Manchester Raspberry Jam

A month later and we’re back in Madlab for Manchester Raspberry Jam IV – again I begin with a recap of the news: Revision 2.0, Made In the UK and Make Your Own PiOS, and move on to skill share pairing!

I was really impressed by how generous people were with their time and equipment to help me get started.

And as it turned out, I was NOT the only woman!  Hello, Dawn! It was great to see lots of dad there with their 10, 11 yr old sons.  But where were the daughters?

I really liked the way the event was set up as a sharing experience.  Everyone was asked at the beginning what they wanted to get out of it and what they were able to put in (nothing, in my case).

I’ve now run two Raspberry Pi events in Manchester, affectionately known as the Raspberry Jam. The first in June, which was the first Raspberry Jam in the UK, and which featured on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website where we gained recognition for getting people together to share ideas, demonstrate what we’ve been doing with the Pi, and getting kids interested in building games and writing code as well as inspiring people all over the UK (and the world) to set up their own groups. Continuing the success of the Jam, our second event took place a month later in July, which was equally enjoyable.

Raspberry Jams are user group meetings, this one being the first of its kind being held in the country, all of the hosts attended the event which was held at the Madlab

Tony interviews various attendee’s from the event including: Dan Hett a Games Developer who’s heavily involved with Manchester Games Jam who wants to promote and get involved with games development on the Pi. Also Dan is hoping to promote the Global Game Jam which is an annual event which takes place at the end of January every year, which hopefully will be held in Salford more information available here. Dan also hopes to be able to put on a presentation/demonstration at the upcoming Manchester Mini Maker Faire details later.

Tony also interviews Amy a 13 year old who has recently received a Raspberry Pi and she is a keen Scratch Programmer.

Tony interviews Ben Nuttall the organiser of Manchester Raspberry Jam and discusses his interest in the Pi and motivation for setting up and running the event. A more in-depth round table interview with Ben and all the Hosts appears later in the show.

Finally Tony interviews Martin Ranyard who presented a talk on 3D Printing at the event, mainly focussed around producing a case for the Pi and his experiences purchasing, building and setting up his first 3D printer.

The venue, kindly provided free of charge, was filled with Raspberry Pi as far as the eye could see, all being used for different reasons.

The event, organised by Ben Nuttall, was developed to promote programming, and the Pi , to a larger audience.

The event started with Ben hosting a short introduction to the format of the day, and explaining his path into the world of IT.

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending Manchester’s first Raspberry Pi event, called (what else?) the Raspberry Jam, hosted by Madlab. It turned out to be a great day, and I’m glad everyone braved the rain to make it.