Autodesk CEO Emeritus, Carl Bass, and I have the same birthday: May 18. So I was invited to Carl’s 60th birthday party where I met Chris Anderson. Though he has the same name, Chris is not the TED guy. Chris was the Wired guy and is the co-founder of 3DR. Chris did tell me that he and the other Chris Anderson have a gentleman’s agreement where each has pledged not to do anything to hurt “the brand,” because the name confusion comes up so often that if one does, both will be tarred and feathered because of it.
“In 2007, Chris Anderson — New York Times best-selling author and at the time the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine — built his first drone at home with his kids using parts from a Lego Mind Machine. He got chills: when a dad and his kids can create military-grade technology on the kitchen table, something fundamental about the world has changed. But what? The kids quickly tired of the experiments, but Chris went down the rabbit hole [and eventually founded 3DR]…