AWS User Group Finland November Meetup at Netlight

The November meetup brought 76 people to Netlight’s 4th floor office on Pohjoisesplanadi. Late November in Helsinki means it has been dark for hours by the time the meetup starts, but that did not stop a strong crowd from gathering for the last regular meetup before the re:Invent season takes over.

Ishani Bhardwaj stepped up to present for the second time at an AWS meetup this year, this time covering the AWS APM feature. Watching someone grow into a repeat speaker within the community is exactly what these meetups should foster, and Ishani went beyond just presenting – she was the main driving force within Netlight to make this meetup happen in the first place. That kind of initiative is what keeps the community running. Mika Fonsen from Vaisala then took the stage to walk through custom deployment orchestration with the AWS CDK Toolkit Library – going beyond the CDK CLI – a topic that resonated with the many infrastructure-minded people in the room.

The timing of this meetup, just days before re:Invent 2025, meant there was a lot of anticipation in the air. People were speculating about announcements, sharing their plans for the conference, and generally getting hyped for what is always the biggest week of the AWS calendar.

This is what meetups are about: people sharing what they know, stepping up to present, and helping each other learn. From January to November, this group has consistently brought out 60 to 90+ people every month. That is something to be proud of.