The MagPi: a Raspberry Pi community magazine

liz
Raspberry Pi

May 5, 2012

Whenever I’m tasked with chatting up potential donors, partners or volunteers for the Raspberry Pi project, I’m asked what really makes us stand out from other computer companies. There are lots of answers: the charity business model; the unusual price point we’ve picked; the open-source software; the transparency about process; the focus on education.

[ http://www.themagpi.com/ ] The MagPi - click to go to the magazine site

But for me, what I consider the biggest thing we have going for us, and the thing I tend to rattle on about most in meetings, is the community that’s grown around the project. The MagPi [ http://www.themagpi.com/ ], a free online magazine dedicated to the Raspberry Pi, whose first issue was released a few days ago, is a perfect example of that. It’s been put together entirely by volunteers, guided by Ash Stone, Jason “Jaseman” Davies, Meltwater and other names you may recognise from the forums and comments on this site. I was broadly aware they were up to something, but I was amazed at the scope of what they sent me to look at earlier in the week, and I’ve been really, really impressed by the first issue. There are Debian and Puppy guides, articles on computing history, ideas for robotics projects, tutorials in Scratch and Python (with code you can type in yourself, just like in the good old days), features about the Raspberry Pi itself, and other goodies to dig into. I really can’t recommend it enough, and if you haven’t been lucky enough to get to the head of the queue, you don’t need a Raspberry Pi to find it useful (you might actually find the magazine good preparation before yours arrives). So go and download a copy, have a flick through, write to the guys if you think you can contribute to future issues, and let us know what you think!