Discover Benelux | Flemish Drone Industry, (Industrial) Robotics & Automation Technology | When Only The Best Will Do
Team-building in the air TEXT: ARNE ADRIAENSSENS | PHOTOS: DRONEFUN
Is navigating a drone on your to-do list for 2019? Then perhaps you and your colleagues can make your first flight during a Dronefun team-building session. By playing challenging and whimsical games in teams, you become a first-class pilot in no time. After having had full and challenging careers in IT and science, Gino De Wachter and his wife Nancy were ready for a new adventure. Driven by a shared passion for technology, they founded Dronefun, organising chipper, informal teambuilding activities with drones. “Drones are incredibly fun to work with,” De Wachter explains. “I first flew one about four years ago. There wasn’t even a Belgian legis30 | Issue 61 | January 2019
lation about them yet. It was love at first sight for me. I am no pilot and I have never aspired to be one, yet the feeling of controlling a flying object myself attracted me a lot.” This joy they want to share with the world by organising team-building exercises for companies and offering initiations at big events like Comic Con and SuperNova: not by boring or confusing their audiences with long lectures and explanations, but in a fun and hands-on way. “We start every session with five minutes of initiation. Afterwards, the participants are ready for take-off. In teams, we let them try their luck on an obstacle course, race against each other and play with
drone cameras. In one of our more absurd games, they even have to deliver as many pizzas as possible in a limited time.”
In conference rooms or on the tarmac Because of this fun approach, anyone can participate – whether they believe that themselves or not! “People often tell us: ‘I can’t do this’. Yet, several minutes later, their drone takes off and the fun starts. In general, nearly everybody gets the hang of it within five to 15 minutes. We keep our sessions accessible for everybody.” That also allows non-tech-companies to hire Dronefun. Furniture designers, bank clerks, nurses… all of them have tried and achieved flying a drone and partici-