We all appreciate the time already spent by all, keeping us up to date at every opportunity, so catch up with some rest. Your probably gonna need it later :D

Hope you feel better soon, gentlemen.

Thanks for the update and isn’t jet lag horrible, I’ve twice gone on about 12 hours flights with only an hour break in the middle. :|

Everything is cool. Take it easy Liz. Things will come.

heheh, if in doubt panic !
You guys are BUSY,, we all know this by the results we can see,, feet up, glass of wine and unwind, :)

Sounds like you’re having fun!
Don’t try to do TOO much, we can wait for the vid, its just good to know that Raspberry Pi is making waves and good impressions wherever it goes.

Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gX78qg6NQs

Why there’s no RSS.

What’s going on in Vancouver? Is there some sort of public event I could come and see the Raspberry Pi at? :)

Vegas? Are you guys going to the Digital World Expo?

Are there any public events going on with your California trips? In particular anything happening in Northern California?

Hi, I am sorry to bother you as I am well aware you are all very busy, and i hate to come across as pushy. However, i sent an email last week, and I am requiring an answer to it rather soon (3rd October). It was the one titled ”Final year Project – Loughborou​gh University” and was sent to the ”info” email given in ”about us” page which is also the email given on Eben Upton’s LinkedIn page. I was just wondering who reads the emails and if i actually sent it to the right email concerning contacting a member of the company.

All that said, i hope your travels are safe and you all get some well earned rest very soon!!

Thank you for your time.

Interesting to see the comments about the RP on Newsnight.

It was worrying to see how the politicos sidestepped the issues without seeming to.

My estimation (FWIW) is that from these words on camera, there are a world of interests in there around the status quo.

The question really amounts to this….

Can you manoeuvre the educational establishment into a situation where they see the RP as a vote /for/ the establishment, rather than a revolutionary upset of the applecart? It will take a lot of political firepower to engineer a result.

The difference with the old days, and Acorn.
The BBC initiative was exactly that…an initiative BY the corporation, that caught the imagination of the polititicians, and was boosted on the back of that.
In the education sector there were no vested interests or positions, that could be considered to be working inside the establishment and de facto resisting the move.

That key difference encapsulates the problems in carrying this move forward.

It is a case of finding the right allies in the right positions, who can be won over, the movers and shakers who can back the initiative and permit the concepts inherent in the RP gain traction in the establishment.

If the BBC can be ‘won over’ then the possibility exists for an externally led pressure group/focus, who can pick up the torch, coupled to an external learning course (Via the BBC and perhaps the OU). Something that presents the educational establishment with a crop of computer newbies up and coming who could slot neatly into the concept of schools and colleges preparing for an intake of these types of students possessing these skills…

For the BBC now equipped with the internet, and groups like the hobbygroups who ran ‘basicode’ in Holland, and the IT programme that ran around with subject hosted by Barry Norman on the radio (I seem to remember it being called something like The ‘chipshop’), in the 1980s, you have a group and focus that can push the idea in a developing direction that the education establishment can latch onto.

Couple the two together and you defeat the biggest threat to the RP, the establishment portraying it as an educational ‘toy’ that has no significance.

If you can come up with a syllabus, and marry that to BBC programmes and programmers/lecturers to carry forward this as a publicly funded initiative almost in parallel to the education establishment, then this will make a serious difference.

Where things went wrong in the ’80’s, probably, was the BBC standing back and not getting their hands dirty and pushing the education angle.

They even controlled the means of delivering courses to the machines, ‘telesoftware., but it was never followed up…

Because they did not continue along this vein, the national computing idea somehow got subsumed into the general education system, and gradually lost its way, resulting in the drift into ICT. The key problem being…Computing found itself being directed by non computing academics and administrators who do not ‘get it’ and had trouble fighting the corner of the new computing science economy, objective.

With the internet as it is today….most of the general public, and school kids, have direct access to a source channel for any such serious initiative, that you could entangle the kids and schools into. Direct access to their home environment…

To make this grand idea/plan work, looking how the whole thing failed last time, is 90% of the way to avoiding the resurrected plan miscarrying this time.

I think you need to talk in depth to the BBC and the Open University, to bring the power of academic kudos into the equation, to sell the idea in such a way that it appears to be a vital direction to take, and that direction that is a win-win situation for educational academia.

-|steve|-