INTERVIEW
Masafumi Ohta We talk to Masafumi Ohta about Raspberry Pi and maker communities in East Asia > Name Masafumi Ohta
> Occupation Consultant
> Community role Community leader
> Website raspi.jp
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We’ve met the Japanese community in person, and they’re incredibly creative The Raspberry Pi User Group can usually be found at Maker Faire Tokyo
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magpi.cc
ne of the things we like to do in The MagPi is cover the Raspberry Pi community outside of the UK and America. Seeing the different approaches in various countries to making and tinkering is always enlightening, and it’s thanks to the efforts of people like Masafumi Ohta that we’ve been able to see some of the amazing work from makers in Japan and even other parts of East Asia. “I founded ‘Japanese Raspberry Pi Users Group’ with [around ten] Raspberry Pi nerds... in October 2012, I always remember the pics we got at Cafe in Jiyugaoka [in Tokyo] to have ‘Raspberry Pie’ with Raspberry Pi and started our community,” Masafumi tells us. “Now we have 150+ active members (600+ subscribed in the Google group), with eight of our 16 committee members being women. We hold meetups (Raspberry Jams) mainly in Tokyo and exhibit and present talks at open-source events – Open Source conference, Maker Faire Tokyo/Ogaki/Kyoto.”
Masafumi Ohta
What is your background in making and programming? I graduated from a Japanese technical high school with a major in electric engineering. I have learned not only soldering to make electronic DIY, but also welding and programming with Apple IIe and punch cards. I also came across the Sharp pocket computer PC-1416G (called Pokecon) as one of the learning materials at that time.
It is for studying BASIC, though. I was trying to analyse its hardware to make some games with its assembly language. I investigated the internal system call to develop a mini graphical game with ‘poke, peek, and call’ commands, like IchigoJam. I tore it down, looking into the hardware itself. It was really fun for me to play with it – I am sure that is why I love programming and making.
