3:30-4:30pm)
Place: Swearingen 1C01 (Amoco Hall)

Abstract

Silicon Valley now has more opportunities than it ever has in the
past. When I was studying at South Carolina, it all seemed so far away
and unreachable. I had no idea how to try to get a job at Google or a
small startup. Now that I'm there I can't walk down the street or into
a bar without someone trying to convince me to leave my current job to
join their company. During my talk we will go over what the job market
and hiring process is like at many companies in Silicon Valley. I will
discuss some examples of what it is like working at Google and my
current startup, DroneDeploy. At DroneDeploy we use a cellular
connected drone to send back images and data while in flight to ground
control stations written in JavaScript on any browser and any location
in real-time. I will go over what DroneDeploy does and a bit of how we
accomplish it. We will go over some details about projects we are
working on at DroneDeploy and the types of people we are looking for
to join our team.  

Chase Gray graduated from USC with a Master's in computer science in
2008. During his last year in school, he started Ratchet Software and
launched its primary product, MyHealthcareSource.com to provide
parsing and processing of healthcare financial data in an easy to use
format. Ratchet Software was doing well, so he relocated to South
America and continued to focus building the business over the next few
years. In 2012 he accepted an offer at Wildfire Interactive, which was
acquired by Google a few weeks later.  At Google he focused on
integrating Wildfire's analytics suite with Google systems and moving
some of their products to Google's new JS Framework, AngularJS. In
2014, Chase left Google to join a team of ex-googlers and Ph.Ds to
make it possible for anyone to collect useful data using drones from a
simple interface on any device. At DroneDeploy
(https://www.dronedeploy.com/), Chase mostly focuses on the AngularJS
frontend, which is used to communicate with and control the drones as
well as analyze the maps being created while the drone is still in the
air.