This week I went to and spoke at the latest Chicago mechanical keyboard meetup, called That Windy City Keeb Meet 2025!

I hadn’t been to a keyboard meetup in a long time! I used to help organize the Seattle meetups back pre-2020, and really love the community, but between moving cities and life changes, it’s just been hard to get to one again. The last event I went to was during the pandemic in winter 2021, where a handful of us met in a piano store and showed our vaccination cards to get in. It feels like a lifetime ago!

Anyway, it was a blast finally getting to go to one of these meetups again. I spoke on a panel about keyboard design with Andrew of Bowl Keyboards and Jack of Pikatea, watched a talk about switch variances (all talks will be uploaded to the community YouTube channel soon), won a fun keycap raffle prize, bought some merch from sponsoring vendors, and saw SO many cool keyboards. I also got to meet some folks who I had only spoken with online before, which is always a great time!

My little display featured my Micro Journal as well as a couple of my other boards, all with keycaps I designed!

Again, I’m so happy I was able to make it to this meetup. I can’t wait for the next one, and if you’re in town next time, you should check out Chicago’s keyboard scene!

Also, in case you’re interested in things I designed, here’s some buy links:

• DSA Astrolokeys
• DSS Tecla
• PBT Jeju
• The Key