Big things are happening in South Florida

The week started with two days of drone flights around Fort Lauderdale, including a beautiful morning at the Bonnet House Museum & Gardens with Serena Hoermann. The surroundings and artwork are incredible! I am excited to share that Bonnet House will be featured in our upcoming VR experience—stay tuned! Thank you so much to CEO Patrick Shavloske for the tour.

Next stop: Boca! I had a fantastic conversation with Judith Cruz-Burnstine for the Naturalista TV about how immersive storytelling can help us imagine (and create!) a better future. Huge thanks to Lynn University for hosting me—not only for this conversation but also for an incredible podcast recording in their state-of-the-art studio! 🎙️available soon

In Hollywood, I met with Christopher Roschek, P.E. and Jose Cortes to talk about flood mitigation and VR. I was truly impressed by the scale of work happening in the city and hope we can collaborate more soon!

My final stop was at the City of Boynton Beach Official, where I captured some more drone shots and had a great conversation with Alannah Irwing, the city’s Sustainability and Resiliency Administrator, about an exciting new project - stay tuned!

On top of it all, I had lunch at Florida Atlantic University with Fred Bloetscher, Serena Hoermann (who is now the interim director for the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions at Florida Atlantic University) and Wen Zhang, who is doing some interesting work with AI and urban planning.

Big takeaways? Florida is doing A LOT of great work balancing engineered solutions with nature to mitigate flooding. I am very happy (and proud) that Virtual Planet is establishing a presence there.

And FL friends—I’ll see you again in April!