10 years of Turku ❤️ Frontend

Two dozen people sitting at an office space, some on couches and others on chairs listening to a speaker who's standing to one side with his laptop. — How it started: Our very first meetup in January 2016 at Poutapilvi

What a journey it's been. 🎉

I had no idea we'd be here when in December 2015 I made a post on Facebook, asking mainly my university friends if they'd be interested in gathering together to learn about frontend development together. Actually, the initial idea was not even to start a meetup. What I wanted to start was a small lunch group where four or five people would have lunch once a month and each time, one of us would talk or demo something interesting. Those lunches never happened — instead, in January of 2016 we organised our first meetup event and 10 years later we're still kicking strong.

We have organised 74 meetups, one Hack Day, two Code in the Dark events, one student night, one brewery tour and a Turku Gives Back open source contribution campaign.

In those events, we've had 97(!!) different speakers and 30 different partners. My heartfelt thank you to all of you who have made this possible. I'm very happy with how our speaker lineup has been a balance of bringing people from outside Turku to share their expertise to our local community, and providing a nice platform for local people to give talks and practise the craft of public speaking. Many have done their first talks with us and have found the joy of that.

I'm confident in saying that we've had quite an impact.

We've come a full circle: when we started, I knew pretty much everyone who joined our events. Somewhere along the years, the community grew beyond my own networks and I met new people every month. These days, I've gotten to make friends with most people who regularly visit our events and we're back to square one in that sense.

Thank you Teemu, Matias and Teemu for being my partners in crime running this community over these years.

A group of people sitting in a beautifully decorated old room with a Christmas tree and a man speaking next to a large TV — How it's going: our most recent meetup in December 2025 at Reaktor.

What's next?

One night, at the afterbeers, I promised someone we'd be here for the next 20 years. To make that happen, we need a short creative break though. So for the spring of 2026 we'll take a break from Turku ❤️ Frontend meetups. We are aiming to return in September '26.

In the meanwhile, I'm leaving this empty space open for new meetups and organisers to fill. As an organiser, I've gotten so much out of building this community and I would be happy to see someone else get that too. So if you've been waiting for an opportunity to run your own, this is an invitation to do so. You'll have our full support. If not, we'll pick up this meetup again for the fall.

While we're taking a breather, you should keep an eye on the other meetups in the area. Like the all-things-tech community Aurajoki Overflow, Pythonistas of archipylago, the wonderful Turku.ai and the new accessibility meetup.

Merry Christmas, happy New Year and see you in future meetups!

Juhis