Celebrate the Raspberry Pi’s 8th birthday at a Raspberry Jam

On 29 February 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation will celebrate the eighth birthday of the Raspberry Pi computer (or its second birthday, depending on how strict you are about counting leap years).

Like any parent, we feel like time has flown by, and it’s remarkable to think how far we’ve come in such a short space of time.

Since launching the credit-card–sized $35 Raspberry Pi Model B, we have sold 30 million high-quality, low-cost computers worldwide. Raspberry Pi has become the third best-selling general-purpose computer ever, behind only the Mac and the PC.

Women using Raspberry Pi and Trinket

Our latest model, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, is still the size of a credit card and still costs $35, but it’s around 20 times faster, with more and speedier connectivity, as well as the neater board design that we introduced in 2014. Raspberry Pi computers are used everywhere from homes, schools, and factories to penguin colonies, volcanoes, and the International Space Station.

An amazing community

In many ways, what’s been even more remarkable than the success of the product is the amazing community that has formed around our tiny, low-cost computer. These are the makers, educators, hobbyists, and entrepreneurs from all walks of life and all corners of the globe who share our passion for inspiring the next generation of digital creators. You can often read about them on this blog and in the official community magazine, The MagPi. You can also meet them in person at a Raspberry Jam.

Raspberry Jam Manchester

Meet up with other Raspberry Pi enthusiasts!

Celebrate at a Raspberry Jam

Raspberry Jams are community-led meetups that bring people together to share, connect, and learn from each other. The first one was held in Manchester in 2012, and so far Jams have been held in more than 70 countries — and that’s just the ones we know about.

While Jams take place throughout the year, there’s a special tradition of Jams celebrating the birthday of the Raspberry Pi computer. This year, there were over 130 Raspberry Jam events in 39 countries, attended by 8000 people. Now that’s a party!

Register your Birthday Jam and we’ll send you some special swag

Next year, because it’s a big birthday, we’ll be sending a special box of swag to any Jam that is taking place between Saturday 15 February and Sunday 15 March 2020.

It’s really simple to register your Birthday Jam: just fill in the Raspberry Jam submission form, including a valid event information URL linking to a webpage with more information about your event. (This is an excellent example of a Jam event listing.)

Raspberry Jam logo and illustrations

We’d prefer you to link to a public ticketing system (e.g. Eventbrite) if possible, but we know some libraries and community centres have restrictions that prevent them from doing this.

In order to ensure that your pack reaches you in time, we need you to register your Birthday Jam at least six weeks before your event.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us via jam@raspberrypi.org.

12 comments

Avatar

We’ll be celebrating the Raspberry Pi 8th birthday as part of #Essex2020, Year of Science and Creativity:
Chelmsford Raspberry Jam on Saturday 15th February
Southend Raspberry Jam on Sunday 8th March
and lots more…

Book tickets now and we’ll let you know more info in 2020.

https://www.southendtech.co.uk/chelmsford-raspberry-jam-5
https://www.southendtech.co.uk/southend-raspberry-jam-14

Avatar

In years gone by the birthday weekend used to be celebrated in Cambridge, separate from the community jams, then the Raspberry Fields event was set up, then this didn’t happen because of the Scratch Europe involvement.

I’m pleased to hear the birthday celebration will continue to be spread between worldwide jams, but any news on reinstating the Cambridge-based Raspberry fields event?

Philip Colligan

Steve.

We have really exciting plans for Raspberry Fields in Cambridge this year (watch this space).

Philip

Avatar

Any reason why you’re no longer organising the official birthday one or Fields in cambridge?

Surely it’s better that Pi support their own project and community rather than running ones like Scratch.

Philip Colligan

We have exciting plans for Raspberry Fields and other events for 2020, but I couldn’t disagree more with your comment about supporting our “own project”.

It was a huge privilege to host this year’s Scratch Conference in Cambridge. We welcomed 300 people from 28 countries for three days of sharing and learning from each other about how to help young people create with technology.

We are proud to be part of a global movement for computing education, and the partnership between the Raspberry Pi and Scratch Foundations is a really important part of that movement.

Scratch is by far the most popular programming tool used in Code Clubs and CoderDojos, and is at the heart of our work to support computing education and digital making in schools. We’ve worked really hard to make sure that the Raspberry Pi 4 is the perfect platform for getting creative with Scratch 3.

But it’s about much more than hardware and software. Our collaboration reflects a common mission and shared values of learning through making, being community-led, and making sure that learning is accessible to all.

In future, I want us to collaborate more with the Scratch Foundation and other organisations and communities that share our mission and values. There is so much that we can learn from each other.

Avatar

Trying to get my head around this, it does not seem that long. The Pi4 is 20 time faster than the first Pi. In another 8 years a Pi could be available that is 20 times faster than the Pi4 and 400 times faster than the original Pi? Someone will still complain “It’s not a Desktop replacement”. So far in 8 years, what can happen in the next 8?

Avatar

I’d love to host one. My company does regular meetups (once a month) with 20 to 80 participants.
Does it have to be an eventbright or meetup is ok?

Janina Ander

Awesome, that’s great to hear!
Any public ticketing platform is OK with us :)

Avatar

Hello! We run various meetups in KL Malaysia (eg Ruby, Go, JS) but not pi specific. We’re thinking of maybe theming one or more of the meetups as pi-centric (like, how to use the gpio of the pi in Ruby). Would those count, or is there a specific agenda and slide deck we should follow and use to be considered as part of the pi jam?

Janina Ander

Hi there,
Yes, those count: you can run any Raspberry Pi-centric meetup as a Raspberry Jam! What Raspberry Pi activities or projects you do at the meetups is completely up to you.
Have fun :)

Avatar

Celebrate Raspberry Pi 8th birthday at Raspberry Jam Russafa on Saturday 7th March

Book tickets now at https://raspberry-jam-russafa.eventbrite.com

Avatar

Excited about the birthday! We’re doing a Raspberry Jam/workshop in Dubai on Feb 29th to celebrate – http://members.theassembly.ae/event/164

Leave a Comment

Comments are closed