Raspberry Pi magazine The MagPi relaunches

Community-driven magazine The MagPi has got a new home!

Now on issue 31, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has acquired the magazine as an ongoing project and is publishing it in-house. With the change of ownership and editorial team comes a complete layout redesign, as you can see above. The community will still be very much involved, but you can expect much stricter editorial standards and higher quality articles because of the Foundation now being behind it.

I personally think this is an excellent move. The content of The MagPi was always very good, but with the redesign and the establishment of a new editorial team under the leadership of Pi journalist Russell Barnes (of RasPi.Today and other existing magazines), I fully expect the magazine to go from strength to strength and become a print publication before long.

You can read the launch announcement on the Foundation’s blog here.

You can read/download the first Foundation-led issue here.

Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend – the blog will be quiet!

For the next few days, myself and Tim Richardson will be otherwise engaged with the Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend in Cambridge. Please accept my apologies for the lack of blog posts this weekend – I just won’t have any time to update the site. I’ll be back in action again on Monday (if I can wake up!) with as much Pi news and projects as I can find. I’ll also be sharing some of my experiences and thoughts about the Big Birthday Weekend from an organiser’s perspective.

For those of you who are coming to the Big Birthday Weekend, please say Hello to myself and Tim. We’ll be wearing purple Raspberry Pi t-shirts (the ones with the logos on) and we’ll likely be carrying clipboards and wearing Marshal badges!

Can I just take this opportunity to say thanks to the Raspberry Pi Community who have been so generous offering their time to help us at the Weekend, giving talks, taking part in panels, helping in workshops, doing Show-and-Tell, taking part in the Marketplace and giving up some of their Weekend to be Marshals. Without you, we just wouldn’t have an event.

Thank you to Tim, as always. And a huuuuuge thank you and Big Hug (c) to Lisa Mather who has been organising the evening party – we couldn’t have done it without you!.

Raspberry Pi Foundation announces Creative Technologists initiative

Rachel Rayns and Ben Nuttall are heading up a new initiative – Creative Technologists. Here’s what they have to say about it on the blog:

The Raspberry Pi Creative Technologists is a mentoring programme for creative people interested in technology aged 16 – 21 years old. If your passion is the creative arts, and you’re wondering how you can use technology to enhance that, this is for you.

It sounds absolutely brilliant, and could really be the way forward for reaching young people on a personal level. You can read more about it on the Foundation blog, including how to apply.

Raspberry Pi education team gains CAS Master Teacher

James Robinson has joined the Raspberry Pi education team and is tasked with writing more resources for their website as well as contributing to their outreach and Picademy programmes. James is a CAS (Computing at School) Master Teacher and Hub Leader and brings with him a wealth of education experience. Read more here. Welcome to the madhouse, James!

Piana – the Raspberry Pi synthesizer

Phil Atkin has been experimenting with bringing synthesizer software to the Raspberry Pi. Normally, this kind of equipment can cost £1000s but he is proving that the $35 Raspberry Pi is more than up to the job. Hackaday has just covered his work here and you can read more about his experiences on his blog here. If you’re lucky enough to be coming to the Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend, you can see Phil in action on the Saturday!