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In this episode of all about business, James Reed sits down with Philip Colligan, the CEO of Raspberry Pi Foundation, which provides free AI education to children across the globe. We discuss why AI is becoming more and more human-like, how to build a global network and why asking AI to help with homework might not be such a bad thing.
About Philip
Philip Colligan is the CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charity that promotes computing education for young people. The Foundation aims to help young people realise their full potential through the power of digital education.
02:05 Raspberry Pi - from charity to billion-pound business
07:07 the IPO journey and listing Raspberry Pi
15:39 AI literacy and preparing the next generation
27:44 The role of AI in education
31:07 inspiring young minds
36:45 global expansion and partnerships
39:06 challenges and strategies for global outreach
Check out Experience AI: https://experience-ai.org/en/
Visit Raspberry Pi foundation’s website: https://www.raspberrypi.org/
Follow Philip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-colligan-8a218723/
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chairmanjames/
James (3): [00:00:00] Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode I sit down with different guests of bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture with popular tech brands charging thousands of pounds for their products, is there a way to make technology affordable while still turning a healthy profit? Yes. According to today's guest, Philip Colligan. Philip is the CEO of Raspberry Pi Foundation, the charity and computer company. Making tech accessible to everyone.
In this episode, we discuss how to balance social purpose with profitability, what your kids [00:01:00] need to know about ai, and the key to building a global network. Well, today on all about business, I'm very excited to welcome Philip Colligan. It's Philip's joke, but it, you can shorten his name to Phil Coe and, uh, we're gonna have a lot more about Phil Coe in this conversation and in the future.
Last year in London in 2024, the raspberry Pie. Technology company was floated on the London Stock Exchange and since then the value of that company has doubled and it's now worth a billion pounds. So we have a charity that started a business that has since been floated and is worth a billion pounds.
And the charity, as I understand it, Philip is still a major shareholder in the business. 47%. I think this is a super interesting story and a really powerful model that I'm personally urging more businesses to consider. So I'd like you to take us, if you could, to begin with Philip on that [00:02:00] journey. The Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to start this company.
Philip: Why? Well, look, thanks for having me, and it's great to have the opportunity to talk about it. So the founders of Raspberry Pi, I wasn't one of the founders, I'll tell you about when I joined, but uh, got together around 2008 and they were focused on this problem of not enough kids having the opportunity to learn how to create technology.
They were involved in the undergrad. Computer science course at Cambridge University. And so there, you know, they were looking at a problem, which lots of people were looking at, which was we've stopped inspiring kids. We stopped giving kids the opportunity to learn how to create the technology. And their idea, their insight, their innovation was to create a low cost programmable computer price of a textbook.
That was the original price constraint. The price of a textbook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is super interesting. A computer for
James: the price of a textbook.
Philip: That's cool. Yeah. And so they, they set themselves this price of $25 initially. Of course, they didn't know that. Price of textbooks has gone up and they settled on $35 eventually.
And so they set about trying to invent a [00:03:00] programmable general purpose computer within that price constraint.
James: So this product obviously is growing in sales very rapidly. You gotta manufacture, make more and more of them. Mm-hmm. That puts financial pressures on a business, doesn't it? You know, capitalizing and financing.
Yeah. You know, production scale of that magnitude must be. Big job. How did you do that? As a charity? Yeah, how did that work?
Philip: So the first period of Raspberry Pie was a very simple clean business model. So it was essentially a licensing business. So we owned the company, owned the designs of raspberry pies, and we licensed those designs to some manufacturing companies.
They took the capital risk to manufacture and then they sold them. And when they sold them, they paid a royalty to the trading company, which meant that it was very clean profits 'cause they didn't have lots of capital expenses in the trading business. And then a proportion of those profits was paid up to the foundation in the form of gift aid, which is one of the [00:04:00] wonderful things about UK charity laws.
You don't pay corporation tax on gifts from a wholly owned trading company. And that worked for several years. We were doing, you know, pretty well, we sold many millions of devices under that model. A couple of things made it tricky to sustain. So one is that for the companies who we were licensing to, um, it meant that their margin structure was, you know, different to what they used to in their main businesses.
Um, and over time we realized that. In order to grow, it became a bit of a constraint on the growth of the business because we were asking other people to put their capital at risk. And so over time we realized there was a working capital problem in the business and we also wanted to keep investing in r and d.
I mean, the reason Raspberry Pi Technologies has been so successful is the innovation it does is off the scale. I mean, it's seriously impressive. And so those two things came together. This idea that we could only really meet demand if we could get working capital into the business, and we wanted to keep investing in r and d.
So [00:05:00] that was putting pressure on the idea of gift aid from the trading company to the foundation. And of course every year, as all companies do, we had a debate about dividends and gift aids and yeah, you know, that was getting more challenging because the choice about the foundations, come on, I want our
James: donation.
Philip: Well, yes, companies saying, well, we wanna invest it in the next round of tech. It was kind of like that. Although, honestly, the foundation also come onto this, perhaps, um, has never relied solely on funds from the trading company. So over, uh, our whole lifetime, more than half of our expenditure has been funded through partnerships and philanthropy.
So we still hold true to that principle today. But back to the debate on the, the, or the evolution of the company. So we realized it would've been around 2017, I think there was a e and I and our families were on vacation in Italy, and Evan and I were spending a lot of time with our chairman trying to figure out this problem.
And we realized at that
James: point,
Philip: so you taught business on vacation? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't, yeah, true entrepreneur. Beautiful Atia. We were sat on and we said, well, look, we're gonna have to [00:06:00] find a way to bring some capital into the business. And that was when the, I think the seed of the idea of listing really took hold.
James: Did you actually discuss that on that Italian patio? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we should list this company.
Philip: We said it was an option. At that stage. We were still exploring options for it and. And over the following years that sort of crystallized, we looked at lots of options, took lots of advice as you would do.
We have a fantastic set of board members both in the company and in the charity. So we were able to draw on some real top quality experience. It's
James: interesting 'cause you know, this journey to take a company to public offering is one a lot of entrepreneurs aspire to follow. Yeah. Talk me through how that worked for you.
What was the, why did you choose a listing?
Philip: Yeah.
James: Over other options perhaps, and, and how did you get to that
Philip: point? So, I think a lot of it, um, really was about Eben and the mm-hmm. Management team in the commercial business. And as ever with these things, he sort of, you know, he is the entrepreneur that created Raspberry Pi and is still running the [00:07:00] PLC today.
And a lot of it was about him understanding what he and his team wanted to build. And you know, without going into the specifics of all of the options, we looked at that, there's a few pathways you can
James: take. Sure. I can think of several. Yeah. Right. So
Philip: trade sale or kind of, you know, yeah. Private equity, private equity, all those sorts of things.
And I think there was a lot of work done with the board of the commercial company and with E on kind of what sort of future do we think works best. And of course, from the foundation we were thinking from the charity's perspective, our focus all the way through has been what maximizes public benefit.
Yeah, and you know, that's a very tricky judgment and you know, you take all the advice you can, but ultimately it's a matter for the trustees to weigh their own conscience and the facts they've got in front of them and bring their experience to bear. Time will tell if we took the right path. Um, but it felt like the best option.
We took a couple of small strategic investments in the Runup Lansdown Partners organization called Ezra Charitable Trust in the [00:08:00] us and then Sony and Arm all came on as investors over a few years in the runup to the IPO. Right? Pretty publicly known. We had a crack at an IPO just before the invasion of Ukraine, which obviously.
Not great timing. Not great timing. So that was a sort of a fire drill, if you will, because we did a lot of the work with investors, a lot of the roadshows and so on. It really made us think that it was a viable route for the company. And so when we came back to it in the run up to last year's IPO, we did again, of course looked at all the options as you would expect, both in the company and in the foundation.
And yeah, the consensus, very strong consensus amongst those of us involved was this was the right path. But as I said, history. We'll judge that later on. Well, I
James: think it's really interesting. It seems to have gone pretty well so far. Yeah, and it is really interesting because this firmly establishes raspberry pie in my world as a Philco.
Yeah. A
James: philanthropy company where the foundation still has a big stake, but the leadership of the business is out there innovating, developing, and producing great [00:09:00] products and growing the company to the benefit of all shareholders, of which the foundation is the largest. That's
Philip: exactly right. I mean,
James: that gives a lot of dynamism to your social mission, doesn't it?
Philip: Yeah, I mean, it does. A couple of really important things. So one of course is we've established an endowment, modest in the scheme of endowments, but you know, it's a 160 million pounds today, which is pretty punchy and for an educational non-profit. You know, pretty significant. We still own, as you say, 47% of the listed company and also brand-wise, I think it's been really interesting.
So we've always had within a certain audience a very strong brand recognition and affinity and people, you know, for us, brand is about that core value of democratizing access to computing education. That's kind of the core, and that if you talk to people who feel an affinity to the brand, that's what kind of.
Gets them. There sort of is a real kind of visceral feeling. There's a real connection
James: isn't there, between you and your customers and your community.
Philip: And we wondered whether that would [00:10:00] survive the IPO, you know, how would it be affected? I see. And what's happened, of course is that that's just gone turbocharge and it turns out many more people in the world feel that connection with our mission.
James: What'd you put that down to? Just greater awareness or
Philip: you know, I think awareness is a big part of it. And they can participate
James: in it as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You can buy shares precisely. I think
Philip: there's also something, and I don't wanna overstate this, but you know, trust in technology generally has taken a bit of a dive over the past few years, I think, for all sorts of reasons that we could dig into.
But you'll know as well as I do, and I think one of the things that we've always worked hard at is being a technology company and charity that. Has high levels of trust with our community, and we've always been very open, authentic. You can go back, you know, raspberry PI's published blogs almost every day through its whole existence, and we've been very open about our development processes, things we've got wrong, things we've got right?
We've always been very closely connected to the community, and I think that trust has really helped us during this [00:11:00] phase where we've got much more scrutiny.
James: So you as the chief executive of the foundation, what's your sort of interface with the business? I mean, do you attend board meetings? Do you go to the, just the annual general meeting mean big.
I mean, they, they should be, you know, listening to what you've gotta say, I guess. 'cause you're board and shareholder, but it's changed a lot. How does that work? Yeah, it's
Philip: changed a lot. So, um, yeah. From
James: where to where? How's it changed?
Philip: Well, so pre the IPOI was a director of the company along with a couple of trustees.
Eben and I, you know, we formed an amazing partnership and friendship over this past decade and, you know, would speak all the time about strategy and operations, both in the company and the foundation. 'cause he cares as much about the foundation as anything else. So I'm no longer a director because, you know, we took the view that having the chief exec of the largest shareholder as a director of the company might not, you know, might send an odd message to the, to the market.
Yes.
James: We're delighted that you are listening to this episode. Hit the follow button so that we can continue to bring you the best [00:12:00] business insight and actionable advice to help your business and or career. You said you wanted to bring affordable computing to the whole world. I mean, that's a big ambition, isn't it?
Yeah. How's that going?
Philip: It's going pretty well. I mean, I dunno what their latest numbers are. Last time I checked, I think they were around 70 million computers. 7 0, 7 0, right? And that commitment we have to democratize access to computing isn't just for education. Now, you know what we've seen is Raspberry PIs being available for entrepreneurs lowers the barriers for innovation in all sorts of settings.
Social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are solving real problems that matter to them. In a way they couldn't have done before Raspberry Pi was available. 'cause it just makes that technology much more affordable and much more accessible.
James: This is right across the planet.
Philip: Right across the planet. Raspberry PIs are available everywhere in the world.
Yeah.
James: So now you are separated from the business, you're running the foundation. Yeah. What are your focuses for the foundation? What, where are you taking it?
Philip: The [00:13:00] foundation's mission is to enable all young people to realize their full potential. Through computing and digital technologies.
James: That's a lot of people.
Philip: It's a lot of people, yeah. Trying to move us to be a global organization. That's part of the journey at the moment, but we basically do three things. So we help schools introduce computing, computer science, AI literacy, and related subjects. We do non-formal learning, so that's things that inspire kids outside of school.
So we run the world's biggest network of coding clubs called Code Club. We have Raspberry PIs on the International Space Station, about 120,000 kids write science experiments that run in space. And we work with organizations like the Scouts and local youth and community organizations. So schools non-formal learning and the.
Third thing is research. So we have a research center in partnership with the University of Cambridge. We have research scientists and PhD students working across all of our programs. And so those three things we try to bring together to really shift the dial on how many kids, and particularly kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, [00:14:00] have the opportunity to learn about technology and make it part of their lives.
James: That's really good. I mean, it's very clearly structured. You said AI literacy in schools. Yeah. I want to explore that. Yeah. What is that? How do we, I mean, I think I could benefit from some AI literacy. Well, I think probably all of the listeners, I mean, we're all learning this, aren't we? Yeah, no, I think this is it.
So are you trying to help with that?
Philip: So. As we know in the past few years, AI has become a huge part of the public conversation, and we actually started this work back in 2019 before chat GPT. So it looked pretty good in hindsight, right? But we knew then, and we know now that AI technologies are going to become a much bigger feature of, you know, it's the future of.
In many ways the future of computing. And so we're trying to figure out what is it that young people need to learn about these technologies, about how they're built, about the societal and ethical implications. And if I can, you know, I always use this example, so when I went to university, long time ago now, the internet was really just getting going.
It [00:15:00]
James: wasn't
Philip: that long ago
James: when I, when it didn't exist. Yeah, go
Philip: on. So, you know, and there was a sort of sense of optimism and hope, but nobody really knew what it was for. I think is fair to say. If you look back now, I think it's fair to say we missed the educational challenge of that moment. And we missed it in two key ways.
One is that lots of young people didn't have any opportunities to learn the skills and knowledge and mindsets that would enable them to have jobs and careers and set up businesses in that. New emerging sector.
James: That's so interesting. So we were kind of asleep Yeah. When this was coming out.
Philip: Yeah. I just, I just don't think we saw how important it would be to equip young people with a foundational understanding of these technologies.
And that's, I couldn't agree
James: more. I mean, it's so obvious with Right. Looking back now. Yeah. And
Philip: the second thing we failed on is we didn't put enough social and ethical implications into the little education we were doing. And if you look, you know, the internet has led to amazing advances. You [00:16:00] know, life is so much better in so many ways, but it's also had some real challenges.
I was gonna, it's not universally the case, right? Yeah, yeah. And so I draw parallels between that moment and this moment where we are with ai, right? So this is a new form of technology. It's been around for a long time, but a new form of technology that I don't think anyone really understands yet the scale of the impact it's gonna have.
No, I
agree.
Philip: But we don't wanna miss this educational moment this time. You know, I think we missed it last time. I think we can learn that lesson and not miss it. So the thing that we're focused on is trying to understand what is AI literacy, and I'll come back to your question. And then how can we get it into the hands of all young people, and particularly their teachers.
So what does it mean AI literacy? Well, firstly it's like what are these technologies, how are they built? What is the difference between searching the internet and putting a request into chat GPT? You know, they're fundamentally different things that happen. What is the
difference?
Philip: Well, you know, if you're searching on the internet in a browser, it is going and looking at other websites and trying to find them through using metadata and all sorts of indexing to give you what somebody has written a human has written.
So Google, right? Yeah. [00:17:00] And it's throwing up some results of things that humans have written that isn't what's happening when you ask a large language model. That has been trained on a lot of data and is a probabilistic system that is trying to figure out what characters should come after the one before, and it doesn't.
I mean, if you use these systems, they're incredible, right? One of my favorite little tropes at the moment is try and get one of the image generators to do a picture of a left-handed person writing. Oh, keeps coming up with the right-handed. Let's try that at home. Shall 'cause the data left handed person writing.
I, well, and I say that they'll probably, my wife's left handed. She'll like
James: that too.
Philip: But it's because can't be. It's based on the data it's trained on. Right. And we've heard lots, haven't we? About must be some
James: left-handed coders. Surely,
Philip: but not. But it's trained on photographs on the internet. And what are the majority of those.
And we know that's a trivial example, but there's a lot Oh, that's an interesting example. I never heard it. There's lots of examples of where the data. That these systems are trained on is biased in all sorts of ways. I mean, look, large language models are trained on the internet at the moment and all sorts of other data sources too, which have a very western bias [00:18:00] to them.
And so, you know, you talk to indigenous communities and other parts of the world, their lived experience hasn't been the basis of the training. It's not on internet, right? And so, so that's just one example. So where does that leave
James: us though? That's a bit,
Philip: well, let's say on the, let's say on the question of AI literacy, ai,
James: that's open up a whole new Horness Nest.
I'll give you another example, which is this
Philip: idea of Anth anthropomorphism, which is very hard to say, but this is the idea that tech companies right now are. Uh, for good commercial reasons, doing their best to make sure that our experience of interacting with AI systems is more and more human-like.
James: That's what anthrop put more. Promote. Yeah. Make it human-Like
Philip: making something human-Like. Think about, you know, Alexa or Google Home. It sort of has a voice, it has a name. You know, most kids in the uk first interaction with AI systems. We'll be asking Alexa for something to help with homework, for example.
Um. Our research shows that has a real problem, has a real negative effect in terms of young people's mental models of what these systems are. You know, it's [00:19:00] not a human,
no, it
Philip: doesn't understand. It processes something and then probabilistically comes up with an answer based on what it's. Interpret it. So one of the things that we're trying to help young people understand is that these systems are not humans or human-like they're systems that were designed and built by humans, but they have limitations, it's your mental model.
It's like, what's happening? When I ask this system a question, do I think that it has empathy, for example? So lots of these systems appear as though they have some sort of thing. Well, they make little
James: jokes now, don't they? Yeah, but they
Philip: don't have empathy. Clearly not. Yeah. Well,
James: I dunno. I mean, maybe you're telling me they don't, I'm telling you they don't.
Philip: They absolutely know. Sure. If you trained it on different data, it would come up with a [00:20:00] different response. And then we also want young people to understand about data sets and about the importance of diverse and high quality data sets and how the thing that you train these models on is so important.
And then it's a different paradigm of computing. You know, it's, it is, it's different from the traditional method of giving humans, giving instructions to computers. So what we're trying to do is break that down in a way that a teenager. Can understand. And so we have a program called Experience ai, which we developed with, uh, Google DeepMind, um, which is a curriculum.
Um, it's a series of lessons and, and videos and instructional materials and hands-on exercises that teenagers can work through. And we provide teacher training.
James: But May, may I just ask you if, if you, if you're a teacher, listen, where do you get that? How do you find that
Philip: experience? Ai. Just Google it and you'll find it.
It's free experience ai.org. Those lessons, I think we're in the region now of getting close to 2 million. Young people have been reached one of those lessons. We have localized and translated them for 23 countries and we're working on a list of other [00:21:00] countries now,
James: and so we're working really hard. So experience ai.org.
Yep. Yeah. And that's part of your foundation's? That's part of one
Philip: of our core products, yeah. Right.
James: Well, that's really helpful to people. I'm gonna go have a go myself.
Philip: Yeah, and you know, the other thing to say is this stuff is moving all the time. You know, this technology is moving so fast. So we are updating and refreshing and continuing to do research so that, that those resources will always be the best that we can offer.
James: So there's no reason why any school can't access that because
Philip: everyone Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And indeed we are, we're funding teacher training as well in lots of countries.
James: So a big part of your job is sort of just raising awareness of that, surely that's there. Absolutely.
Philip: Yeah. Partly it's awareness, but I do wanna come back to this point about supporting teachers.
Yeah. Because, you know, even if we build awareness, even if I can persuade school systems, this is something they should do. One of the things you gotta know is that almost every computer science or AI lesson taught now and forever will be taught by a teacher who didn't have the benefit of studying that subject themselves.
And that's not to [00:22:00] criticize those teachers. They're amazing. Right.
James: But yeah. But that's true of everyone right now, isn't it? We ask exactly, but we ask. None of us had that opportunity.
Philip: But we ask a huge amount of teachers in this context and that's why I think it's Yes. You know, if there's one ask I have of governments around the world, it's like you've got to invest in teacher training.
You've, you know, if we want kids to leave school. Understanding the way that technology is shaping the world, feeling confident and able to use technology to create the world they want. We've got to invest in teachers. It's really, so how's
James: it going? Are you worried that we're gonna see a repeat of what happened when the internet came onto the scene?
Or are we nailing it?
Philip: Oh no, we're not nailing it. We're a long way from nailing it. I mean, you know, you look around the world, there is, um. You know, England, um, we've had a computer science curriculum for, what, 14 years now. Requirement that every, every child in every year studies some computing. Um, and, and lots of teachers and schools doing amazing work, but still hugely patchy.
I mean, the thing is, changing in school systems takes a long time because they're [00:23:00] complex environments that have all sorts of demands and pressures on them. I think this new wave of technological innovation is throwing up real challenges for schools and most of that. Such as
James: what
Philip: are the, well, most of the debate at the moment, and I understand why and most of the debate is how are AI technologies going to change teaching and learning?
I. So, you know, the debate around one strain of it is like, are kids cheating when they're using uh, uh, an LLM to write their essay? You know, or what does the assessment look like in a world where, yeah, what do
James: you think about that? I mean, I mean, 'cause in business now everyone's using I I so you say to the kid or you can't use that, which, which isn't really helping them prepare for life afterwards.
That's right.
Philip: I think there is foundational knowledge that you need. Young people to learn and that they might not learn by using those tools, but I think that you also need them to understand and, and, and experiment with and learn how to use those tools. My son, he'll kill me for saying this. He's a good kid.
Um, but uh, he [00:24:00] was doing an assignment for his computer science A level, and he was, uh, building a game. Programming it himself. Yeah. And of course that game, he could just have gone on chat GBT and written two lines of prompt. Yeah. And chat. GBT would've produced the code for him, and it probably would've.
So what should the prompt have been? Build me a battleships game. Right. Would've been, you actually get into a
James: podcast for you as well, right?
Philip: No, I know. No, but absolutely fantastic. But, but you know what's so important is that. Kids do the work themselves in some circumstances. So they're understanding those foundational concepts, but also I think they should have space in their school career to experiment with these technologies and kind of, you know, use them as tutors or assistants or to give them feedback.
I mean, we know, for example, research very good on this, that high quality feedback is one of the most important things for learning, right? So if you, if you want to learn something, get somebody to give you feedback on a piece of work you've created.
James: AI will do that
Philip: well. Yeah, that's right. And a lot of the, I think, exciting innovations in [00:25:00] AI technologies are around the idea of providing young people with unlimited high quality feedback.
Because teachers are great at feedback, but they're rate limited by the number of students and how many hours are in the day.
James: Someone was telling me they, this was the thing they were doing. Uh uh, socially they put two different pictures into ai, which is the best.
Yeah,
James: it's like a photography competition and the AI told them which it thought was the best and, and reasoned it out.
Philip: Yeah.
James: But you said, thought it didn't think I said thought So what did it do then?
James (3): It's called intelligence. If it's not thinking. What you're saying is pattern recognition. No, but I
Philip: think, I think it's fascinating this whole debate, 'cause I do it all the time. I formed this trap, so I wasn't thinking What was it doing then?
Well, it was, it was, it was processing. Wasn't that thinking the pixels was processing the pickle pixels and then you are right. Is that it was pattern recognizing. Yeah, it was assessing that against what it had been trained on
James: pattern, A lot of thinkings, pattern recognition. That's true. That is true. So it's artificial intelligence.
We've gotta remember [00:26:00] the got, remember the word artificial,
Philip: but ban to the school thing. So a lot of the debate is around the use, how AI technologies are gonna. They, and they will, they will radically transform teaching and learning in some ways,
James: if it's not thinking, sorry, I'm, yeah, go on. You. Why do we
Philip: care about its feedback?
That's a good question. But, but it's, but it, you care about it to the extent that it's useful, right? '
James: cause I, I'm thinking of my tutor or whatever it used to gimme pretty brutal feedback. Yeah. But I cared 'cause I thought that Juda was a good guy and super clever.
Philip: Yeah. But are you attributing the good guy, super clever attributes to your LLM?
James: Well, I dunno what to attribute, that's why I'm wondering whether to pay any attention to it. But, but, well, I think you've also
Philip: gotta know that it's, it's flawed. But then I suppose your tutor was flawed too.
James: Deeply.
Philip: I hope he's listening.
James: No, he's telling you,
Philip: he
James: stimulated a lot of sort of thinking.
Philip: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and there you are. So that's the answer perhaps, is that the job of feedback is as much to stimulate thinking
James: Yeah.
Philip: As it is to give you the [00:27:00] answers.
James: Because I always say, because some people are quite sensitive around feedback. Yeah. Um, I always say there's no such thing as bad feedback. It's just feedback.
And you do what, what you want with it. So I, uh, I grew up information.
Philip: I grew up in the civil service with some wonderful people mentoring me. And I remember one chap said to me when I was upset with some feedback, he said, Philip, you have to remember all feedback is a gift. But sometimes it's that jumper you got from your aunt that you should put in a drawer and never think about again.
James: That's
Philip: very good. I like that. That's a nice way of thinking about it.
James: My draws got a lot old jumpers in it. Yeah, exactly. That's so, that's good. I like that.
Philip: But let me finish the point, lemme finish the point about the school. So you've got the, the, the use of AI technologies, how they're gonna change teaching and learning, but then you've got two other things, I think so.
One is AI literacy. What foundational knowledge do we need all young people to understand so that they can choose a career? In ai, choose to study more about it or just be more confident citizens in a world that's shaped by ai. And then the third thing I [00:28:00] think is how, is the, how are the fundamentals of the subjects we teach the curriculum?
How do they need to change to reflect a world? AI is so important. So if you look at biology, mm, I mean, that's an informatics subject. Now we need to be teaching much more data science as part of biology curriculum. Mm. Same with geography, actually. And what does it mean, you know, what does computer science as a subject look like in a world where AI is such a big part of computing?
James: Mm. It's a bit like everyone used to study philosophy. That was sort of the subject.
Philip: Yeah. Right.
James: And then they realized that there was a little more, you know, you couldn't call everything philosophy.
Philip: Right. '
James: cause it came outta religion, I suppose. Yeah. And now the computer science is so pervasive and everything,
Philip: and I think the, the world, if I was making a prediction about the future, it would be that computer science and AI will become much more integrated into other subjects.
So it'll be less of a standalone subject. It'll still be there, I think, as a standalone subject, but I think we will see it being integrated more and more into other subjects.
James: [00:29:00] Yeah. Might be interesting to see how that pans out, but I think you might well be right. We'll have to get you back in a few years time for that.
Yeah. So, so, okay, so AI literacy, huge amount there. I mean, you, you talked about these couple of other things that you were promoting and in terms of channels or streams of work for the foundation. Just, just gimme a little bit more detail on each of those.
Philip: Let me talk about Code Club because that's one of my favorite.
Yeah, that sounds really fun. So, um, yeah, so Code Club, A Code Club was actually created, uh, not by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We merged with them, um, shortly after I got there a few months after I arrived. Um, and it is a network of, um, afterschool and community-based coding clubs for kids. Um, and, and covers an age range of like, sort of, kind of eight or seven through to 16, but the sweet spot's really nine to 13.
That's where the bulk of the young people are, and it is, uh, uh, run by an amazing network of volunteers and educators who we call mentors. Um, and they help kids. Experiment with and build cool things with technology and I spend a, a [00:30:00] lot of time, I would spend more if I could in code clubs. And it is phenomenal to see the impact it has on young people because, you know.
We all know, don't we, that schools struggle a little bit with project based learning. The idea that you learn by building things and co club is all about learning by building things. Mm. Sounds wonderful. Yeah, no, it's terrific. And uh, so we have I think a little over 8,000 co clubs around the world now.
We had a lot more before the pandemic we're building back.
James: So are there many Right across the uk? So yeah,
Philip: there, there's uh, I think we're up to 3000 in the uk. It's our biggest market. Um, and they take place in primary secondary schools, community centers. Um,
James: so our listeners who. Might be interested. You look out for those.
Philip: Well, in any of your listeners who are inspired to do something to help kids.
James: Yeah.
Philip: Learn about technology, which also join in. It's so simple to volunteer and set one up. We do all the heavy lifting for you really. Um, and I promise you that the hour a week you spend in a co club will be the best out you spend every week.
James: There you go. Yeah. They're in the code club.
Philip: They're just tremendously endless, [00:31:00] endlessly fun. That's voice of experience, endless, endlessly fun. Yeah. Well, I I, I ran one for years in my kids' school, and now we have one in the office that meets once a month on a Sunday for a couple of hours. And they are, they are the, and you get,
James: and you, as your Raspberry Pi Foundation give people the sort of curriculum or sort of so we books or whatever it is to do this.
Philip: Yeah, we create what we call the projects. So they're learning experiences. We've got over 200 of them translated into 30 languages, all free, all using free software. Uh, and then we also provide training for the mentors. And the main thing, you know, the other thing we do is we make sure that they are safe.
So we take safeguarding very seriously, so we have a, a team that focuses on making sure the venues are safe and that the volunteers have been properly made sure, background checked, all that sort of of stuff. Yeah,
James: you can help me with that if you need any DPS checks. Great. So, uh, so that's good. And then, and then you were talking about research as well.
Yeah, yeah. What have you got going on in that space?
Philip: Well, so, so the starting point is, um, computer science is a subject, AI literacy, the whole, uh, gamut is, uh, relatively new. So it hasn't got the, um, depth of research and, and length of research that, you know, other [00:32:00] subjects have. And so, um, we really wanted.
To make an investment there. So we, we established a research center at, say, at the University of Cambridge, led by a fantastic, um, computer education specialist, uh, Sue sentence, Dr. Sue sentence, um, who used to work in the foundation has moved over there now. And so they do original research into things like what, you know, they're helping us figure out what is AI literacy, what does it look like for primary?
So you are quite.
James: Tied in with Cambridge University.
Philip: Yeah. Very close Computer science faculty,
James: is that,
Philip: uh, yeah. We're in the computer science department and we have about six, seven research scientists on staff at the foundation, and they work closely with the team at the university. And then we also collaborate with other universities around the world.
That's something in the next few years I wanna do much more of. And, and part of that is about, um. Supporting the next generation of computing education researchers. You know, there is now,
James: that's a two-way street then, isn't that The university's giving you material and you are helping them.
Philip: Exactly. And, and you know, I'm a big believer as a lot of the work I did when I was at a [00:33:00] place called Nesta.
I'm a big believer that the challenge for all of us is how do we take academic knowledge and put it into practice. You know, there's this huge gap in the social policy sector where great insights and, and, uh. Uh, research and learnings happening in universities just not being applied in the field. And so one of the things I wanted to do when I joined Raspberry Pi was figure out a way we could do that better.
And I think, you know, we're making progress that. What have you learned so
James: far then in terms of a way of doing that better?
Philip: One of the things is getting teachers participating in research is hugely important. So seeing themselves as, you know, thoughtful, insightful practitioners, having the space and support to do research in the classroom.
I think the second thing is, you know, the. Um, the academic way of distributing knowledge is perfectly valid of no shade, no shame. You know, academic journals, conferences are all great, but the overwhelming majority of us, mere mortals never touch it. And so you've gotta think about how do you take some of those insights and make them actionable and digestible.
[00:34:00] Digestible, digestible being a good word. I mean, some of
James: those documents, they're quite hard to,
Philip: so we publish a magazine called Hello World. So you do that. So we, we launched that in 2017. It's now, what's it called? The magazine. Hello World. It's the first line of code that everyone writes. Right? Um, and that is by teachers for teachers.
But we put a lot of research insights into that
James: magazine.
Philip: Amazing experience. I was So how would you get
James: the magazine just
Philip: Well, if you are a teacher in the UK and soon in the us, we will send it to you for free to your home every time we publish it three or four times a year. But you can go to HelloWorld cc and download A PDF and all of the back catalog for free.
Forever.
James: Fantastic.
Philip: Yeah.
James: So we're getting lots of useful actions outta this conversation for our listeners. Yeah, that's fantastic. What a gift.
Philip: Yeah, no, it's, it's been a hugely successful part of our distribution of knowledge. It's been very successful.
James: Yeah. Well, it's so inspiring. I mean, you've also said that you wanna take more of these initiatives around the world.
Yes. You know, I've struggled in my business career to sort of open offices in other parts of the world and you know, expand our brand footprint and all these things, [00:35:00] and it's, in my experience, it's really not easy. How are you getting on and what are your sort of key things you think people should pay attention to when they're embarking on a you ambitious goal like that?
Philip: So, you're right, it's not easy. I mean, it started for us because we had lots of demand for our educational resources all over the world. And, um, we obviously we've always made it available free and people can download and and so on, and we started translating into other languages, but then we had this realization that.
Well, I didn't, the board didn't want to be a UK centric organization, just sort of shipping our curricular around the world. Mm. And so we took this view that we wanted to, um, build capabilities in other parts of the world too. Some of it we do directly, some of it we do in partnership and try to build a global movement around this computing education, this democratizing, uh, computing education mission we've got.
And so, um, we now have teams in the US. In India, [00:36:00] in Kenya and South Africa, in Ireland. And those are teams that include educators, researchers, community managers, um, and you know, the, the, so we took this very deliberate and quite difficult decision actually to build teams in those places, build organizations in those places.
Um, but it's enriched. The work of the foundation overall, immeasurable.
James: So how many teams do you have now around the world?
Philip: So we've got, I mean, we have teams in six countries, right. Um, and then we have, we have about 200 staff in the foundation and about, probably 60 of those are not in the uk. And most of the growth is happening outside the UK now.
And then we have partnerships with nonprofits in 60 other countries. Right. And those A, those a. You know, varying degrees of depth. I mean, some of them are really deep, long-term collaborations. Um, but the important thing is we learned collectively so much from seeing how the challenge manifests and how curriculars developed, how school systems work in different parts of the world.
It [00:37:00] really enriches all of the, the efforts that we do. Yeah. So what tips would
James: you give someone thinking of opening?
Philip: So humility's the big thing, right? Particularly coming from Britain into countries like Kenya. And India, you have to be aware of the sort of cultural baggage you are carrying, right? And you have to go to it.
And we were very deliberate with this from the get go with a learning mindset. You know, we're not here to tell you what to do. We're here because we care about the outcomes for young people all over the world. And we think we can learn an awful lot by working with you. And then we build local teams. Um, so, you know, we hire.
Absolutely stunning educators, researchers in those parts of the world. And they, they then work globally. We work across the world with the teams as they work across locations
James: UK
Philip: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, and that's, that's been great. One of the challenges, of course is, is about how do you hold onto a common culture and values whilst also respecting the different culture and values in parts of the world.
And there's lots of work [00:38:00] there, and I'm not, so how do you do that? Well, I dunno if I've got the perfect answer yet. I mean, it's still a work in progress, but I think it's a lot of listening and, and you do have to spend time in each other's contexts. I mean, and that, and that we agonize over this from a sort of climate perspective, but it does involve flights, it does involve people spending time in other parts of the world.
We just had our, um, some of our learning teams from the UK spend time in India with the learning teams there and the insights and, and you know, you can see how many ideas they've come back with. Yes. And about how we can design things better for all kids all over the world, not just, um, uh, in an Indian context.
FaceTime is
James: still important. Then
Philip: it's hugely important. We hold a residential every year, the foundation where most of our, uh, colleagues from around the world come to. We actually hold it in Cambridge, where we're based. Um, and that's a two day event, which is. Just very focused on building relationships between people across the organization.
Um, uh, and then, you know, when we're hiring new leadership in different parts of the world, and one of the things that I've learned is [00:39:00] you really have to devote a lot more. I. Time to the, uh, alignment, the cultural alignment. And I mean that both ways. It's sort of how can we learn from them and how can they learn about us?
So there's really, do you mean in the
James: recruitment process as well? Making sure they're aligned?
Philip: Yeah. So I will not hire people, uh, that haven't had a face-to-face meeting with a hiring manager. Um, I think some people think I'm crazy. I insist on it. I think it's hugely important. I think spending time together.
I would agree with that is just, you know, we can do so much. So you can't get a
James: job in your foundation over Zoom then? No.
Philip: No, we did some of that, of course, during the pandemic. I'm not saying we made bad hires, we made great hires during that period. But I just think it's so important, um, that you are, you are, what is it
James: that's different?
Philip: I don't, somebody asked me this recently, why are you insisting that I fly over there to interview this person? I'm like, there's just something about, it's a reasonable question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's something about, about the dynamic on both sides. Mm-hmm. There's something about the interaction, which is so different, um, and the time you spend [00:40:00] together, which is so different from being on a screen with somebody.
Um, so no, I will, uh, I'll come back on when I figured out the specific answers to that, but for now I'm saying it's a, but intuitively it's a gut bet you gotta do. It's a good thing.
James: Yeah.
Philip: Yeah.
James: So there is some flying required, but you try and manage it? We do. And you do you cross-fertilize ideas super actively?
Are you gonna be setting up more locations?
Philip: No. Well, I'm holding the line at the moment that we have a lot of work to do in those six. We chose them very deliberately.
James: So talk me through them again. Just remind me of
Philip: the six. So it's the uk Yeah. Um, Ireland and Ireland was because we merged with an organization called the Coda Dojo Foundation, um, who we've now incorporated fully into the, uh, foundation.
Um. The USA, um, um, in the USA, we focus on two states. We work all over the, the, the, uh, the country, but we have staff in, um, Georgia and Minnesota. There's a reason behind each of those. Well, well, come on. What's the reason? Well, so Minnesota has, uh, always been the, pretty much the [00:41:00] bottom of the ranking for computer science education in the us.
Has
Philip: it. Yeah. And I figured when we were looking at where we should base our team, I was like, well, we should go where they need us most. Right? And so let's go to Minnesota and see if we can move the dial. And then Georgia, because it's just such a fascinating, challenging place to do education. 'cause you've got the Atlanta Metro region, um, uh, and then you've got a very rural sort of.
Big state. And so both of those states together. If you can crack, if
James: you can crack that, you can crack most of it. Yeah.
Philip: I mean that's, that's probably unkind. But you know, California and New York do not need the Raspberry Pi Foundation. They're doing, you know, they've got loads of tech companies, they've got loads of philanthropy.
So one of the things we looked at is where, where could we add most value? So then India.
James: Right.
Philip: And where we currently focus on, there's a lot of technology
James: in India.
Philip: It's amazing. I mean, and their idea of scale is just incredible. They move, when they move, they move so quickly. There's a lot to learn from there, uh, uh, as a nation.
But there's still
James: a need you feel for Well, it's a huge population.
Philip: Yeah. It's a [00:42:00] huge, well, there's a huge population. And also, you know, there are, there are lots of kids going to schools in India where they have no access to computer science education at all currently. Uh, so we work in a. Um, and we work in Tel and Garner two states, and we have teams in both places.
And you know, again, we've found fantastic partnerships with state governments there. Isha, I think has three times the size of the education system at the whole of the uk. So, you know, it's not local government in our sense at all. No. And then Kenya and Kenya and South Africa. And, um, we were very fortunate in securing, um, significant philanthropic sport to expand into Africa.
And we went through a process of kind of deciding, um, where again, we could. We could have an impact, but also, um, we wanted to choose, uh, parts of Africa where there was a technology sector so that we could be connecting, uh, with that.
James: South Africa's very advanced, isn't
Philip: it? Yeah. Tech. Yeah. And Kenya too. I mean, amazing.
We actually make some Raspberry Pi products in Kenya now. Right. Um, one of our products from Pico, we, we [00:43:00] manufacture there, so yeah, it's, they're both. Incredible places. That's the international footprint for now. Um, and as I said, uh, how many
James: young people have you reached so far, do you think around that?
Philip: So I don't have a total number. This is one of the things I agonize over slightly. So, last year I know that we reached over a million young people in India.
James: In India alone. In
Philip: India, alone. Right. Uh, code Club in its first 10 years reached 2 million young people across the world. Right. Um, but one of the reasons why it's hard to give an answer to that is a lot of what we do is provide curriculum and training to teachers.
Yeah.
Philip: And then who know, you know, who knows how many. Kids they go on to work with. I mean, teachers will work with hundreds of young people every year, and so it scales quite significantly. Yes. Um, it's a lot. That's a good way of, of doing it for
James: that reason.
Philip: Yeah, it's a lot. And we've trained my impact team, um, are very good at holding me to account all the numbers.
So I shouldn't give you hyperbolic numbers, but I think they would reliably say we've trained over a quarter of a million teachers, right. Um, through our online courses and in-person activation, and
James: this is all. To go back to where we [00:44:00] began, really supported by the profits and dividends from the business.
Philip: About 50%. So the other thing You remember that 50? Yeah. You said other Phil. Half and half. And that's our, that's our, well, that's amazing. That's such an,
James: an amazing, it's incredible, wonderful model, I think. Yeah. And I'm really keen that other businesses think about this and maybe do the same thing because Well, and entrepreneurs.
Yeah. You know, when
Philip: you're setting up, I mean, Evan will often say this, he said, you know, entrepreneurs setting up their businesses, have a think about whether or not you should set it up under a charity. Yeah, actually very, I know that's different to your usual folk.
James: Well, it is, it is different, but it's related.
Philip: Yeah.
James: And um, or an entrepreneur setting up business makes a portion of it a foundation That's right. Or gives a portion of the shares because I mean, it brings so much to the organization, to the company and, and vice versa. Yeah. Yeah. And, and from an entrepreneur's point of view, you know, you get a great legacy.
Your business becomes much more sustainable and um, and [00:45:00] performs better. And I think, I mean that's discipline. You said right at the beginning, $35. I mean, that was a brilliant insight idea that made Raspberry pie success. It is. In part,
Philip: yeah, it absolutely did. Absolutely did. And the other thing for us, and I think this isn't true of all Philco models, but certainly for us, this idea that we have a, a very shared mission.
But that you can pursue it in different ways. And so for the company making low-cost computers available for everyone everywhere, whether that's in industry or entrepreneurs or education. And for us, you know, democratizing access to skills, helping young people develop mindsets, particularly focus on educational, disadvantaged young people who don't normally have those opportunities, but not only on Raspberry Pi computers, you know, our view is whatever computer you've got will help you learn.
James: No, they're highly complimentary. Yeah. Now I wanna say congratulations. Thank you. Actually, I think you've done an amazing thing and I, I think it's a great story and, [00:46:00] and super inspiring and I hope you can carry on doing this wonderful work for many, many years to come. Thank you. Me too. Thanks so much for coming and talk to me.
Appreciate it. Really enjoyed that. I'm gonna ask you two questions for, okay. I ask all my, uh, guests. The first one, there's a clue on the wall. No. Is what gets you up on a Monday morning.
Philip: I mean, do you mean practically or, uh. So, well, I don't mean what time's your awesome
James: alarm clock you got, I suppose, but, well, it's radio four at
Philip: six 20 is my answer.
Radio four at six 20 is your answer. That's, it's always radio four at six 20. That's the business slot. That's exactly right. That's the business slot. I'm up for that usually as well. Um, so, uh, what gets me up on a Monday morning, I mean, look, this is gonna sound corny. It's not corny. The thing that I love about my job is meeting the kids.
And the teachers too, but particularly the kids and seeing, um, we have this thing called coolest projects, which is like a showcase of kids who've built cool things with tech. One of my favorite things is kids come back year after year and you get to meet them and learn their stories and get to know them and, you know, [00:47:00] I have written a few recommendation letters for kids who come from backgrounds where this wouldn't normally happen.
I've written their recommendations to MIT and Stanford. And these are kids who got inspired to a code club who learnt using our technology or some of our resources, and they're now training to be the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologies. I just
James: hope they come back to the UK from those great American institutions.
We need all the brains this, this corner. Yeah. And my last, um, question, and this is from my interview, but why you 101 interview questions you'll never fear again is where do you see yourself in five years time?
Philip: Myself
James: or the organization? Well, yourself. Yeah.
Philip: Well, so I, I, well, I'm trying to build the Welcome for education.
James: Okay.
Philip: You know, that's what I wanted to do when I joined Rasberry pi. The welcome trust is one of the world's most significant health foundations, and I absolutely have always thought we could do that for education. So I should be beavering away at that machine. You're gonna be busy, Philip, and
James: I wish you every success with that.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Cheers for coming. [00:48:00] Thank you, Philip, for joining me on all about Business. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reed or Raspberry Pi Foundation, all links are in the show notes.
See you next time.
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