It has been fantastic to see so many of the global network of community event organisers adapting their upcoming meetups and arranging special events to showcase the brand new Raspberry Pi 5. Since we announced our latest board, event organisers around the world have secured pre-release Raspberry Pi 5 units so their attendees can test‑drive this powerful new product.

Perhaps the furthest afield so far — if you’re counting the miles from Pi Towers in Cambridge, UK — happened in Melbourne, Australia. Organiser Trevor Warren got in touch to let us know how his Experience Raspberry Pi 5 event went down under.

From Trevor at Dockland Makerspace in Melbourne, Australia:

“We celebrated the Raspberry Pi 5 announcement at Docklands Makerspace in Melbourne with a “Raspberry 5 Launch Party”. Unsurprisingly, this attracted double the usual numbers of makers at our monthly meetup and it was one of the best events we’ve had in a very long time.

“Raspberry Pi 5 was set up along with a portable LCD monitor, keyboard, and mouse for a live demo and walkthrough. A couple of our experienced makers walked everyone through the capabilities of Raspberry Pi 5, explaining what it has to offer and why they might consider it for upcoming projects. My daughter baked raspberry cupcakes for all of us and I picked up a number of eats with raspberries in them to stay on‑theme.

“It was a great event and we had makers from all over Melbourne present for us, including a number of people connecting remotely over Discord. We also had a giveaway featuring The MagPi and HackSpace magazines, plus some Raspberry Pi tote bags, which added to the special occasion.

“The enthusiasm among the makers present and the wider community was really exciting. Everyone was also pleased to learn that Raspberry Pi will prioritize availability of Raspberry Pi 5 to makers, with only single board orders fulfilled from the date of release until at least the end of the year. This approach of bringing everyone along on the journey is just fantastic.

“We were so pleased to have the opportunity to bring Raspberry Pi 5 to the community of makers here in Melbourne. The last few years have been really tough for everyone so opportunities like this to strengthen the community and make sure we build on the support we have out there, as well as keeping our local makers engaged, are essential.

If you run a get-together focused on home engineering, making, programming and tinkering with Raspberry Pi, let us know by scrolling to the bottom of this page and clicking ‘Tell us about your event’. We’ll promote it for you on our channels, and hopefully encourage a few more people near you to join in. It doesn’t matter if it’s a handful of people or a couple of hundred, or whether it happens every single week or just now and again when you have time to organise it around your life. These things all start small, and they’re all equally great ways to meet like-minded people.