This month’s column comes from Raleigh, North Carolina where I attended All Things Open 2016! This post consists of the highlights of the lightning talk I gave at the conference, which covered the mission and purpose of Raspberry Pi, and our programs and outreach including Code Club for kids, Raspberry Jams, and Picademy.

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Who I am, who we are

I’m Raspberry Pi’s Community Manager, based in Cambridge, UK. We have sold over 10 million Raspberry Pis since launching our first product in 2012. Many people think of Raspberry Pi as a hardware company, but in fact we’re an education charity.

In 2006, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was founded at Cambridge University with the humble goal of getting more people to study computer science. The proposed solution, a small and cheap Linux computer, was immediately popular with a large number of people. Since 2012 educators, hobbyists, and industrial users have been making the most of our range of devices, and funding our education programs. All profits made by our trading subsidiary go to the Foundation.

Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission

Our mission is putting the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world. We do this by providing low-cost, high-performance computers that people use to learn, solve problems, and have fun. We provide outreach and education to help more people access computing and digital making. We develop free resources to help people learn about computing and how to make things with computers, and we train educators to guide other people to learn.

Current Raspberry Pi models

Raspberry Pi 3	Raspberry Pi Zero
64-bit quad-core ARMv8 @ 1.2GHz	32-bit single-core ARMv6 @ 900MHz
1GB RAM	512MB RAM
$35	$5

The Pi 3 is our headline product. It’s 64-bit with 1GB RAM, which is not just a good computer for $35, it’s a good computer, full stop.

The Pi Zero shook the world last year when we released it for just $5, and stuck a free one on the front of our print magazine, The MagPi.

If you used a Pi in 2012, it might have felt a bit sluggish and looked a little ugly. Today it runs fast, and looks quite good. We just released the new Raspbian (our distro based on Debian) with a new desktop called PIXEL.

Free resources and training

We provide a set of free learning resources on our website. There are plenty of fun activities of things you can do with a Pi. They’re free in every sense of the word, and you can contribute on GitHub.

Picademy is our free teacher training program that we run in the UK and the US. Educators apply for a place to become Raspberry Pi certified educators, and become part of a global community.

Community

Raspberry Jam

Raspberry Jams are community events set up around learning and sharing with the Pi. They’re family-friendly meetups and anyone can start their own. Have a look at our map and if there isn’t one near you, get in touch and I’ll help you get started.

Code Club

Code Club is a network of after school coding clubs for kids aged 9-11. Anyone can set up a Code Club and we provide training, support and resources. Check out the Code Club World website for more information.