130319 R-Pi Jam planning

Reading Raspberry Jam
All errors & omissions are all my fault, please correct any you find, thanks - David

Planning & Organisation session 2 2013-03-19 @ Volunteer, Theale


 * David Price
 * Matt Daubney & Catherine
 * Mark East
 * Gareth Jones
 * Barnaby Shearer

Conversation with Alan O'Donohoe
David spoke with Alan on Tuesday 19th March.


 * Alan's happy with the direction and planning
 * focus is people who wouldn't normally be interested in programming etc
 * recommended Saturdays better than weekday evenings for schoolkids
 * encourage children to come along and talk
 * wants Reading to host a larger event (200 - 300 people) poss March 2014
 * will provide an Eventbrite template for us to use to book groups
 * get some teachers on-board, Alan knows some.
 * start low key (max 20 people) to get comfortable with process and place then make bigger
 * Jamboree material on Youtube (teknoteacher)

Jam - who
So far the main volunteer contributors to the Jam project are;
 * David Price - organising, newbie guinea pig and poss Squeak freek
 * Matt Daubney - organising, Linux, Python, Minecraft, hardware
 * Mark East - organising, Linux, Python, Scratch, Minecraft
 * Barnaby Shearer - Linux, Python, Minecraft, hardware
 * Chris Bagley - Linux, Lisp (tbc)
 * Gareth Jones - hardware

We also have some volunteer newbie guinea pigs
 * Jim Pugh - Newbie guinea pig
 * Taimoor Yousaf - Newbie guinea pig, accountant

Jam - when
Which day is best - Saturdays or evenings? This still needs to be thought through.

UPDATE:UoR facilities would be readily available either time, the issue is during the normal workday when it would clash with classes etc. Weekends would have the advantage of there being a longer period available whereas evenings would be limited to approx 7 - 9:30, beyond a point and extra costs would be involved.

Jam - where
David has been talking with the University of Reading who appear quite interested particularly with the links to education. They have ideal facilities and are very accessible.

David is meeting with the community liaison people on Wednesday.

UPDATE: Thursday 21st March - David met with the community liaison and events people at the UoR. They are very keen to support this activity with free premises. Further contact is being arranged with members of two faculties - Institute of Education and Systems Engineering.

Looked over one of the IT rooms in the Palmer building where students access PC's for their own studies. Nice layout with wired ethernet though the displays are VGA. I will go into the technical aspects of displays and networking once I talk to the IOE contact. The Palmer building has a lot of rooms of varying types and sizes plus a cafe and car park not far away so seems ideal. Another option may be the London Road campus which is nearer the centre of town and has been recently refurbished so might offer more up-todate displays.

Multiple rooms would provide useful flexibility.

SUMMARY: UOR looks very promising and they are very keen to be involved and help.

Jam - funding
If we can get UoR facilities funding should be less of an issue though sponsorship should be sought to cover a set of Pi setups and displays to avoid borrowing from all and sundry each session. Also, sponsors could fund T-shirts and competition prizes.

One suggestion was to have product developers come to sessions and they could provide goods in kind as their sponsorship, eg interfacing boards that could be used by the group for workshops and projects

Jam - contents
Athough we may provide a number of Pi's and some peripherals for those starting out (hence the need for donations) the expectation is that attendees bring their own Pi's, monitors etc.

All material produced for the RR Jam should be Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_GB

Jam - ACTIONS
Discussed individuals focussing on putting initial material (tutorials and worksheets) together as follows;

David - Getting started and simple Linux

Matt - Scratch and some initial electronics projects

Barnaby & Mark - Minecraft tutorial based on Barnaby's work with the cubs

Gareth - hardware interfacing, starting with an audit of the hardware we have to hand

Mark - to set up Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for the Reading Jam.

David - set up a blog and Github for the Reading Jam.


 * UPDATE: Blog setup (readingraspberryjam.wordpress.com)
 * UPDATE: Github account setup (ReadingRaspberryJam) with repository (RRJam)

Next meeting
Tuesday 2nd April 7pm, venue TBA