Raspberry Pi Meetup

[jmeosbn]

Just a quick post to gauge the interest in a regular Raspberry Pi Meetup.

Probably not weekly, but once or twice a month if there is enough interest.

So, if you - yes, you - are interested, please let us know by replying to this message (or me directly if you prefer).  Don't leave it to "see what happens", else it won't! ;)

Also, please let us know your preference between once or twice a month, and Thursday or Friday evening.

Jamie

[Gyrobot]

I would be interested, but my preference is on the regular Wed meetup. If we have too many (;-), then we can overflow upstairs.

Once a month is good, don't they normally call it a "Pi Jam"?

[Jamie Osborne]

> I would be interested, but my preference is on the regular Wed meetup. If we have too many (;-), then we can overflow upstairs.

That would probably work well if it's only once a month. The idea being to concentrate on Pi and related topics, whether that's a presentation to the group or one on one help for newcomers to set things up or troubleshoot. Obviously, we don't want to have half our Hackspace sessions taken over, but one a month would be ok (with me anyway, others should speak up).

The other way I was thinking of doing it, would be to have two "event" evenings a month, say every other Friday (for example), one of which would be the Pi event. The other could be a different topic each time.

The Oxford Hackspace have a scheduled event every month and say it's really good for getting people in (both new and returning). The obvious objective is to plan ahead with a presentation or something so you can get people in that are interested that topic. However, they still have the event even if nobody had time to prepare, and then encourage attendees to speak about anything they are interested in for a few minutes (I think the call it "lightening talks" or something similar).

> Once a month is good, don't they normally call it a "Pi Jam"?

"Raspberry Jam" is the de facto name for the meetings. If we have a regular, dedicated night, then it'd be worth branding it this way - but I wanted to avoid constraining the scope or circumstances of the meetup until we knew what people wanted. :)

Jamie

[Jamie Osborne]

I should probably register my own interest!

I'm ok with wed, thurs, or fri.  I have most of the work done for some introductory talks on:

• Setting up a lean and mean Raspberry Pi for terminal use

• Introduction to the terminal, including tips and tricks to minimise typing.

Between me, you (Steve), and Rob, we have enough experience to have a setup workshop helping with:

• Using the Pi with electronic circuits

• Using an LCD display and infrared control

• Home theatre PC and media server

• 3D Printer controller / server

• Setup and use of the camera module

• Using serial connection for local login without network or keyboard and mouse

• Secure, password-less remote login over SSH

• Simple web server with nginx and PHP

• OwnCloud - run a private service similar to Dropbox or Google Drive that you control and help with any other issues

Jamie

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[Robert Longbottom]

Similarly, I probably wouldn't make special trip on another night as well, but if it was part of the regular wed meeting then I'd be happy to listen in and help out where I can.

Rob.

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[Jamie Osborne]

Cool, we have heard of people not being able to make it on a Wednesday - so it might be a good way to trial a different night, to see if it's worth moving the Hackspace night?

Or we could just switch everything to Thursday and see what happens??

Jamie

[Damian Axford]

I'm in...  should give me the kick start to get my PI and touchscreen working :)

On Wednesday, 16 July 2014 17:56:28 UTC+1, jmeosbn wrote:

[jmeosbn .]

Awesome, looks like it'll be quiet tomorrow if you want to come in and do some Pi stuff ahead of a "proper" Pi meetup.

Spoke to someone today who's keen to build stuff with the Pi and learn to solder. Other than that and the above, the number of people wanting a Pi meet up has been pretty underwhelming. :(

Jamie Osborne

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[Robert Longbottom]

That's disappointing.  Maybe it needs to be advertised beyond the google group to catch people who don't already know about us.  Though I don't have any suggestions as to where/how to do that

[jmeosbn .]

I currently have a draft email about this issue (not just for this event) and how to proceed.

Not sure really, I kept it to the group and twitter to get an indication of how many would be interested.  At least out of those subscribers/followers, the answer is practically none.

Jamie Osborne

[Jess Robinson]

Should get my Pi soon! No idea what to do with it though, suggestions welcome!

I suggest you email the bigger group, the manual one. I think a fair number of folks are signed up to this list, but not actually getting the emails.

Its the old chicken & egg game, people may be listening but for whatever reasons not speaking up, if an actual event with a set/particular topic is announced, there will likely be more lurkers attending who have been all quiet..

(Tho I wish they wouldn't be! Make a noise if you're listening at all, dammit!)

Jess

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[jmeosbn .]

"people may be listening but for whatever reasons not speaking up"

Yes, I referenced this phenomena in my post, and it's a shame. As much as people may not want to speak up and just prefer to turn up on the night, it's often not worth going ahead if nobody speaks up. (Or, more succinctly, 'chicken & egg' ;)

"a fair number of folks are signed up to this list, but not actually getting the emails."

You may well be right there, it certainly seems that way!  Doesn't explain the 148 followers on twitter - even if you assume half of them aren't local and half of what's left never check their timeline.

I'm not too worried about making a big push right away, but I was hoping at least some would say they were interested before I committed any time to it or put out a proper event announcement.

I'm pricing up some components to put together kits for people to build and play with (I'll submit it to the group when I have a decent list to put up).  Once we have some Pi stuff prepped, I see if it's worth pursuing this further.

"Should get my Pi soon! No idea what to do with it though, suggestions welcome!"

Excellent. You could start with the basics and program some I/O - there are various APIs in various languages. The C based Wiring Pi is a port of the same Wiring framework that Arduino uses, and has various wrappers for Python, Ruby and Perl, as well as node.js bindings. Additionally, while I'm not sure about Ruby, I know that Python and Perl have their own modules that may be a better match for each language (Python's is extremely popular).

I'm sure you already know some of the above - and probably heard me going on about WiringPi before! - but this was as good a place as any to put the links up!  Whatever, you decide to do we'll be interested in helping out, or seeing the results.  Rob and Steve also had some fun with the Pi Camera and PiFace LCD recently and we got some decent posts up on the site as a result! :)

Jamie Osborne

[jmeosbn .]

Doh! That errant comma in the last para: "Whatever, you decide", made that sound far more sassy than intended! :/

Jamie Osborne

[Darren Wheatley]

Hi,

Let me know if you firm things up as I would be interested. I have a couple of Raspberry Pi projects in mind.

Regards

Darren.

[Mark Philpott]

I'm in for sure, twice a month, but would have to be Thursday:)

Right back to staging 27 of 'em for the day job ...

Mark.

On Wednesday, 16 July 2014 17:56:28 UTC+1, jmeosbn wrote:

[Jamie Osborne]

Excellent, thanks for letting us know! :)

We'll post everything here, and probably sent out a mail to those subscribed to the mailing list.

Jamie

[Jamie Osborne]

Cool, thanks for posting!

I'd love to have a dedicated Pi night, and Thursday would likely be the night we'd choose (subject to clearance from the museum that hosts us). However, it's likely that we'll start off using an existing Hackspace night unless/until we get more interest.

Out of interest, would the reason for Wednesday being an issue apply to others too? We've considered moving the Hackspace to Thursday - as we think there may be more people who could make it then - is that something you'd be interested in?

Right back to staging 27 of 'em for the day job ...

That's awesome! Do you have any jobs going?! ;) (I'm previously an industrial software engineer and would love to work with the Pi more.)

Jamie

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