Big Birthday Bash – the aftermath

We are all very tender, aching and sleepy. It was a fantastic weekend. 1300 of you came to see us at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory over the weekend, where you listened to 24 lecture theatre talks, took part in 14 workshops, shared hundreds of incredible projects you’d made with your Pis, and ate 110 pizzas. The workshops were amazing: thanks so much to everybody who helped run them. Here’s Imogen, age 10, who is a Scratch pro (we loved your maze game, Imogen!): this is the first time she’s ever done any robotics, and we thought her robot turned out just great. Alan McCullagh came all the way from France, where he runs the Rhône Valley Raspberry Jams, to join the other volunteers teaching kids in the Beginners’ Workshop. (Private note for Alan: ROWER. I said ROWER.) The projects on display were brilliant. Phil Atkin brought along PIANATRON, his Raspberry Pi synthesiser. Pete from Mythic Beasts (you can only see his hands), who is such a good pianist I’m always too embarrassed to play in front of him, was joined by Jonathan “Penguins” Pallant on the “drums”. (Jonathan gave me an update on the penguins project: the Pis all survived the Antarctic winter; however, the solar panels did not, so some more work’s being done on how to manage power.) We loved watching kids see the music they were making. Some kids learned a bit of history. Others got to work on custom devices. Brian Corteil’s Easter Bunny (which he lent us last year for YRS) made an appearance, and laid several kilos of chocolate eggs. We found more kids in quiet corners, hacking away together. Workshops aren’t just for young learners: here’s Dave Hughes, the author of the PiCamera library, giving a PiCamera workshop to some grown-up users. There were 24 talks: here’s our very own Carrie Anne explaining what we do in education. A certain Amy Mather made a Pi photobooth, the results of which, in this particular instance, I found horrifying. Vendors set up stands to sell Pis and add-ons on both days. Here’s Pimoroni’s stand, as gorgeous as ever. All the cool kids played retro games. Poly Core (Sam Aaron and Ben Smith) provided live-coded evening entertainment. (My Mum, who came along for the day, is still adamant that there must have been a tape recorder hidden in a box somewhere.) They were amazing – find more snippets on their Twitter feed. Dan Aldred brought a newly refined version of PiGlove. The capitalisation of its name is of utmost importance. Ben Croston from the Fuzzy Duck Brewery (and author of RPi.GPIO) uses a Raspberry Pi controller in the brewing process, and made us a batch of very toothsome, special edition beer called Irration Ale (geddit?) for the Saturday evening event. There was cake. It was a bit like getting married again. There was more cake. After the beer (and raspberry lemonade for the kids) and cake, several hundred people played Pass the Parcel. The foyer centrepiece was a talking throne which we borrowed from an exhibition at Kensington Palace (thank you to Henry Cooke and Tim from Elkworks for making it, and for your heroic work getting it to Cambridge!) We understand a door had to be removed from its frame at Kensington Palace to get it here. A selection of members of Team Pi were photographed on it. Please note the apposite labelling – the throne uses a Pi with RFID to read what’s on the slates out loud. (Ross has cheese on his mind because we interrupted his burger for this shot.) And we appear to have lost Eben. He was last seen heading towards Bedford in an outsized, Pi-powered Big Trak. Enormous thanks to all the exhibitors and volunteers – and most especially to Mike Horne, Tim Richardson and Lisa Mather, who made this weekend what it was. We can’t thank the three of you enough. There was so much more – we were so busy we didn’t get pictures of everything, and I didn’t manage to get to talk to anything like as many of you as I’d like to have done. (Does anybody have a picture of the gerbils?) I’ll add links to other people’s accounts of the weekend’s events as they come in. Thank you to the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory for letting us take over the building for the weekend. Thank you to our incredibly thoughtful and generous sponsors for the pass-the-parcel gifts, the contents of the goodie bags, and other giveaways: 4tronix @holdenweb @ipmb @whaleygeek Adafruit AirPi (Tom Hartley) Bare Conductive Brian Cortiel CamJam CPC CSR Cyntech Dawn Robotics Dexter Industries Django Eduboard Energenie Farnell GitHub IQaudIO Low Voltage Labs Manchester Girl Geeks ModMyPi MyPiFi NewIT No Starch Press O'Reilly PiBorg Pimoroni PiSupply RasPi.TV RealVNC RS Components RyanTeck Sugru The Pi Hut UK Space Agency Watterott Wiley Wireless Things Tableware and Decorations were kindly sponsored by: @WileyTech @RealVNC  Wood and Laser Cutting was generously sponsored by: @fablabmcr (FabLab Manchester)

URL: http://www.raspberrypi.org/big-birthday-bash-the-aftermath/