Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women

Posted on 2014-09-30 by Paul Sutton

This came through on e-mail today

Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women
======================================================

The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Program
for Women, OPW, in 2006. It was quite successful, and in the January-April 2013
round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program. We are happy to
announce that Debian will participate in the next round
(December '14-March '15) and, pending sponsorship, we'll offer up to three
internships. 

You can find more details about the program:
* http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about
Debian's participation.
* http://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen with details about the
program in general.

Call for mentors and projects
=============================

OPW allows applicants to work on any kind of project, including coding,
design, marketing, web development... If you have any idea for a
project and you want to mentor it, please contact us at opw@debian.org
and we'll guide you through the process.

OPW provides a lot of useful information for mentors on the GNOME Wiki at
https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/Admin/InfoForMentors. Please
have a look, and don't hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Call for participants
=====================

The main goal of this program is to increase the number of women in
FOSS, so all women who are not yet a Debian Developer or a Debian
Maintainer are encouraged to apply. There are no age restrictions and
applicants don't need to be a student.

If you want to apply, you must follow three steps:

1. Choose a project from the list of proposed projects on
http://wiki.debian.org/OutreachProgramForWomen. Those lists may change as
mentors add themselves over the next few weeks.

2. Make a small contribution to Debian. Projects will add a task the
applicant must complete as part of the pre-selection process. If no task
is provided, you are welcome to ask the mentors of the project. You can
also make a different extra task of the one listed to show your skills
and interest.

3. Create a page in the Debian wiki with your application. You can do so
under pseudonym, but in that case, please give us information about
yourself privately by email to the people below!


The Debian OPW coordinators <opw@debian.org>
 Tom Marble
 Nicolas Dandrimont

Pi Jams – What we try and do

Posted on 2014-09-22 by Paul Sutton

With monthly Raspberry Pi jams in Paignton, what would you like to see at these jams. Given they are now more about just raspberry

At present we :

Help on how to get started, what you need to get started, what to buy etc

Show you some of the many add on boards etc available for the pi

Demonstrate projects based on the PI AND Arduino systems (which will hopefully inspire your projects)

Help with getting started with programming or provide advice on the next step for example where to go after using scratch.

We have a few laptops (with Linux)

Help with hardware projects (either stand along or linked to Pi , Arduino and similar devices)

Networking with other users

We would like to encourage young people to network with other young people and advocate collaboration and peer supported learning

We sometimes invite people in, for example in September we had the virtually safe team in who spent some time discussing the concerns of the young people at the jam
We also try and advocate other groups and initiatives that may be of interest to young people: for example Young rewired state, coder dojos, after school clubs. Promote events for adults for example hack4good events or hackathons on services such as geekli.stWe can also help with Linux user group related activities such as install and set up help for Linux. Advice on software or general discussion on related issues.Promote and advocate the use of free and open source software and the work of the Free software foundation Europe..Advocate and promote the new school Computer science curriculum. Enguage with parents, students and teachers in order to facilitate support if needed.Promote STEMnet and Stem activities. Free giveaways such as stickers if available, copies of Linux cd’s again when / where available.

September Raspberry Pi jam

Posted on 2014-09-14 by Paul Sutton

Torbay Raspberry Pi jam – Write up 13^th September 2014

This month we had the usual mix of projects, help and advice.

First off :

Tom Brough brought along freddie and bob, to demonstrate, Freddie now has a user interface, written in python and I guess tkinter. This allows control over features, which colour the web cam detects OR you can control freddies arms with the interface. Again this proved popular and there could be some interest to run a build your own freddie activity at a future event.

Gordon was on hand to demonstrate some of his ever increasing array of add on boards for the Pi, this is now looking rather impressive esp with the pi-moroni kit to look at.

We also had the virtually safe people along in a tie in to advise people on internet safety, while we didn’t get anyone in specifically to see them, they did talk to the 3 young people and discussed issues that concerns them e.g swearing in chat rooms. The young people also showed them their projects, including a minecraft clone in scratch. We also installed minetest which is the free MC clone.

So a big thank you to the two PCSOs from the virtually safe team. I think you gained something from the chat with the young people which is a good thing. I will discuss getting you back in, in the mean time we have some flyers for the next Pi jam.

http://www.torbayvirtuallysafe.co.uk/

The Pi jam now have 3 laptops for people to use, the idea here being that these are extra computers to either run scratch, or perhaps use for remotely accessing a Raspberry Pi.

I helped a young lad and his dad with some advice on what is needed to get started with a Pi, where to buy from and what can be done with a pi, and then left them to have a go with scratch / Python.

A big thank you to everyone involved, and especially Dan S for bringing two laptops and a stack of Maplins flyers down. Thank you also goes to Rob Beard for PAT testing the PSU’s this means they are certified as safe for people to use.

The next Pi jam in Devon is 4^th October at Exeter library 10 – 12

The next Pi jam in Torbay is 11^th October, this is the same week as European code week, so the Jam is listed on the codeweek website.

Please tell friends, teachers, work colleages, children / young people lets get lots of people to the events in October.

The event is slowly building up, we took positives from today so we are working on a few items behind the scenes.

Next time expect more of the same, I am hoping to demonstrate ToriOS which is a minimal Linux based operating system based on Ubuntu 12.04 (http://www.torios.org/)

There is more to a Pi jam than simply Raspberry Pi. It is also about coding, education, help & advice and keeping safe while coding.

Torbay Raspberry Pi jam

Posted on 2014-09-13 by Paul Sutton

Torbay Raspberry Pi jam – Paignton Library 13:00 to 15:00

Exeter Raspberry Pi Jam 06/09/2014

Posted on 2014-09-06 by simon

Saturday 6th September 2014 saw another Raspberry Pi Jam in Exeter take place and what a great turnout there was!

At today’s Jam, there was lots of teaching going on with the introduction to Raspberry Pi course going on in the Fab Lab and there was even more teaching going on in the Meeting Room where the rest of the Jam took place. Continue reading →

Torbay Pi Jam – Call for papers

Posted on 2014-09-01 by Paul Sutton

As I am part of the team that run the Torbay Pi Raspberry Pi jam. This is a call out for anyone who would like to either do a demonstration or do a talk at a future pi jam,.

So, If you would like to do a talk or demo or can help in other ways please get in touch,

Exeter Raspberry Pi jam

Posted on 2014-08-04 by Paul Sutton

2nd August 2014, saw yet another pi jam take place in Exeter Library / Fab lab, the 2 hour session seemed to be really busy. In the main fab lab there was a introduction to raspberry pi workshop where users were given an intro to the pi and had a chance to experiment with some electronic interfacing The Library / fablab have some new raspberry pi model B+ for users Bag of components from CPC ready for the work shop This is a project from Mark evans, the display shows the Pis IP address Some of the creations by some of the younger visitors using scratch And yes minecraft on the pi, i think we managed to hack this enough to get the tnt blocks to explode with code rather than using redstone torches which are not available in MC Pi edition. And bob made an appearance one of Tom Broughs many projects. This is arduino based but that is not really important, anyone inspired to make their own Bob ask Tom for info :).

Handy – Scratch controlled robot arm (not the mini webcam)- issue with camera settings hence it is dark,

Freddie (photo from a previous jam ) has now improved further.

So in all an excellent jam, more of the same on Saturday 9th August in paignton, we hope to see lots of people there :), and maybe we can look in to doing mini workshops at a future date.

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Raspberry Pi jam July 14 – Torbay

Posted on 2014-07-12 by Paul Sutton

For anyone who missed out today, we had another great pi jam, Big thank you to those that turned up and the 4 young people who also made it.

Again today was a good mix, Tom demonstrated his latest project: a face with a built in webcam that can track a coloured ball using OpenCV! This uses both Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

Video

One of the young people showed me the fg and bg commands, so my pi-liter project can now run but be put in the background, while it runs. I showed him the cowsay command, and one of the other young people got cmatrix working. These young people are uber L337.

I attempted to install Skype from Ubuntu software centre, failed, tried to download and then tell the installer to run through software centre, that failed, so just used dpkg and it worked fine without problems! I put a few notes on my website about this.

We could now do with more monitors and Pis, so we can get more people set up with Pis. I think we may have a few laptops at a future jam.

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Torbay Pi jam July 14

Posted on 2014-07-12 by Paul Sutton

For anyone who missed out today, we had another great pi jam, Big thank you to those from the Lug that turned up and the 4 young people who also made it.

Again today was a good mix, tom demonstrated his latest project a face with a built in webcam that can track a coloured ball using open CV, this uses both Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

Video

One of the young people showed me the fg and bg commands, so my pi-liter project can now run but be put in the backgroiund, while it runs. I showed him the cow say command, and one of the other young people got cmatrix working.

I attempted to install scratch from ubuntu software centre, failed, tried to download and then tell the installer to run through software centre, that failed, so just used dpkg worked fine without problems.

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Pi jam Write up July 14

Posted on 2014-07-05 by Paul Sutton

Just got back from the Raspberry Pi jam in Exeter and have included a few photos below of some of the things on show.

First off is Tom Broughs Excellent Wii remote scratch game, this uses Python to take input from the wii remote via bluetooth and pass it on to scratch, so that the cat can be controlled to move around and catch / eat falling fish.

Still with tom, we had handy (robot arm controlled from scratch) and Bob the robot which as arduino at its heart.

We also had Lego Rovers Devon make an appearance, amazing what you can do with lego and the nxt block

We also helped Chinna out with his buggy made from an old remote control car and raspberry pi.

Chinnas Blog can be found here

http://scientistnobee.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/raspberry-pi-spotter/
And a link to github for the code
https://github.com/scientistnobee/Raspberry-Pi-Spotter