If you're new here, welcome! We're archipylago, a community for Python developers and we organize meetups. If you're new to developer communities, you might have some questions on what meetups are and how they work.

We host our meetups on the second Thursday of the month, on odd-numbered months.

We partner up with local tech companies who sponsor and host our events, usually in their offices. This gives you a wonderful opportunity to get to learn about the companies here in Turku, their company cultures and people there. The companies invite us to their offices and offer food and drinks during the events.

Join in three easy steps

To attend our meetups, you need to do three things in preparation:

• create an account at Meetabit
• join our community there
• and when event registration opens up, click Attend.

We have limited seating in our meetups. That's why we require registration. It's also why it's so important to sign up with intention to attend rather than "just in case". If you notice between signing up and the event that you can't make it after all, be kind and cancel your attendance so someone else gets the opportunity to join through the waitlist.

Our meetups are for everyone: whether you are an experienced developer with years of experience writing Python, are a junior early in your career or a curious hobbyist, you're equally welcome to our events. If you're in doubt, err on the side of joining.

Learn, get inspired, meet new people

Attending meetups can give you a lot and are worth attending. Normally we have 2 speakers who are fellow community members who join us to share their experiences and knowledge in 30 minute talks. This is an opportunity for you to learn about new topics, approaches and tools in the Python ecosystem and community.

In addition to the talks, we have a lovely community where you can make friends and build professional networks. We make sure to have time at the start of the event, between the talks and after them for what in the industry call the "Hallway Track". It's a fancy way to say "talk with each other". After the meetup, we also continue the discussions in a nearby pub. Drinking is totally optional: pubs just happen to be the only places open that late.

When you arrive at a meetup event, say hi to people you see, grab a beverage and a snack and find a place to hang out. We'll let you know when we start the organized program.

I'll share a secret: I don't always understand all the topics of talks in events I organize or attend. Good news is, you don't have to either! If one talk of the night isn't exactly your jam, don't let that skip the event. The beauty of meetups is that they are a combination of learning from talks, getting inspired by new ideas, having discussions with fellow developers and having a good time.

Inspiration from others

Eric Holscher has coined a two nice rules for event participants. The first one is called The Snowball Rule:

For every year you have attended an event, you should try to meet that many new people each day.

This encourages experienced attendees to carry most of the burden of initiating the discussions with new people – and gives new people an out to chatting with one new person if they feel a bit intimidated.

The second one is The Pac-Man Rule:

When standing as a group of people, always leave room for 1 person to join your group.

Andy Croll recently shared his reasons for attending tech conferences and much of it applies to meetups as well. I especially enjoy this passage:

If you don’t attend the event, there’s no chance of serendipity. An unexpected insight, from a talk you might have avoided or a conversation in the hallway, where a new approach to a long running problem presents itself.
[ - - ]
Meeting someone, or seeing a talk, could change the trajectory of your career. You might choose a product company, if you’ve been in agency life. You might lean hard into open source work and make that a foundation of the next phase of your career. You might meet someone who, in three years, starts a company and remembers that great meal you had and asks you to join them.

I have a personal blog post on the topic too:

I have made so many friends all over the world through meetups, hackathons, conferences and online communities and I am so happy I have because people are kinda the best part of life.

Wanna host or give a talk?

We're always on the lookout for companies to host our meetups and speakers to give talks.

If you want to sponsor an event, get in touch and we'll find you a good slot in our event calendar. We'll take care of the speakers, marketing and registration – your part of the deal is to offer us space and drinks & food for the participants.

If you want to talk, get in touch! Our regular slots are max 30 minute talks in English about Python or related topics. If you have an idea for something that deviates from that, let's chat. We welcome both new and experienced speakers alike. If you're new to speaking, we can offer help with choosing an idea, crafting your talk and practicing it.