Welcome Dave!
Carrie Anne wasn’t our only new starter on Monday: we’ve also welcomed Dave Honess to the team. Dave will be familiar to many of you as Davespice from our forums, where he’s one of our moderators; he’s also been helping me moderate the comments on this blog for a year or so now, and he’s a mod on the Freenode #raspberrypi IRC channel. Dave writes for The MagPi (as Davespice), and he’s behind the porting and uploading of lots of the retro games you’ll see at the Pi Store. Here he is in situ at Pi Towers.
Dave’s an archaeologist by training, as well as a software developer; he’s also been working with the Pi as a private tutor, and he’s a STEM Ambassador. He’s joining us to work on a mixture of project management (fortunately for Dave, that’s much more exciting than it sounds), creating educational resources, outreach, and polishing the educational software stack. We’re extremely glad to have him, and we’re running out of desks.
Dave says:
Back in 2011 one of my old work colleagues brought in an old Spectrum BASIC book, and we had a discussion about how great that era of programming was. We then flipped to the back, found Frogger, and tried to type it into an emulator; we were rusty. Not long after that I found the first blog post about the Raspberry Pi at the BBC by Rory Cellan Jones. I remember thinking it was going to be massive back then, and signed up to the website soon after. I’m glad to say I was right – it has been massive – and I am very happy and excited to have landed a job here. I am going to be working on creating educational materials for the Raspberry Pi and helping with various outreach projects the foundation is working on.
A few of you will know me from IRC and the forums, but for those of you who don’t, you can have a quick glance at my original Introduce Yourself post from when I joined the community here.
Dave is very unfortunate, because he’s ended up sitting next to me. We commiserate about the seating plan and congratulate you on your new job, Dave – welcome on board!
35 comments
Praise Johnson
Nice to see more people joining the team congratulations dave
ukscone
congrats but don’t let Liz fool you. your duties do not include walking mooncake & doing all the washing up
clive
Hi Dave! Hope you’re making yourself at home :)
I for one am very excited that about our expanding education team — 2014 is going to be amazing :D
Alex Eames (RasPi.TV)
I could see there was soon going to be a shortage of desk space when I was there in October. Congratulations on your new job Dave (& Carrie Anne).
The team gets ever bigger and better. Exciting times :)
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
We’re planning to move to a new space (about seven times the size of the current one) in the same building later this month; very exciting, and we’ve got lots of plans for what we’re going to do with some of it, which you’ll read about here later. None too soon: when everybody’s in the tiny office we have at the moment, some of us are having to use desks in the meeting room, and I’m using the test bench as mine!
meltwater
Clearly need more space for the cakes.
Is that Christmas cake still going spare?
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
I think Rachel has requisitioned it.
ukscone
she couldn’t find the hammer?
meltwater
Was gonna say “very useful in a windy office”…
Dave Akerman
I assume the microscope is so he can see what’s left on the cake tray when it finally gets round to him.
meltwater
So David is surrounded with electronics and tools, while Carrie Anne is surrounded with cake…
For balance we should have a series of shots of the teams soldering skills (and perhaps cake eating skills)!
BTW has Helen had a go at the RGB-LED kit? Wow the little one must be coming up to 9 months!
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
I haven’t seen her in a little while; she’s been on maternity leave, but all being well she’ll be back with us around March/April. She is, hopefully, joining us in the pub on Friday to welcome Dave and Carrie Anne – so I’ll ask her!
Davespice
Thanks guys :)
meltwater
Wow. Really glad to hear that Dave is on the team too.
I look forward to more education/educating discussions in future.
I’ve recently signed up for STEM and looking forward to getting cracking on that.
Although still very working hard on finishing my current labour of RPi before that (I’m getting there!).
meltwater
Although still working very hard on finishing my current labour of RPi before that (I’m getting there!).*oops
Bantammenace
What next ? A foreign office perhaps?
I’m all in favour of getting all the creative types in one place but there’s also mileage in spreading the net a bit wider either by language, culture, location, accessibility etc.
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
Hold that thought…we already have feet on the ground in Brazil and South Africa, with people who’ve been working with us since last summer. There’s Japanese stuff in the works, and we’ve some other plans too.
Marc
So the additional physical space will follow the Pi.
Bantammenace
I knew you’d have all the bases covered and at the risk of mixing sporting metaphors, i’ll line ’em up and you knock ’em down. I’m still trying to work out whether it is best to be ahead of the curve? btw I bet this gets lost in translation.
Catalin
OFFTOPIC: There is RaspberryPi in the INTEL presentation. Check 1:02 in the video from http://www.makeit.intel.com/#
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
I saw it – and thought that the fact that the voiceover that ran at the time they were showing a Pi and Raspbian was about how great Intel chips are was…awkward!
Jonathon Conte
I’m wondering if the SD card that is visible in that brief clip contains the Intel chip discussed here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/07/intel_demos_pconsd_tiny_computer_for_internet_of_things_and_wearables/
A Raspberry Pi is also visible in the same video at 1:04.
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
Yeeees…we thought the juxtaposition of the voiceover with the bit with the Pi was unfortunate and kind of hilarious, given that they’re promoting Intel chipsets!
Jonathan
Wow! More people. I wish I had one of those Pi controlled coffee machines, it’s 15 degress (Fahrenheit) and was -5 this morning.
Neil
I remember a feeling of elation at reading about the Raspberry Pi, when I read about it on the BBC. I bought my third one yesterday and I’m looking forward to getting useful stuff from it.
Jim Manley
Congratulations, Dave!
Well, I guess the mounting overpopulation problem there is as good a reason as any to announce our (previously jokingly mentioned to Liz and Eben, but we’re now proceeding without permission of any kind) establishment of The Second Foundation out here “at the opposite end of the universe”, as Harry Seldon would declare. Everyone there at the Original Flavor Foundation is cordially invited to come and visit at any time, and if you like what you see, we’ll find a cracker barrel and stool somewhere (and probably make them before your very eyes, with or without a 3-D printer) so you’ll eventually have somewhere to sit – oh, you expected to work? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That’s a good one! Unlike Ye Olde British Isles, we will never run out of space here – we still have over a hundred thousand square miles of spare room just here in the rural parts of California, let alone all of that acreage not currently being gobbled up by the NSA to build massive server farms in otherwise-empty states like Utah (so far).
As they say on “The Price Is Right” TV game show, “Come on down!” :D
ColinD
Congratulations indeed to Dave!
And kudos for the Asimov reference.
Raspberry Pi Staff liz — post author
Forward the Foundation!
Jim Manley
Oops! I set my TARDIS a little bit too far afield … that should have been “opposite end of the galaxy“, not universe! Well, I suppose some would prefer that I be located at the opposite end of the universe … :lol:
Solar3000
ahhh that dave. such a nice guy. such a great smile.
Daniel van den Akker
Congratulations with your new job! Hope you have a great time over there! You are just in time to help moving ;-) Good luck with that!
LeonV
Sorry to break the QR convention, we all miss you already Dave but it looks like you are loved wherever you go and that is no surprise! Lunch club lost a good 33% of it’s membership roster too! Good Luck to your new role!
Davespice
Cheers buddy :)
Vanfanel
Congratulations, Dave!
I’m glad someone who shares my ideas about how commandline OSes and open-source gaming can lure children into real computing and programming is now working for the Raspberry Pi foundation! :)
wik wong
This utterly amazing #livingthedream