Welcome Lance!
As you’ve probably noticed, Raspberry Pi is a rather unusual organisation. We have two functions: we make and sell tiny computers, and we promote children’s education. These activities support each other (all the money we raise from selling Raspberry Pis is put straight back into our charitable activities), but are in many ways separate, and it’s a real juggling act directing the two together. Back at the start of the year, we split the engineering and trading activities of the Foundation into a separate, wholly owned trading subsidiary, Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd. The Raspberry Pi Foundation continues to run the charitable, educational side of things. Since then, I’ve been overseeing both organisations, but really, the two roles require two people doing them, and of necessity most of my attention has had to be devoted to the trading business.
With that in mind, I’m very pleased to be able to announce that Lance Howarth has joined us as Foundation CEO, and will be taking the lead on the Foundation’s charitable activities.
Lance spent a decade with ARM, latterly as EVP of Marketing and as a VP in the office of the CTO. He’ll be driving forward our educational mission, while I continue as CEO of Raspberry Pi (Trading) – you won’t see any big changes in my interactions with you here, at talks and so on. Hopefully we’ll be able to talk Lance into posting here on occasion too, to let you know what he and the board are up to.
You’re seeing some of the results of those charitable activities I’ve been talking about already – Clive Beale, our most excellent Director of Educational Development, is heading up the work on a growing corpus of free educational materials, running workshops, working with teachers, and with other charities; we’ve committed to take on some more people to work on our educational function too. We’re funding development of projects like Sonic Pi, the music programming environment we blogged about yesterday. We’re putting money into open educational resources, like Scratch and Squeak.
Lance will be growing our engagement with this sort of work, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming him to the growing Raspberry Pi family. And if you want a lapel pin like his, you’ll find them in the Swag Store!
42 comments
Michael Horne
Welcome to the madhouse Lance! :-)
Matt Hawkins
Welcome on board Lance!
omenie
Hey, I know that guy!
Alex Eames (RasPi.TV)
Congratulations and welcome Lance :)
RobV
can we have an update on what your artist-in-residence is doing?
RobV
oh, and i looked at the swag offerings.nothing grabs me. I’d like to see a classy tie with a subtle Pi print.
Raspberry Pi Staff liz
CLASSY tie with subtle Pi print? Does not compute. (Plus, Lance is the only person I work with who would dream of wearing a tie, so the “we must have a logo tie” lobby at Pi Towers is non-existent.)
dan3008
I’d love a tie. I keep applying fot IT jobs, and it would make for a brilliant talking point, professional but fun :)
Andy Crofts
Tie? A PiTi? Nah, better call it Pi-Tie
Seriously, WANT!! As Dan3008 says it’d make a great talking point at interviews, trade shows, seminars, to customers. Cheap advertising – cheap in that the advert. actually makes money.
Only today I was recommending Coding Club books to my local library here in Oulu, Finland (standard of English amongst the kids is easily sufficient for those books), and naturally, plugged the Pi – as do the books themselves. According to Rastrack, there are only a couple of dozen Pi’s registered in Oulu, which is Finland’s Northern technology centre – it’d be great to do a bit of advertising. Grief, we can wear one in the pub on a t-shirt, why not on a tie in a more formal setting?
Go on, Liz – give it a whirl!
Davespice
Welcome Lance! Hey I like the idea of a tie too… what if it had a paisley pattern but with the raspberry logo incorporated into each boteh droplet shape? That would be amazing! You could even make shirts out of the material?!
ukscone
but but but if you have a raspberry pi logo tie you can use it to punish Rob when he’s been naughty by making him wear one
Raspberry Pi Staff Gordon
Oh I like that idea, Liz I think he’s got a point!!!
Gordon
Rob Bishop
I totally only took down the servers that one time…
AndrewS
So, if Rob is resistant to wearing a tie…. does that make him a Tie-Fighter? ;-)
Rob V
hmm
mother in law has a computer controlled sewing machine, i’ll run up an embroidered logo on CAD and see how far i get
the next obvious step is to do it from, whatsaname of that credit card size ‘puter? umm whatever.
there’s a market need just demonstrated here.
Ken MacIver
Look up Embird http://www.embird.net/ it’s the CAD software for emboidery machines..
Or if she’s using Brother machines they have their own ‘PE-Design’ software.
I’ll have a word with er’indoors to see if she can do one
Derrick
What’s this thing called a “tie”?
(former business school student, now Raspberry Pi convert.)
Alex Eames (RasPi.TV)
So glad you said that Liz. My mum keeps on at me to wear a suit when I present at Jams etc. It’s not going to happen though. Jeans and tee-shirt FTW. :)
Steve Williams
I’d like a Pi-Tie. I sometimes wear my Millennium bug tie at business meetings, especially if there are other programmers around. (It features lots of smoking VDU’s and a bug with six-guns!)
IvanRoulson
I’d like a tie too! Might add some subliminal support while I’m teaching.
Would make a change from the usual Simpsons ties that I’ve got.
Stephen Minton
I’d like some cufflinks, please!
The Raspberry Pi Guy
TIE WITH SUBTLE PRINT FTW!
I would wear it everywhere…
The Raspberry Pi Guy
AndrewS
Don’t you mean “The Raspberry Tie Guy” ?
RobV
I’d thought of cufflinks, but wasn’t game to mention it. Something exxy worn in a more formal context is a risk right now ?
Seriously,
in addition to a tie, you at least might want to consider a something that can be worn either as a cravat for the guys or a scarf for the gals, would look very up-to-the-minute-corporate/governmental.
Marc
Yes, something like the scarf that The Doctor wears…
clive
Cufflinks like these you mean?
:)
Rachel Rayns
Hey RobV
I’m still around – Moving into a new studio and watching endless tutorial videos on Python in the evenings.
I’ve got some cool stuff lined up – You’ll hear from me really soon :)
RR
Rachel Rayns
Hey RobV
I’m still here! Just moved into a new studio and watching endless tutorial videos on Python in the evenings.
I have some cool stuff in the works – You’ll hear from me soon :)
RR
RobV
its a great combination, looking forward to it.
RobV
maybe you could screen print a BRASH and LOUD wearable for your first presentation?
RMW5
I like the idea of an enamel lapel badge and the price is right, but 30mm – that’s more than an inch! Perhaps something a little more discreet?
Jim Manley
Hmmm … discreet, or discrete? Perhaps a silicon-substrate badge infused with the right metals to reflect the raspberry red, green, and black logo colors, embedded via an epitaxial deposition process just like that used to create semiconductor devices such as the Pi’s BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC). If the logo formed one or more discrete transistor gates, or, even better, transistor-switched color LED arrays, that would be soooo cool! :D
Marc
Or a circuit card name badge for those presentation events.
RMW5
I was thinking of discreet, but discrete wold be good too – a lapel that floats in mid-air an inch or so above the lapel would be very impressive, although not very discreet ;-)
Dutch_Master
Welcome! Good to see the educational side gets the attention it deserves now. You’d have some shoes to step in to, taking over from Eben and no doubt he’ll be in touch about his ‘baby’ regularly, but if Eben’s happy to hand it to you, so should we :-) All the best in your new job, just don’t forget to be a child playing, occasionally ;-)
tkraspi
congratulations and welcome sir ;-)
kneekoo
Welcome to the family! :D
The Raspberry Pi Guy
I hope you enjoy your time at the Foundation Lance, and I look forward to reading any blog posts that you might do!
The Raspberry Pi Guy
Mike
+1 for cufflinks!
Lance
Hi all, just wanted to say thank you for the warm welcome messages. It is an absolute honour to join the Raspberry PI phenomena which is only made possible by you the community plus the support of the great team back here at Raspberry Pi HQ. I’m looking forward to building on the outstanding work done to date driving forward the charitable mission and will certainly be keeping you up to date on progress in the blog from time to time.
Best wishes, Lance
Raspberry Pi Staff liz
Thanks Lance! (We really do have to stop you from wearing that tie…)
Jose
Excellent work.
I like programming in Qt. More support in the future?