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→A Slice of Raspberry Pi - Eben Upton
I attended this presentation partially because of a recommendation of a friend and partially because compared to many of the other talks, the focus for the presentation wasn't on open source. It focused more on what the product was and what the purpose of Raspberry Pi was. While Eben did talk about what contributions the open source community has given his project, for which he was thankful for, it was not the major focus. This was what made the talk so different and so memorable for me. Well, that and the presenter had a British accent, which was also very different from the majority of speakers I listened to during the event.
The speaker, Eben Upton, is an ASIC architect (he designs chips) working for Broadcom. He is also the founder and a trustee for the Raspberry Pi Foundation where he is responsible for the software and hardware architecture of Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi is an ultra-low-cost computer aimed at helping children get into computer programming. There are already boards similar to Raspberry Pi both in terms of specifications and function in existence already, such as the BeagleBoard, PandaBoard, and the OLPC. However the main difference is the attempted price point Raspberry Pi is aiming to hitship at. Upon retail Raspberry Pi units will retail between sell for $25 to $35 depending on the configuration of the board. Raspberry Pi was spurred on by the experience Eben had when he was on the board of admissions to Cambridge's computer science department. He explained that when he applied to the program, it was a given that the applicants new several languages and had the ability to program some assembly. Now, he laments how far the bar has fallen. He talks about how now "having built a webpage" was considered good enough for consideration. This is a trend I can definitely identify with. The aim for the Raspberry was to provide younger generations the opportunity to learn how to code and program well before it was time to apply for post-secondary education. The link between Raspberry Pi and open source was with regards to the software packages that will be available for it. Due to the limited size of the people involved with Raspberry Pi (I believe it was 6) and their intention of shipping it within next year, there really isn't enough time or man power to create a lot of content for Raspberry Pi. However, because of the willingness of numerous open source communities like CDOT, Raspberry Pi will be shipping with several pieces of software, with more packages to come. The hope is that the open source community, as well as the individuals who purchase a Raspberry Pi would contribute to the software library that would be available for it. Eben expressed his surprise and optimism at what the open source community has been able to do with the limited time they have had with the Raspberry Pi. His point of view...
==Personal Reflections==
==Conclusion==