Drones: No. 10 Baltimore tech trend of 2015

Beyond individual stories, a tech community is defined by how its component parts work together. So, to look back at 2015, we’re unpacking 10 themes that kept popping up with big headlines all year long. See the full list of trends here.

Due in equal parts to a your editor and reporter’s respective obsessions, a viral post from last year and, of course, actual things happening in the world, there were a lot of drones on Technical.ly Baltimore this year.
We had drones flying in buildings, underwater drones, drones in winter and drones flying contraband into jail. (Hell, let’s go ahead and give the military aerostat that broke free from its mooring a drone-like honorable mention.)
Fear not, though, the future of the technology points toward more organization. Aerial Array’s Terry and Belinda Kilby started out building drones, and are now shifting focus to analyzing data. New FAA regulations mean every amateur pilot won’t be able to (legally) fly their UAV anymore. And really, the true promise of the technology is in doing actual work, not in shooting cheap YouTube videos to gawk at.
Whether 2015 will be the year drones jumped the shark is for TechCrunch to decide, but in general we’re somewhat bullish on what drones may ultimately, um, deliver.