Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #124, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland.
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The view from the other side
Is different. For sure.
I love going to tech events in Finland. Between the two of us - Prerna and I - we have split events in the household. She is more of a developer than me, so she goes to Python, PyData and Java meetups. She also goes to women-focused events - women in tech, etc. I go to more platform-specific events - FAUG, Azure and Friends, Platform and Infrastructure Community, Vibe-Coding, etc. I feel that provides a nice balance to our after-work lives.
This all started some time last year, after Prerna told me about this app called Meetup and the events that were on it. Meetup has become shite, ever since Bending Spoons acquired them - which, granted, is the playbook. Side note - I had not been to their website before this and guess what’s on their homepage?
Prerna is better at this stuff than I am - reaching out to people, talking to people, and so on. Which is not to say it’s easy for her; it’s not. But she’s just better at actually doing the things.
I am working on it.
Of course, she was first when it came to volunteering her time and becoming an organiser. She joined the PyData organising team and is one of six organisers there.
I, on the other hand, just go for the sake of it - to maybe learn new stuff. I used to talk to one, maybe two people who were nearby. Mostly, I would be taking notes in Obsidian, about the things that people were presenting.
Sometime earlier this year, after she had joined the PyData organising group, she asked me if I wanted to speak at one of the events.
I said no, per usual.
Sometime later, she said, “I have volunteered your name for an upcoming meetup.”
I said, “What?”
She said, “So what will you be speaking about?”
I said, “What?”
That was then.
After my initial resistance had died down, I started thinking about what could I talk about. I had no stories yet, no cool things I was building - the usual self-deprecation.
I thought I could talk about using AI to learn. I had been dabbling with workflows, projects and prompts.
So, I made a new note in Obsidian, gave it the proper title, and started thinking.
The lightning talk at Reaktor
The result of that was the lightning talk I gave at the PyData event hosted by Reaktor, at their offices in Helsinki.
That note I made is not live yet. I prepared the slides in Keynote and haven’t had the time or desire to write that note now.
The lightning format meant that I got a time window of around 10 minutes to complete my talk. I took somewhere between five and ten minutes. I did not set up a clock - perhaps a learning for next time. Teemu showed up a clock halfway through to tell me I was past five minutes, after which I panicked a little and rushed through the rest of the slides. I had planned to demo my project and website - if I had time - which apparently I did not.
This was a positive experience for me - being the one presenting. I had been wanting to speak for some time now, though all the earlier times boiled down to me telling myself - what did I have to say?
Which, funnily, is not a problem here, on this website.
Since Prerna was emceeing at the event and I was speaking, Savya attended his first tech event too. They sure do start early these days!
I spent most of the event listening to Savya, playing with him, talking to him. Then, during my talk, Prerna did the same.
Reaktor have a beautiful office. There was plenty of food and drinks at the venue. And it was yummy! There is a view of the Helsinki Cathedral from the office. It was at the golden hour and the cathedral looked beautiful.
There was a beautiful balcony with glass railings, just outside. I did not step out onto the balcony - it was cold and I had Savya. But I saw plenty of people out there when we arrived.
I loved speaking, sharing this little thing I had messed about with. And the speaking itself felt natural enough. Sure, there were some jitters, but none of that remained after I began.
Emceeing at the CNCF event
The other thing that happened this week was that I emceed for the CNCF Helsinki group.
I had become an organiser the week before, and on Monday, another organiser asked if anyone wanted to create the intro slides and be the emcee. I volunteered and that was that.
I worked on the slides on Wednesday night (the event was on Thursday). And that was that.
The CNCF event was held at the Computer Science Building in Aalto. Prerna, Savya and I reached the venue around 17:00. Savya had not slept at his daycare, and so had slept through our ride there. But dutifully woke up as soon as we reached the venue.
The venue had a nice setup - two sets of the kinds of mics you can hang behind your ears and speak through the mic next to your mouth. There were two traditional stick mics as well - which we used for questions.
There was a big monitor you could see your slides on, as you looked out into the hall in general. I had not seen anyone do an intro for this event before, so I kind of winged it.
I think it went fine.
Prerna volunteered to interview the attendees and organisers for the social channels. There may be a short coming out on our LinkedIn and Instagram channels soon.
Being around the CNCF community, felt good. I love CNCF’s code of conduct around meetups - Be nice and respectful to each other. Include everybody. This community and the organisers really embody the ethos of the project. I’m looking forward to contributing more toward both the project and the community.
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄
Until next week.
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