A Suggested Promotion

Hi,

The rasberry pi and alike have a lot of potential for popularizing technology and building the future. Recently I found Sonic Pi and after the conversation between Ben and Hilaire about minecraft and minetest, I'm learning about the last one and Lua. I would like to bridge Pharo with that contexts and in fact my knowledge of Smalltalk is enabling me to learn Lua more easily.

As you can see on [1][2] the approach to get younger involved is not competition, but collaboration and presenting their creations to wider audiences (works also for minetest/minecraft). That could work better for Pharo also.

I have a suggestion for future Smalltalk advocates...

The advent of Pi Zero last month is an interesting opportunity. This is a very, very cheap Raspberry Pi. Anyone can afford it. I'm thinking of kids, in particular.

What if we could get kids to delve into Squeak or Pharo (Squeak is better optimized for Raspberry Pi) via the Pi Zero? A competition could be set up in various countries, such as Canada, Britain, Australia, Japan, etc., where the best student submission for a Smalltalk-based Pi Zero application would win a small scholarship prize (say, $500). A panel of judges in each country would decide the winner.

The contest would be much less ambitious than my now-defunct Canadian Smalltalk Competition (CSC). Less control (no real need to prevent cheating). Easier to raise the prize money. The nice thing is that it would be a multi-national promotion (it's tough getting a national school competition like CSC going in other countries).

Of course, because it's less ambitious, we can expect to reach fewer kids. Instead of thousands, probably more like hundreds. I could be totally wrong on this; I could be totally surprised!

I might even come out of retirement to offer some creative services (eg, promotional graphics, websites, etc.). 😁

Anyway, it was just an interesting thought I had. Don't know if it stands up to scrutiny.

Cheers,

Richard

Hi,

The rasberry pi and alike have a lot of potential for popularizing technology and building the future. Recently I found Sonic Pi and after the conversation between Ben and Hilaire about minecraft and minetest, I'm learning about the last one and Lua. I would like to bridge Pharo with that contexts and in fact my knowledge of Smalltalk is enabling me to learn Lua more easily.

As you can see on [1][2] the approach to get younger involved is not competition, but collaboration and presenting their creations to wider audiences (works also for minetest/minecraft). That could work better for Pharo also.

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/sonic-pi-live-summer-school/
[2] https://vimeo.com/110585077

Cheers,

Offray

On 22/12/15 06:45, Richard Eng wrote:

I have a suggestion for future Smalltalk advocates...

The advent of Pi Zero last month is an interesting opportunity. This is a very, very cheap Raspberry Pi. Anyone can afford it. I'm thinking of kids, in particular.

What if we could get kids to delve into Squeak or Pharo (Squeak is better optimized for Raspberry Pi) via the Pi Zero? A competition could be set up in various countries, such as Canada, Britain, Australia, Japan, etc., where the best student submission for a Smalltalk-based Pi Zero application would win a small scholarship prize (say, $500). A panel of judges in each country would decide the winner.

The contest would be much less ambitious than my now-defunct Canadian Smalltalk Competition (CSC). Less control (no real need to prevent cheating). Easier to raise the prize money. The nice thing is that it would be a multi-national promotion (it's tough getting a national school competition like CSC going in other countries).

Of course, because it's less ambitious, we can expect to reach fewer kids. Instead of thousands, probably more like hundreds. I could be totally wrong on this; I could be totally surprised!

I might even come out of retirement to offer some creative services (eg, promotional graphics, websites, etc.). 😁

Anyway, it was just an interesting thought I had. Don't know if it stands up to scrutiny.

Cheers,

Richard