Finnish Mechanical Keyboard Community
The hobby is nice but the community makes it better.
TLDR;
Despite the first organized meetup in Finland only consisting of 3 persons, we’ve managed to gain attraction meetup after meetup. After each meetup, the community grew more and more. Today we have over 1000-people in our Discord with several active Finnish Vendors and lovely community spirit.
The first meetup
Organizers: 2
Attendees: 1
Keyboard: 10
Despite only being 3 people in the first meetup, it was really nice to try out different keyboards. We didn’t think this would take off due to the lack of interest. Apparently, we just hadn’t enough publicity which was seen in later events.
Meetup #2
Organizers: 2
Attendees: 12?
Keyboard: 20ish?
Somehow there was a sudden spike in the number of attendees. Being 12 people in a medium-sized office room wasn’t optimal and we already had to start thinking about a bigger location to host the next meetup in. This was also when we created our Discord channel and things started to grow.
Meetup #3
Organizers: 2
Attendees: 40ish?
Keyboard: 50ish?
The word started to spread out and suddenly we had around 40 signed up for a meetup.com event. As we grew, we also started to look for sponsors. This meetup was the first sponsored meetup. Siili Solutions offered the space and beverages while WASD-Keyboards, KBDFans, and Komplett offered some giveaways. People stayed for a long time and everyone has a good time.
Meetup #4
We had to once again look for a bigger space due to the increase in attendees. This time we also had a membrane-keyboard throwing competition, the winner won a full TKL keyboard!
Meetup #5
We had a person from Latvia reach out and ask if there is any meetup happening, and that was the spark for this meetup!
Meetup #6 feat. PRKL30
As the community became more and more active, some decided that it was time to create a community keyboard. We organized an event where the attendees would receive their PRKL30 keyboard. Due to some technical issues, we weren’t able to laser cut PRKL30-cases but had a good time whatsoever.
This was our last before Covid-19. Despite not having meetups, for the time being, the community has been really active with different projects like custom cases, custom PCBs, artisan keycaps etc.
2022 Helsinki Meetup
Organizers: 6
Attendees: 45ish
Keyboards: 80ish?
After a long break due to covid we were finally able to organize a meetup! This wouldn’t have happened unless Columbia Road would have offered their space for use, thank you Columbia Road ❤️
2022 Jyväskylä Meetup
Organizers: 6
Attendees: 22
Keyboards: 75ish?
This was our first larger meetup outside Helsinki and was hosted at Taitopilvi Oy. There were lots of new faces in the meetup who hadn’t had the chance to travel previously to the Helsinki meetups. Thank you Taitopilvi ❤️
2023 Turku Meetup
Organizers: 4
Attendees: 35
Keyboards: 65ish?
This was the first keyboard meetup in Turku. The meetup signup was closed the same day it opened due to being full. Once again a really nice meetup with nice people and awesome keyboards.
2023 Tampere Meetup
Organizers: 4
Attendees: 50
Keyboards: 100ish?
The idea for this meetip quickly sparked after the Turku meetup and sign-up was opened several months before the actual meetup. This was the first big meetup in Tampere. Thank you Recordly for hosting us ❤️
2023 Helsinki Meetup
Organizers: 5
Attendees: 45
Keyboards: 140ish?
There had been many requests for hosting a Helsinki meetup in 2023, but we didn’t have a proper location for the meetup until Siili Solutions were kind enough to let us use their office. This meetup differed from previous meetups in the way that there were no outside sponsorships, and the meetup was purely focused on freely roaming around and trying out different boards. We received really good feedback about the meetup, and some even said that this was the favorite meetup (so far)!
Siili Solutions, you are awesome ❤️
2024 Oulu Meetup
Organizers: 3
Attendees: TBA
Keyboards: Also TBA
There had been discussions about a Oulu meetup for quite a while, and we finally got a good slot for it at the start of 2024! This was also for the time being the most northern keyboard meetup so far! Thank you Solita for hosting us ❤️
Community activism
Despite Covid-19 hindering us from organising meetups, the enthusiasts in our community have stayed active and created awesome things.
16.12.2020 we were featured in the Skrolli-magazine. Elpedro, Hekeke (heke.io) and I, olligranlund made an article about the Finnish keyboard community and how it has evolved, you should be able to find this magazine all around Finland in larger stores.
There have been several community projects and activities:
- PRKL30 keyboard cases have finally been sent out
- We’ve seen a few prototypes of a concrete case for keyboards
- More people are getting into 3D-printing
- Community merchandise GB
- Louhi GB (ortholinear keyboard)
- Neito GB (TGR Alice-like keyboard for Europeans)
- Among Us-gaming sessions
- Prototypes of BTLE controllers (NRF micro) for keyboard projects
- Secret Santa
Vendors in our community
Some people in the community actually do keyboard-business, check out the main ones here:
olli.works (shameless self promotion)
heke.io
Is your company missing from the list? Let me know and I’ll add it!
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