We’ve got offices!
You probably didn’t realise this, but up until now, we haven’t had an office to work from. We’ve been completely virtual: I work from the study at home, we’ve got some space at the University Computer Laboratory in Cambridge which we use for meetings with visitors, there’s a small electronics lab in our house, Jack deals with paperwork from an office in his house, we borrow space at St John’s College for board meetings…it’s not a very efficient way to run a million-unit computer company.
Now we’ve started taking on our first employees, it’s really not a tenable way to do things any more, so Rob Bishop (evangelist and developer), Gordon Hollingworth (GSH on the forums) and James Adams (software and hardware chaps respectively) have been moving into our new office in the centre of Cambridge this week. Clive Beale, Eben and I will be joining them when Clive’s teaching contract is up at the end of the month, and when Eben and I get back from a series of meetings in the US.
We finally have something to keep Rob in. (The chap on the right is from the removals company, and not a Pi person.)
Rob and James Adams survey the mess. Rather them than me; there’s nothing worse in the world than the sound of squeaky polystyrene. Gordon’s behind the camera.
We’ll be decorating soon, but it’s already a fully functional office (we’ve got an entry phone and everything), and best of all, it’s only a few hundred yards from the pub. It’s leafy, it’s central and I’m really looking forward to moving in next week!
84 comments
Nicholas Barnes
In the best tradition of computer companies in Cambridge, you now need to find some fellow boffin to pick a fight with in the pub!
Wombat
Reminds me of the good ol days with Acorn and Sinclare both based in Cambridge.
Smiles as i remember spending a summer holiday working for Acron fixing the DIY Atom kits that people had returned to Acorn because they botched up building their computer kit. I think the kit version was 19.99 cheeper than the ready built one, but the “repair” charge was 29.99 + postage. So overall it cost 10 pounds more!
Jeremy Lincoln
This is so awesome. I have been following your guys progress for a while. I wish you all the luck in the world.
Michael Horne
Congratulations on the office! Lots of natural light :-)
liz
*Really* nice, that, isn’t it? (It was one of the reasons we chose it!)
clive
This “decorating”. Hmmmm….
Any other decorating ideas for the Raspberry Pi office? (Liz will surely thank me :))
ukscone
trampoline, ball pit & bean bag chairs
Aideen
Rainbow stripes surely?
Michael Horne
Beanbags. Apparently they’re very ‘in’ for the geeky professional :p
Montekuri
Just a coffee machine… but not as decoration.
Robert_M
Maybe they could revive the Trojan Room Coffee Pot, with an R-Pi running both camera and web server.
liz
I’m planning on ordering us an inflatable Portal turret. (And there will be beanbags, because we’re stuck in 2000.)
Gordon
We should rent the room below as well then we could make a hole in the floor but a bean bag room below and pretend to drop through a portal!
Oh what fun (now back to work!)
Gordon
liz
I want a fireman’s pole.
liz
I was also thinking of painting at least *something* (perhaps Rob) with blackboard paint.
guru
B&Q do Blue and Magenta blackboard paint. We’ve made a couple of Wile E. Coyote blackboards at Pimoroni with the blue, and the Magenta is *very* close to Raspberry Pi Pink :D
They make my heart sing with unbridled joy.
Liam Jackson
Ooooh another polystyrene hater. Its always a double edge sword when cool gadgets arrive in it, on the positive: cool gadgets, negative: have to touch polystyrene or get someone else to unbox!
liz
Seriously – it raises hackles in places that I didn’t even know I had hackles. I have to leave the room and get someone else to unbox stuff; it’s like a million tiny fingernails scratching the chalkboard of my soul.
Todd
Interesting, my wife’s the same way. Until now she was the only one I’d heard of that reacted that strongly to polystyrene – glad to know she’s not alone!
Wizard
It makes me very glad that you make make some sort of living out of all the work you’ve put into the Raspberry Pi project and now also have somewhere to work!
Having a dedicated office makes a major difference! (I’ve been doing a few startups in my days…)
Good luck with the interior decoration now and don’t use the pub for regular meetings ;)
Alan Childs
I’m assuming that the entry phone is somehow going to be Raspberry Pi powered, using some special Asterisk and GPIO robotic door trickery. If not I’m very, very disappointed. :)
Stephen Scott
I would hope that the entry phone makes some sort of BBC Micro two tone beepery, to make one feel at home…
omenie
Excellent – I will have somewhere to visit when I bring the orchestra round!!
Tim
“it’s only a few hundred yards from the pub.” It’s in Cambridge, is anywhere more than a few hundred yards from a pub?
BobC
That was my first thought.
bradley
a few hundred yards is going to feel like a few miles in our lovely british weather (snow in milton keynes and northampton)
David Simpson
so new board meetings in the pub then lol
SirJames
Very cool digs, greatness comes from humble beginnings. Would love to come work 12 hour days for you for a pinta r two, sleep on the floor etc.. If you like , any support needed from cow town Denver USA, put me on your node list.
The Denver connection
JFleit
John
You’re supposed to think outside of the box!
Rob Bishop
I knew I’d been doing something wrong… ;-)
ColinD
Hey but at least now Rob’s going to be kept in a cardboard box instead of just hotel rooms and hotels… I think that counts as an upgrade from “cattle class” to Economy.
Also a thought: you should charity auction that box you’re pictured in (if you still have it). Pick a decent charity and I’ll happily bid a load of ££ (double if you’re pictured sleeping in it overnight;)
Matt Ward
Really happy for you guys.I’m excited for your team! I’m especially satisfied that your amazing work is being recognized and rewarded with some new office space! All the best!
Bob Kosse
Congratulations with your new office!
W. H. Heydt
“The chap on the right is from the removals company, and not a Pi person”
…yet.
Eric
Hmmmm.. so where’s Ebens tidy desk? At Broadcom? :-)
JBeale
I understood Eben’s tidy desk to be at Broadcom- the RPi being his “spare time project” (!)
Riccardo
Fantastic :-) :-)
Andrew
Excellent to have a base! And just in time to celebrate the first birthday of the launch on the 29th !
Andrew
Excellent to have a base to work from! And just in time to celebrate the first birthday of the launch on the 29th !
Helen Lynn
Nah, there’s another three years to go before that :-)
Paultnl
Glad to see things progressing well.
Rich Kavanagh
Hopefully someone donated the office space??
Thomas Pleasance
I like the alma. but as its pub friday tomorrow i feel all bar one calling :D
nick
There are much better pubs than all bar one. The best pub in Cambridge is obviously the Empress.
JamesH
Almost all pubs are better (cheaper) than All Bar One.
bradley
i prefer the super cheap ones (pronounced “free”) like the place, ballare, fez, soul tree (keep forgetting what it’s called now). and yes i realise they’re not really pubs but booze is booze
Andy M
I suspect you’ll get some possibly unwanted visitors around the time of the Elite Dangerous launch party.
Andrew
Yep, mine was the same when he was little. No matter how fancy a present you got him, he only wants to play in the box it came in.
Juan Carlos
Greetings from Guatemala on account of your new offices! I hope to get my hands soon on a Raspberry Pi and see if I can spur some enthusiasm for this hardware with my students here at San Carlos University!
Andrew Rawlins
It isn’t in the uilding Acorn were once in at all is it? ..
Andrew Scheller
After finishing all the unpacking, will you be saving a box for Mooncake to play/sleep in? :-)
P.S. Which pub is it near?
nick
You could say its more of an INn named after a somebody involved with Physics.
Andrew Scheller
Ahhh. Not my part of town, but I’ve got a friend who works in the big building just down the hill.
Jim Manley
WHAT??? Your office isn’t a pub, or at the very least, a significant portion of a pub??? How can you possibly operate in the proper mood if you have to walk hundreds of yards to and from the pub? Talk about excessive wait states, propagation delay, and the severe limitations of USB 2.0 ganged with 100BaseT wired Ethernet!!! Oh, the humanity!!!
Well, at least you’ve got Rob in a box, although it’s going to be much less impressive than Andy Sandberg’s and Justin Timberlake’s Saturday Night Live musically-oriented Digital Short that revolved … no, make that devolved … around the subject of something in a box … :D
Seriously (who, ME???), congratulations on acquiring your new home – does it at least have a better kitchen than the one at Chateau Upton? ;) You may need to change Mooncake’s name to Suncake, if all that uncharacteristically intense solar radiation persists for longer than the duration of that photo shoot!
liz
The Chateau Upton kitchen is still a nightmare in lizard green from the 1970s. (1972, to be precise: it’s older than I am.) One day I plan to replace it with a gleaming fantasy in walnut and silver – just not yet!
Wombat
And there i was thinking 1970 lizard green bathrooms and kitchens were comming back in fashion.
Benedict White
A few hundred yards from the pub? Disgusting. More than 50 is far too far! ;)
liz
Ah – but we all have bikes, and the pub is downhill!
AdamS
Both ways?
Neil H
Don’t be silly! Nobody goes back to work from the pub! ;)
clive
Yes. The pub is called “The Klein Bottle”.
nick
Go to the second pub you get to when going down the hill as its better than the first pub you get to, but I am sure you know that.
Wombat
and it means that when you walk back up the hill you have somewhere to stop for a quick drink!
Brad from SI NY USA
Hurrah… they gave Rob a place to sit… which because he is so busy he’ll never get to sit at :)
I was the person at the make.SI PI meet up with the antique small green suitcase running XBMC to the 13″ HD screen in the lid powered off of NiCad battery… and it was nice when the power was down during Sandy here in SI to watch movies on my Pi
ColinD
What screen did you use Brad? can you post a link to somewhere to buy it online, thanks.
Brad from SI NY USA
QFX LED1311 with model B1 Pi and dual USB drive with a single 1 TB drive run off of 2 10,000 mAh nicad battery’s in a green stenograph machine case.
Brad from SI NY USA
price went up 20% since I got it??
ColinD
Thanks Brad. You know… it never occurred to me I could use a small HDMI TV rather than trying to find a small HDMI monitor *lol*… HDMI monitors that are around the 12″ mark tend to be expensive pro-video production things. Where-as TV’s are cheaper :) 13″ is perfect for running Pi demos at events.
William Stephenson
Congratulations on the new diggs and the workforce!
It looks like a nice place and you all deserve that. Hope you you both have a good time here in the U.S too!
Giles
Oh yes – the prototype R-Pi Camera webcamming the coffee pot – that would be so amazingly fitting…
Skizz
In terms of decoration, a few Pi powered internet controlled Nerf gun launchers are required – then we can take pot shots at anyone in the office!
Gethyn Owen
That looks a lot like the windows of Betjeman House? If so my wife works for the company on the ground floor.
Also it used to be the home of Acorn Soft!
Ken MacIver
An unboxing “video” of Rob, Did he have all his peripherals in the box as well, or in best RPi tradition did he have to scavenge bits from the environment..
Those Desks look horribly familiar, I’ve had to build\unbuild ours about three times in the last few years. (office moves) Not to mention playing Desk Tetris getting them down narrow corridors and doorways.
Happy New Home, Hope the commutes aren’t too bad..
Wombat
Will Eben be able to work there with out his wall of power sockets….
Ravenous
Big room!
SCALEXTRIC TIME!
Wombat
Dam, i sold mine just before my last house move. Remembers happy days in the upstairs room of a pub in Holborn and the 2 dozen grown men building mega tracks.
Wombat
when is the office warming party…. and where oh where are the invites?
stubright
I’m surprised nobody has noticed, Eben and Liz had a week of “important meetings” in America the same week Rob, James and Gordon move in to the new office, coincidence, I think not. I hope they make it up to you all. If they don’t, keep some of that polystyrene handy for their return.
ukscone
want to lay a bet that “important meetings” really means spa day? :)
stubright
More than likely. They’ll lying there with their mud packs and cucumber eye patches, laughing at how everyone fell for their cunning plan.
liz
That is actually kind of terrifying; we are taking the weekend off for some skiing, and I’ve just come down off the hill to check my mail…before going to the spa appointment I’ve booked for 40 minutes’ time. Scone, have you put a keylogger on my laptop again? ;)
ukscone
Nah I woudn’t do that ;) Mooncake has taken to sending me a copy of your itinerary in case of emergencies. You have a bad habit of twisting your knee when skiing & getting food poisoning while travelling so he wants to have all the bases covered in case you aren’t around to supply the cavier & wild salmon. it’s a long cc list he sends the details to.
stubright
So it would appear, because of your own admission, that Rob, James and Gordon may be buying Raffles and Mooncake polystyrene toys from now on.
Do cat claws/teeth in polystyrene make the same noise as an office printer being unboxed?
justin smith
should have a web series called pi cam and have a live stream of the office with the new rpi cameras xD i would give anything to come visit this office when its up and running play some ecco the dolphin :P