15 years of PFMeet: Pizza, polls, and a peek at the future

August 15, 2025

3 min read

PF Meet News

15 years of PFMeet: Pizza, polls, and a peek at the future

Last modified: September 2, 2025

Last night we marked a pretty huge milestone: 15 years of Portsmouth Freelancers Meet! 🎉

We’ve had a lot of venues over the years, but for the last couple we’ve made The Sir Loin of Beef our home. About 22 of us came along to celebrate, shared pizzas (thanks to Starboard Media for fuelling us), birthday cake, and more sweet treats than was probably advisable on a weeknight.

We had some lovely new faces join us alongside our regular crew, proof that PFMeet is still attracting brilliant people after all these years.

I even stood up and said some words which I don’t normally do (but get used to it!) about the new direction for PFMeet. Charlotte and Ryan are stepping up as our new ambassadors, they’ll be helping to keep things running smoothly and bringing fresh energy to the group.

We also dropped a little teaser about our shiny new rebrand coming soon which is being led by brand specialised Charlotte! We’re not giving everything away just yet, but let’s just say PFMeet’s look is getting as much of a refresh as the format. And we’re ready for it, because the truth is, in 15 years we’ve all changed, the creative scene has changed, and networking in Portsmouth has definitely changed. With more groups popping up, we want PFMeet to stay as fresh, relevant, and welcoming as it’s always been.

This is the new format in a nutshell:

6-7pm – AFTER WORK CATCHUP – After work mingling & networking, a chance to catch up over a pint or come and introduce yourself before the main event.
7pm – INTROS – A PFmeet intro by the team, followed by a very quick chance for each attendee to introduce themselves (just a 5-10 word intro e.g. “Hi I’m Jo, I’m a freelance web developer & UX designer). For anyone new who’s attending this will be a good chance to get to know who is there that night and quickly find out who you want to talk to.
7:15pm – GUEST SPEAKER or MICROTHEME. This will be a either short 10-15 minute talk by a regular PFMeeter on a subject of their choice, or we’ll have a Microtheme which you can interact with (using post its!) to create a talking point.
7:30pm – 9pm – NETWORKING. Grab yourself a drink from the bar and enjoy some snacks courtesy of us and get chatting!

If you have been to PFMeet more than 3 times and would like to do a talk on a subject of your choice, get in touch joanna@pfmeet.co.uk with your ideas! More info on that coming soon.

Oh, and the poll. Yes, we ran a completely scientific and extremely important poll to see which social media platforms people are still using in 2025 (spoiler: it’s not Myspace).