Building for good in San Diego

Roughly 400,000 people in San Diego rely on food assistance every month. When our whole company gathered there last year, we turned part of the offsite into a food drive.

The can build challenge

Teams designed large-scale structures modeled on real architecture and landmarks, including bridges and towers, then assembled them can by can. One team riffed on Michelangelo and named their build Michael-CAN-gelo. The room got competitive and loud, and every can on the table was headed to the San Diego Food Bank.

By the end we had donated 3,914 pounds of food, which the food bank counts as 3,264 meals.

Capturing what we built

Then we added the part you would expect from us. Employees scanned their finished structures with DroneDeploy Ground and built 3D models of them. People who work on reality capture every day got to point it at something they had made by hand, and the models became a record of the day.

“It was rewarding to build a relationship with the San Diego Food Bank and see our employees rally around the cause,” said Rebecca Lehman, Chief of Staff at DroneDeploy.

Our 2025 Impact Report credits the people here for how we show up in our communities, and an afternoon over canned food is a good example of what that means.

We do this kind of thing all year. Deploying Good, our volunteer program, runs events in person and online, plus donation drives and a product pledge. You can see more of that work at DroneDeploy.org.

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