Hello World was launched just over a year ago, as a joint project of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and BCS / CAS, with some generous sponsorship from BT. Back in December, just over 1400 of our readers (about 10% of the total subscribers) completed a short, online survey to tell us a little about themselves and what they thought of the magazine’s first three issues.

Here’s a few of the interesting things we’ve learnt from this:

Firstly, Hello World’s readership seems to extend beyond the core of CAS’s membership and the digital maker community (43% are the former). Most of our readers (62%) are based in the classroom - our principal audience.

Only 28% of our readers are female

I’m not sure what the statistics are for those teaching computing or volunteering with digital making education, but there’s no cause for complacency - I’d like to have more women writing for Hello World, and it’d be great to see a score closer to 50-50 on future readership surveys.

The magazine certainly seems to be well received - 72% of our respondents read at least half of it, and nearly two thirds are finding ways to use content in their classroom more than once. In fact, we estimate that Hello World content has reached some 86,000 children so far! The majority of our subscribers seem happy with a ‘more of the same approach’ to content as we move forward, although quite a number would like to see more project ideas for the classroom.

In terms of technologies to feature in the future, AI and robotics are both high up the list - the former is something I’ve been thinking (and writing) about recently, and it’d be great to see more of both here, particularly if we can link that in with the practical, classroom project theme from above.

We’re thinking seriously about shortening the period between issues, and 78% of respondents would be happy for us to do so. Watch this space!

We’re determined to keep Hello World free: taking a pragmatic approach to appropriate commercial advertising might well ensure the magazine continues to be available to those who can best make use of it. 91% of respondents seem happy with this idea.

It’s been a great first year!

I think we’ve had four fab issues so far, and there’s some great content lined up for issue 5 already. The future success of the magazine depends on continuing to get some great content, and this is where you can help! We’re really keen to get a more diverse group of authors writing for the magazine: if you’ve a story, an opinion, or a classroom project to share, please do write in (contact@helloworld.cc): we’d be glad to help get your ideas into print. We’d be particularly glad to hear from you if you’re female (we’re really keen to address the current gender gap in content and readers), if you’ve something to share about AI or robotics, or if you’ve got something with a practical classroom focus.

Originally published as a news item for CAS