The RustFest Project

Cancellation: RustFest Global EMEA Edition

team@rustfest.eu (Jan-Erik Rediger, István Szmozsánszky) — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

We regret to announce that we have arrived at the hard decision of canceling the upcoming RustFest EMEA Edition, the final event in this season of RustFest Global online conferences, originally slated for April 23rd.

Read on to learn about the background of the decision, or scroll down if you are interested in the practical information or have purchased a ticket.

Background

After we, like many others, have been forced to cancel the next in-person RustFest conference back in 2020 we have joined forces with other event organizers of the Rust community under RustFest Global’s umbrella. We quickly learned that many of our aspirations of “a truly global online community conference” were bold, to a point where we had to create much of the non-existent tooling and infrastructure from scratch.

RustFest Global 2020 has been exhausting, but invigorating. It truly has succeeded in bringing together the wider Rust community in ways that simply wasn’t possible for a physical event — and so it wasn’t a question whether we wanted to follow in its footsteps. Given the extreme toll of that weekend on everyone involved, it was clear the globe-spanning single day event format needed tweaking, so we decided to spread the load between a couple smaller events. We also wanted better tools, an even better experience, further experimentation with some novel ideas. Then, there was the desire to expand further and involve even more communities, supporting them better. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is: all of this has required increasingly more of our time, a lot more coordination across timezones and, generally, a lot more energy. Energy, that we didn’t realize we didn’t have.

So laser-focused were we on the goal of “making the best of the situation presented by the pandemic” that we forgot that it was a pandemic, after all. Sooner or later we would have to face the realities of burnout, exhaustion and the ever-increasing work our aspirations demanded.

No matter how much progress we’ve made on RustFest’s infrastructure (the multi-language perpetual CFP, the world-inclusive ticket pricing, multi-language streams with live translation) the work still ahead of us seemed to have only grown. We have received a lot from communities around the world, willing to help make RustFest even more globally inclusive, only to find that we still missed the means of supporting them (translations, i18n and right-to-left language support, and many, many others), which piled even more work on our already jam-packed agenda. Despite having wonderful partners and sponsors who never stopped believing in us and supporting us throughout our journey whe had to realize that we had bit off quite a bit more than we could chew. But it wasn’t just us having to come to terms with the pandemic’s reality — the community itself has been reeling from burnout, isolation and online event fatigue. Talk submissions have dried up and we found it increasingly hard to fill the RustFest schedule with interesting talks and present a diverse range of ideas, by and for our global community.

Around the time we made the tough decision to cancel the APAC Edition, we hoped with more time we can come back to it with better preparation and make it a success — while on our ‘home turf’, we would fare easier for the LATAM and EMEA editions. By the time the LATAM Edition finally came together it was increasingly clear that we had to re-evaluate many of our earlier assumptions, we had to step back and think it through whether we will be able to deliver a RustFest EMEA experience that we would be proud of.

The thinking is now over and you are reading the distilled version right here. The world is still reeling from two years of pandemic-fatigue, and while this thing is far from over yet, it’s clear we are already hurtling towards some semblance of the oft-cited “normal”. Our goal throughout two seasons of RustFest Global events have always been to emerge with something better than what we had before — instead of returning to an “old normal”, inventing a “new normal”. Keeping all the good things that we learned over the past two years — a more open, more accessible, more international event with more diverse voices and ideas —, but also bringing back some of the much missed traits of physical events, the new friendships, unbreakable bonds, warm fuzzies and interpersonal serendipity that tends to only manifest with physical connection. In a way, just like how our online events were intent on not merely “trying to replicate what physical conferences were”, the future we imagine would be more than either online or in-person events, embracing the best of these worlds and merging them in an improved experience.

We are not there yet.

We have ideas, big dreams, and budding plans for small local in-person events meshed into an overarching global or regional event, showcasing local communities, made accessible on the world’s stage, but still having those in-person serendipitous moments many of us crave from the mythical “beforetimes”. We already had a couple exciting conversations with potential partners and members of the global community about how this would look like and how could we truly make this work. We are re-evaluating how we motivate contributors & how we better involve partners not merely as sponsors throwing money at an event, but as true stakeholders and close partners, contributing to the organization as part of their commitment of giving back to the community.

We need to regroup and figure all this out. But we also need to take a breather and acknowledge the exhaustion of the past two years. Whatever will come next, we will make sure when the next time we set out to write the next chapter in RustFest’s history, we are ready to see the journey through to the end.

So that’s the plan! While we take a bit of time, we will also make sure to tie up all loose ends, pay out all commitments from this season’s events and publish our final numbers in keeping with our pledged culture of transparency, with which we have also been regrettably behind because of *gestures* everything that’s been going on.

Of course, as always, we are open & eager to hear your feedback and questions, find the contacts below.

And now, some more practical information:

Practical information

You can still enjoy all published content from the rest of the season on our website
The Rust YouTube has an archive of all historical RustFest content, including all recent editions
If you have purchased a ticket and would like a refund, email us at tickets@rustfest.global and we’ll take care of it
Don’t forget to check out other Rust events & meetups that are happening: This Week in Rust has a weekly updated list
If you want to join a fun developer event with our shared values check out Devs for Ukraine on April 25 & 26
Earlier this week we (that is, RustFest’s host organization, the non-profit association Bay Area Tech Club) has donated $1000 to Devs for Ukraine’s fundraising effort, consider chipping in if you can
With any other questions or inquiries, message us on Twitter or drop us a mail

We hope to see you all at a future event soon, and thank you everyone for your continued support!

RustFest LATAM is on! 🦀

team@rustfest.eu (Jan-Erik Rediger) — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0100

With just 5 days to go we keep it brief: RustFest LATAM is happening this Saturday, February 26th. We will be hosting 5 talks and an artist performance. And in true global fashion 4 out of the 5 talks will be given in Spanish. We will provide live translation into English for them, so you can join and understand it even without Spanish knowledge.

We start at 10:00 CST / 13:00 ART / 16:00 UTC.
Check the schedule for details on the talks and times in your local timezone.

Pay-what-you-can tickets will be available, so you can join us in the chat and enjoy RustFest together. And of course the livestream will be available on our website.

See you on Saturday!

¡RustFest LATAM esta en marcha!

A solo 5 días del evento lo mantenemos en breve: RustFest LATAM tendrá lugar este sábado 26 de febrero. Estaremos presentando 5 charlas y la actuación de un artista. Y de manera verdaderamente global, 4 de las 5 charlas se darán en español. Proporcionaremos traducción en vivo al inglés para ustedes, para que pueda unirse y entenderlo incluso sin conocimientos de español.

Comenzamos a las 10:00 CST / 13:00 ART / 16:00 UTC.
Revisa la agenda para los detalles de las charlas y los horarios en tu zona.

Habrá entradas disponibles para pagar lo que puedas, así que puedes unirte a nosotros en el chat y disfrutar juntos de RustFest. Y, por supuesto, la transmisión en vivo estará disponible en nuestro sitio web.

¡Nos vemos el sábado!

RustFest LATAM & EMEA are on! 🦀

team@rustfest.eu (Jan-Erik Rediger) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0100

We’re back! With a full month of 2022 already behind us, we’re ready to focus on bringing you 2 more RustFest editions.

We are working on two smaller, dedicated events this time.

Call for Proposals is still open!

Rust Latam: February 26, 2022

Yes, you read that right: In less than 4 weeks we’re hosting Rust Latam! There’s still a chance for you to speak. Submit a talk now and we’ll get in contact ASAP.

The LATAM edition aims to bring together the Rust communities across Latin America and give them a chance to learn from and with each other. We’re looking for talks about your journey learning Rust, your current project or a story around your next idea.

Talks will be in English & Spanish with live translation going both ways!

Rust EMEA: April 23, 2022

In April we follow up with Rust EMEA. The EMEA Edition will be a collaboration between organizers in Europe, the Middle-East and Africa.

We’re back at and around UTC timing (± couple of hours in either direction). We plan with an afternoon full of inspiring talks and hopefully some artists & music as well.

Submit a talk now!

You may indicate that the submission is intended specifically for the EMEA edition, otherwise it will be considered for all upcoming events.

¡Hemos vuelto! Tras todo un mes ya en 2022, estamos preparados para concentrarnos en traerte dos ediciones más de RustFest.

En esta ocasión estamos trabajando en traerte dos eventos dedicados más pequeños.

¡La convocatoria de propuestas sigue abierta!

Rust Latam: 26 Febrero, 2022

Sí, has leído bien: ¡En menos de 4 semanas estaremos organizando Rust Latam! Aún tienes tu oportunidad para hablar. Presentanos tu charla y nos pondremos en contacto contigo lo antes posible.

La edición LATAM tiene como objetivo reunir a las comunidades de Rust latino-americanas y darles la oportunidad de aprender entre ellos y los unos de los otros. Estamos buscando charlas sobre tu viaje aprendiendo Rust, tu proyecto actual o una historia sobre tu próxima idea.

¡Las charlas estarán en Inglés y Español, ambos con traducción en tiempo real!

Rust EMEA: 23 Abril, 2022

En Abril continuaremos con Rust EMEA. La edición EMEA será una colaboración entre organizadores de Europa, Oriente Medio y África.

Hemos regresado al horario UTC (± un par de horas en cualquier dirección). Planeamos una tarde llena de charlas inspiradoras, ¡y con suerte algunos artistas y música!

¡Presenta ya tu charla!

Podrás indicar que tu presentación está destinada especificamente a la edición EMEA, de lo contrario será considerada para todos los futuros eventos.

Rust in Arts Retro & future editions in 2022

team@rustfest.eu (Lisa Passing, Jan-Erik Rediger, István Szmozsánszky) — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Past edition: Rust in Arts 🎨🎮

On November 20th we held the first Rust in Arts Edition and it was a blast!

We all enjoyed four talks from different fields of creative tech spectrum: from generative art, multimedia sequencing and tooling for pen plotters to large scale media installations. On top of that we had two game makers walking us through their in-development games and answering questions on the go in the new director’s commentary category. For entertainment we invited two artists to give our minds some time to process the wonderful and exciting things that people build with Rust.

Thanks again to all speakers!

For ticket holders all replays of Rust in Arts are already accessible on watch.rustfest.global. In the coming week we will make the recordings available directly on the website as well.

Canceling RustFest APAC 😢

As you might have guessed from the lack of communication this week we will have to cancel the RustFest APAC edition. Originally set for December 11th we hoped to bring you another event, tuned to the local communities and placed in Pacific/Asia timezones. Ultimately we cannot make that event happen at this time. We failed to set up RustFest APAC for success and weren’t able to spend enough time coaching new organizers & recruiting speakers. As RustFest organizers we’re deeply sorry about this. But rest assured that this is not the end of an APAC edition. We would still hope to bring you an APAC event in the next season.

Next editions: RustFest LATAM & EMEA 🦀

There is good news though! We’re well along with organizing the next 2 editions: RustFest LATAM & RustFest EMEA. These will happen in early 2022 (exact dates to follow soon). Both editions will be fully online, available everywhere, but tuned to the appropriate timezones. Talk replays will be available to all ticket holders instantaneously after the talks aired.

Are you interested in helping out? We are always looking for more helping hands, drop us an email!

Call for Proposals is still open!

Submit your talk!

We cannot emphasize it enough that everything we do at RustFest would be for naught without the creativity, knowledge and incredible spirit of the Rust community. At Rust in Arts we had first time & seasoned speakers, experience talks & interviews, pre-recorded and live talks, all within the same event.

We want the same variety of topics, speakers & talks for the next editions as well. So this is your ask to submit a talk for the upcoming RustFest editions today!

Tickets

If you want you can already grab a ticket for RustFest LATAM & EMEA, and that will get you access to the Rust in Arts replays as a bonus (until we start publishing those recordings).

TWIRF: The First 'This Week in RustFest' of 2021!

team@rustfest.eu (István Szmozsánszky, Jan-Erik Rediger) — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0100

And phew what a week it’s been! There is a million things to talk about so let’s jump right in:

Edition dates!
Rust In Arts and RustFest APAC dates announced. RustFest LATAM & EMEA (née Africa) editions delayed to early 2022.
RustFest Rust in Arts is next weekend!
Keep an eye out for the lineup coming up later this week.
Ticketing now live!
You don’t necessarily need one, but you will want one! You are also supporting the speakers and organizers, which is nice too.
Pay-what-you-can tickets are back.
We really do care a ton about making RustFest accessible globally and this is reflected in our ticket pricing as well.
New sponsors ahoy.
Centricular returns for the third time, joined by JFrog for the first time this season.
CFP still open, send proposals! Please?!
Check our speaker perks and help us spread the word!

More on all the above

Edition dates

We have final dates for this year’s events, with two of the remaining events moving to early 2022.

Rust In Arts Edition coming next week!

That’s right, the first RustFest this year is just around the corner, Rust In Arts takes place next Saturday, November 20th in the European afternoon! All details on this below.

APAC Edition: December 11

We also have a final date for the RustFest APAC Edition which will take place on December 11th. The precise timezone and schedule is still being worked on but this event will take place mostly around Pacific/Asia times.

The LATAM & EMEA (Africa) Editions move to 2022

The team has also realized that squeezing in four events into the less than two months that remain from 2021 would be silly, so we decided to move the LATAM and Africa editions to next year. No precise dates just yet, but we are aiming for February–March 2022.

Part of the reason is that we have had a hard time finding people from these regions to collaborate on these events. Now the idea was never to put all the burden of organizing the events on the local teams, but we realize that with twenty months, and counting, spent in a global health crisis, taking on more responsibilities is probably the least of what many would like to do right now. That said, if you are reading this, anywhere in the world, and would like help us bring together the Rust community without borders or limitations, drop us a mail!

We have also decided to rename the Africa Edition to EMEA Edition. The original idea with Africa Edition was to highlight and showcase the local communities in Africa, instead of simply putting on an “European” event in the UTC timezones. We realize that this may have put a bit too much of a burden on these communities, struggling to find people interested in collaborating on a RustFest event. We would hate nothing more than organizing an Africa edition, that was “African in the name only”, without the participation and insight of the African community, so we decided to change and expand the scope slightly. The EMEA Edition will be a collaboration between organizers in Europe, the Middle-East and Africa. Maybe one day we’ll have grown large enough to give the Africa Edition another go – but until then, if you are from the EMEA region (and especially the Middle-East and Africa) and would like to take part in the creation of an EMEA Edition that is more inclusive, more interesting, more fun, let us know!

And yes, we are also looking for organizers in the LATAM team, you know what to do. ;)

Rust In Arts: November 20!

The Rust In Arts Edition takes place next weekend, we are working hard on the revamped live experience which will host the livestream (for free, as usual), and all the extra features like chat and Replays for those with access passes (more on those below). The event will kick off around 3PM CET, you can check the website if you want to know the times in your local timezone. We have a couple really cool speakers and artists for you, who we will be continously announcing in the coming days, keep an eye on the schedule and our Twitter.

At the Rust In Arts edition event we will be showcasing unique rusty games and art projects in the breaks, and it is still not too late to apply if you want to get your game or project an extra couple eyeballs for free! Send us an email and we can figure out the details. It’s worth noting that if the project showcase will have a good reception (we can’t see why not), we plan to extend it to all the upcoming events, so make sure to reach out even if the roughly one-week deadline seems a bit too short for comfort!

Ticketinfo

You can get tickets right now!

The short version:

The live stream on the website is & always will be free!
You can buy a ticket to access replays, chat, get freebies etc. for all four events this season
Before every event you will also be able to buy a pay-what-you-can ticket: you can name your own price, including zero, that is, a free ticket!
All tickets are available in multiple currencies, tailored to the price-range of the target demographic, and you can even request support for more, besides the currencies we are kicking off with.
A chunk of all ticket sales directly goes to speakers and volunteer organizers bringing you the events.

The slightly-longer version

You can find every detail on our ticket information page, bit with that out of the way, here’s some of the highlights:

Our baseline ticket price this year is €50 and €200 for the Community and Standard tickets, respectively. This is somewhat higher than the 2020 prices, but actually represents roughly the same value considering they provide access to four events this time. The prices this year are final, and already include any potential VAT/tax, which was one of the primary drivers of this change.

(More) globally-inclusive ticket pricing

We spend a lot of time trying to figuring out how to make RustFest even more accessible – without jeopardizing the event’s sustainability and this year’s ticketing represents a big step forward in this work.

Both the Community & Standard tickets come with exactly the same perks, but we ask those who can afford it, or who get reimbursed by their employer for these tickets to buy the Standard tickets. This approach worked well over the years, and helps us in being able to offer other options for anyone who couldn’t afford the tickets in that price range.

This year we are also making all purchases offered in 8 currencies besides the default Euro pricing — from Argentine pesos to Chinese yen and South African rand, with more options to come. These prices are not direct conversions, either, all purchases in these currencies use the 2020 OECD purchasing-power parity (PPP) rates to tailor the ticket price to local price levels, in short, making the tickets cheaper for countries & currencies for which that’s appropriate. These prices are available and open for all locations without any restrictions, we didn’t feel these necessary, and trust everyone to choose the tickets that best fit their budget.

Furthermore, we are still working on enabling more currencies and payment methods (such as Alipay and WeChat Pay for China) to make RustFest even more accessible in the regions we were unable to serve until now.
The translation of the many of the new website pages, including the ticketing ones is ongoing and will release as completed by the relevant teams.

Pay What You Can

Another experiment returning from 2020, in a much more sophisticated form: pay-what-you-can tickets. These are limited-time tickets, available leading up to the events and valid for only that one event with flexible pricing. This means that you can name your own price, in your own currency and “pay what you can”, and this includes not paying at all, as you will be able to select the free option again.

These are tickets dedicated to those who are enthusiastic about the Rust community but couldn’t, for whatever reason, afford the regular ticket price. Even with the availability of the free live stream we want these people to be able to experience the full RustFest experience, while carefully balancing the incentives. The goal is to ensure that the RustFest remains sustainable without relying too heavily on sponsorships and other funding that comes with “strings attached”.

It’s important to note, that there will be no scholarship program for RustFest this year (one can just get a free ticket!), but this doesn’t mean we don’t need you all to help us with outreach! Recommend RustFest to people who’d benefit from it and spread the word!

Also important: sales of free/pay-what-you-can tickets go live on Monday, and will close on Friday, before the event, so make sure you get your ticket by then if you are aiming for one of these, you can get an email reminder from the website if you’d like. All “regular” tickets remain available non-stop until the end of the season.

Directly supporting speakers & organizers

So why pay at all, why not make the conference free?

A valid question. Besides the risks in depending on other income sources such as grants and sponsorships, RustFest is a non-profit community-governed organization that works for the betterment of the Rust community. This costs money, and time.

While we have been paying our speakers for a while, our goal is to make RustFest even more sustainable, and having money is not the worst of ways to ensure that. This is why we would like to make sure the community we serve contributes its fair share back to the speakers tirelessly working on talks and organizers putting in the work to make a complex thing like RustFest happen.

For this year we dedicate 40% of all ticket sales revenue (after taxes and fees) to be split between organizers and speakers of RustFest. We are still figuring out the right way to do this and this year will be more experimental in that regard. All RustFest Editions are 100% volunteer-organized events, not to mention the presenters putting in all the extra work, it felt like the right thing to do.

Based on last year’s numbers, RustFest Global 2020 earned ~€15.000 in ticket income (thank you!!), which would mean €3.000 for organizers, and speakers respectively (beyond the perks we already offer for speakers, of course). It’s not a ton, but is a good start – and all your ticket purchases contribute to it.

Welcoming Centricular, JFrog to RustFest!

Or rather, welcoming back! Centricular is returning as a supporter of RustFest for the third time in a row this year. Not only that, but they have been one of the first people to reach out to us about a sponsorship right after our first announcement, thank you so much for the dedication and support!

JFrog is joining us for the first time ever this year, so make sure to give them a big warm RustFest community welcome when you see them popping up in the chat at the events later on.

CFP

We cannot emphasize it enough that everything we do at RustFest would be for naught without the creativity, knowledge and incredible spirit of the Rust community. Please, consider submitting a proposal to our CFP, and share the CFP with people who you would want to be seeing on stage, presenting or performing at one of the upcoming RustFest events. We have had unusually few submissions thus far, and would love to give a good challenge to the teams for building amazing and exciting lineups for the upcoming events.

That’s all folks!

That was it for this week’s TWIRF, see you all in the anticipatory pre-RustFest-Rust-In-Arts-TWIRF next week, and at the event of course!

APAC is Back: RustFest Global 2021 APAC Edition is Happening

team@rustfest.eu (Tim McNamara, István Szmozsánszky) — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0200

The Asia-Pacific region hosts billions of people, thousands of cultures, and even a few Rustaceans. A few of us have decided to bring you an edition of RustFest Global in December!

RustFest Global is an online Rust conference & event series, organized by the Rust community from all over the world. It is intended to enable global access and inclusion for all, irrespective of their time zone.

The APAC edition aims to be a celebration of activity, a learning experience and a chance for the Rust communities in Asia and the Pacific to learn from each other. While the sessions will primarily be technical talks, you are welcome to propose other activities that might suit an Asia/Pacific audience.

Your proposal is welcome

Whether you are from a remote Pacific atoll or a major metropolis, you are invited to submit a talk. There is no requirement to present in English - RustFest will pay for a professional translation of your video so that subtitles can be provided during the event.

The Call for Papers (CfP) is open now. We are accepting talks in several languages (and translators for other languages are welcome - please take a look at the FAQ below):

You are welcome to learn more about our Code of Conduct, Accessibility Statement and other policies.

FAQ

Can I buy tickets? Soon! Ticket sales are not yet open, but we will have tickets yes, and there will also be discounted and free options just like last year.
Anything I can help with? Absolutely! Always looking for new team members, translators, CFP commitee members, community organizers, help with developing & maintaining our infrastructure, etc. Please reach out via DM or email.
I found an issue on the website/blog/CFP Please let us know via DM or email. Also worth noting the both websites are still under heavy construction, an evolving every day as we fix and update old contend, and upload new information.
I have a question about the CFP We are happy to help with your proposal, too! Please email coaching@rustfest.global.

Introducing Rust in Arts

team@rustfest.eu (Lisa Passing) — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0200

We’re super excited to introduce you to Rust in Arts, a brand new addition to the RustFest Global 2021 lineup, happening on November 20th 2021!

As a small reminder, RustFest Global is the umbrella event for several standalone conferences that we call “Editions”. Read more about it in the announcement blog post.

Rusty art, artsy Rust

Rust in Arts aims to combine two very exciting things: low-level programming and creative uses of technology. So I want to spend a minute to talk about art and creative ways to use technology.

Creative tech covers a wide range of topics that include (but are not limited to!) generative art, physical computing, light art, audio-visual things and AI, each with several sub-categories that are fascinating and exciting.

From real-time or data-driven, generative art, to working with motors and sensors in interactive installations or managing audio signals to control LEDs, a lot of projects require exactly the features that systems-level languages like Rust offer to solve unique problems they’re facing. For outsiders it’s easy to underestimate how much technical knowledge is required to create such a piece of digital art!

There have been occasional “artsy talks” scattered around previous RustFests and then RustFest Global 2020 featured an arts section and talks about computer generated art. Building up on that, it is time to offer artists and their projects a stage that focuses on the extraordinary things they’re doing. Rust in Arts is here to be that stage!

How can I join? What can I contribute?

Since Rust in Arts is the first of its kind, it’s open to a multitude of possible proposals in regards to both content and format!

For formats, everything from a classic talk about your project to a rundown of your installation and live performance is possible. Want to do a group exhibition around using the same crate? A dramatic reading of your generated Rust source-code? Propose whatever you think does your project justice (and is somewhat possible in an online space)!

As for content, your proposal does not need to focus on Rust (or include it at all!) as long as you think it’s still interesting to Rustaceans or low-level programmers. Obviously, it’s also cool if it does feature Rust!

Already know what you want to submit? Head over to the RustFest Global CFP!

You can read up on RustFest Global’s shared CFP.

FAQ!

Can I buy tickets? Soon! Ticket sales are not yet open, but we will have tickets yes, and there will also be discounted and free options just like last year.
Anything I can help with? Absolutely! Always looking for new team members, translators, CFP commitee members, community organizers, help with developing & maintaining our infrastructure, etc. Please reach out via DM or email.
I found an issue on the website/blog/CFP Please let us know via DM or email. Also worth noting the both websites are still under heavy construction, an evolving every day as we fix and update old contend, and upload new information.
I have a question about the CFP We have a dedicated channel for CFP questions and we are happy to help with your proposal, too! Please email coaching@rustfest.global.

RustFest's back, alright!

team@rustfest.eu (István Szmozsánszky, Jan-Erik Rediger) — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0200

Welcome to rustfest.world, the new home of the RustFest blog and the RustFest Project as a whole.

RustFest is now a community-owned non-profit organization helping the Rust community around the world grow closer & stronger, through all sorts of events from small meetups to large conferences, organized by the members of the global Rust community.

And with that, it’s time to announce our first big project under this new umbrella:

Please give a warm welcome to RustFest Global 2021!

There is a lot to talk about, but allow us to cut to the chase and say: we want your talks!

Submit a proposal to RustFest Global 2021!

We, in fact and as you will also notice in the submission form, want all kinds of your session ideas, not just talks. There is a lot more to unpack about the CFP but first, let’s talk a bit about why we felt these changes were needed in the first place.

Global inclusion — five years in the making

Since the very first RustFest five years ago we have always tried to make RustFest more inclusive and accessible. This did not stop at worrying about the venue’s accessibility, or our diversity, or even the affordability of the conference — it fuelled many other aspects of inclusion, from bringing RustFest to local communities, making it a migratory event, to trying to bring outside perspectives into RustFest through talks and CFP committee members.

Last year’s RustFest Global was yet another leap forward in this direction, as we explored how we could connect the Global Rust community at scale. While many (us included!) lament that online events are no replacement for a community getting together in person, online events can have their own perks. They are able to reach a much wider audience who never has to worry about the costs and grievances of international travel, visas and so on. Yet, global access does not necessarily mean global accessibility and inclusivity. Time zones, language difficulties and huge disparities in internet connectivity remain but some of the most well-understood challenges that online events face — challenges that unfortunately we saw rarely taken up on by the myriad of online events springing this past year.

This is why we keep trying to evolve the format of RustFest (Global), because we believe these are challenges worth solving. The feedback we have received after RustFest Global 2020 happens to confirm this suspicion.

Three Editions, One RustFest

While cramming three whole conferences into one planetary day of RustFesting last year has certainly been a… let’s say “educational experience”. It was not very sustainable, to say the least. In 2021 we expect to deliver a similar amount of content (15+ hours!), but this time around in a brand new format split across three weekends. These three new RustFest “Editions” will not only differ in their scheduling (live airing timezones), or dates, but will be entirely different events organized by their own dedicated teams! The organizing teams will have a large amount of freedom to focus on the event experience, lineup and tailor it to their focus audience — while the shared infrastructure allows funds, sponsorship, streaming infrastructure etc to be shared by the whole organization.

Compile Once, Run Anywhere

The new RustFest CFP condenses what we learned from five years of frantically-reviewing-proposals-for-an-entire-week into a new approach that should be a win for both prospective presenters and the organizing team.

Talks submitted through our CFP are made available to all teams, who will execute the selection on their own cadence, gradually filling up their event’s lineup. In this sense, we will do away with the traditional (and rather arbitrary) concept of a “closing date”, since the CFP in all practicality will be “open” until the teams still have open slots in their schedules.

The submission also makes the submitted proposals easily portable by generating of a both human- & machine-readable downloadable file from the completed submission. These can be edited and discussed separately, even shared with other events if in the future some would choose to adopt this system. Submissions can be easily moved around and tweaked before importing and submitting them with a click of a button! The CFP form and other components are in an alpha state, but are open source, with other components also released soon as they are being completed.

¿Así que sólo hablas inglés, ah?

If we have learned something from RustFest Global 2020, it’s that there’s a lot of room for us to grow in the language department. Not only that we should be working on making RustFest localized into more languages (which we are!), but we should also try to bridge these gaps between pockets of Rust communities across the globe.

Starting today, the RustFest CFP is fully localized in English and Spanish, with additional accepted languages enabled for future editions. All proposals may be submitted in any of the supported languages, and the team pledges to provide translations of the proposals for the selection and professional English subtitles for all accepted presentations.

We understand this may still be far from ideal, but we believe this is a good start and a step in the right direction. We always welcomed feedback, so if you have thoughts please let us know!

All this coupled with our beginner-friendly approach, regular perks (e.g. speaker fees and an A/V stipend) and some brand new ones in the works (stay tuned!) all RustFest Family events are committed to make these online spaces welcoming for the Rust community truly anywhere on the globe.

What do you mean “RustFest Family”

RustFest today is so much more than the RustFest conference in Berlin five years ago, but the ethos is unchanged. It is an ethos inspired by the JSConf Family: while RustFest itself is now its own (non-profit) organization, RustFest Global and events that share our community focus and values (such as the wonderful Rust.Tokyo) are their own entities, with a common goal of bringing the Rust community together.

The RustFest Project has a couple means of raising funds, be that through RustFest Global sponsorships and ticket sales, or through direct support via Open Collective. All these funds are tracked transparently in our open budget, and used entirely to improve RustFest Global and support the RustFest Family events.

These funds mean a lot. The income from RustFest Global 2020 meant we could support and build the RustFest infrastructure over the past year, had enough to start the 2021 planning and even paid for the subtitling of one of this year’s upcoming Rust.Tokyo talks! We are hoping to raise more funds from sponsorships (please reach out!) and ticket sales (soon!), but would also ask all of you to consider supporting us with (even just a small!) recurring donation that will make RustFest’s work much more sustainable.

It is here where we would like to thank Concordium, Embark Studios and the individual supporters Peter Parkanyi & Beni Issembert for their trust and continued support, your early contributions have helped us get to where we are today.

Á propos… speaking of “the very first RustFest”, we have our fifth anniversary coming up in just a couple days, and we fully intend to celebrate in style! That is all we can share, for now, but stay tuned for an upcoming announcement shortly. 😉

Thank you!

Thank you for all the support we have received from everyone up until now, it has been such a ride! Looking forward to the next 5 years! Send us a proposal. Join an organizing team. Support us on Open Collective. Sponsor RustFest. Be well, stay safe, wash your hands & don’t touch your face.

Lovingly,

The RustFest Project & RustFest Global organizers

FAQ!

Can I buy tickets?
Soon! Ticket sales are not yet open, but we will have tickets yes, and there will also be discounted and free options just like last year.
Anything I can help with?
Absolutely! Always looking for new team members, translators, CFP commitee members, community organizers, help with developing & maintaining our infrastructure, etc. Please reach out via DM or email.
I found an issue on the website/blog/CFP
Please let us know via DM or email. Also worth noting the both websites are still under heavy construction, an evolving every day as we fix and update old contend, and upload new information.
I have a question about the CFP
We have a dedicated channel for CFP questions and we are happy to help with your proposal, too! Please email coaching@rustfest.global.

Watch all of RustFest Global

team@rustfest.eu (Jan-Erik Rediger) — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0100

Over a month ago we finished up RustFest Global 2020. Bringing RustFest to a huge audience in a year like 2020 was an incredibly hard task, but in the end we managed to do a 21-hour long live event online, thanks to 3 incredible teams, 24 speakers and 10 artists. Right after the event we made all talks and artist performances accessible to ticket holders.

And today we are incredibly excited that you can now watch every single RustFest Global talk and all audio-visual art session right on our website, no ticket or registration required! 📺

We are continuing our Web Monetization experiment, so if you are watching from a browser that supports Web Monetization you are directly supporting the speakers and artists who created the content!

All non-English talks come with subtitles, and all talks come with a transcript! We spent a ton of time ensuring the content is as accessible as possible, but please feel free to send us corrections if you notice any issues! You can find all transcripts in our RustFest transcripts repository.

Enjoy!

Welcoming the RustFest Project

team@rustfest.eu (István Szmozsánszky, Jan-Erik Rediger, Florian Gilcher) — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0100

Four years after the very first RustFest we are ready to take our ideals to the next level:

Today we are announcing the RustFest Project, a non-profit organization and new home for RustFest conferences, created to support event organizers in the Rust community. The RustFest Project will operate under an open governance model with transparent budget in support of event organizers joining our global RustFest family. We will provide event organizers with guidance, connections, resources and fiscal support to help them meet the high standards for inclusivity and openness the Rust community has been praised for.

More than “just a conference”

Seven RustFests ago in 2016, when we started planning our very first Rust event in Berlin, “a Rust conference for Europe” was only part of our motivation. We wanted this to be an event from the European community for the global Rust community — instead of just “that conference, organised by the folks in Berlin”. Taking inspiration from conferences like EuRuKo, we made RustFest a travelling conference: not only happening at different locations, but also being organised by different local teams. Our intention was to go beyond being “a conference for the Rust programming language” and have RustFest become a celebration (a festival, if you will) to bring the Rust Community together. And what a celebration it has been! The small, 150-strong weekend event has grown into a 4-day festival with workshops, Impl days and more. By last year’s in-person conference in Barcelona we have tripled in size, attracting over 400 Rustaceans. Our latest event earlier this month, the online RustFest Global has counted close to a thousand registrations.

One of our initial goals in moving the conference around the continent was not only to make it more accessible, but also to equip local organizing teams with the experience and skills to support the growth of their own Rust communities once the event was over. The pre-events, the local non-profits we helped create all served this purpose. It has been in RustFest’s DNA from the very start to help anyone bring a Rust event to their community.

The complexities of international community collaboration

Despite being a non-profit endeavor, every single RustFest event has ended up with some amount of “leftover” funds. While this wasn’t itself a big issue, as we’d always intended to use these funds in future events, the act of getting these funds from one organization to the other turned out to be a constant headache due to local, legal coordination challenges.

Our most recent online RustFest Global event also ended up with a sizable surplus, which (being a global collaboration of multiple teams) presented another question: How do we stay true to our pledge to make these funds available to any of the collaborating teams, should they decide to organize their own events in the future?

In short, we have been long looking for a transparent and unbiased way to distribute funds to the global Rust community working on events.

A new home for RustFest

The RustFest Project is our best answer to all these complexities as of yet.

We are opening up the core of RustFest by moving the project to an open governance model and transparent budget, under the umbrella of an actual non-profit. The Estonian open source non-profit Bay Area Tech Club will host the RustFest Project, with project finances tracked on our new Open Collective page. We are currently working on the governance structure, and outlining the process of applying for support to our partner events (see below).

The new RustFest Project organization will take ownership of the various infrastructure bits accumulated by RustFest over the years. Most of it will move to the oversight of Bay Area Tech Club (including domain names, hosting, and service subscriptions). The RustFest Global organizing team included over 20 people, with historically many more contributors across all events. We want to make sure we have the infrastructure and an easy way to onboard anyone who wishes to participate in the future.

The RustFest Project is still planning to organize its own RustFest-style events (both online and potentially as in-person/hybrid events in the future) on a project basis, but we also want to support others in doing so — regardless of whether they’ve been part of the RustFest Global team this year.

A global family

As part of defining the RustFest Project we are also working on clarifying a concept we’ve come to refer to as “the RustFest family”. We borrowed this term from the JSConf family of events, as we intend to offer guidelines and set expectations around creating inclusive community events endorsed and supported by the Rust event organizing community. As part of this endorsement, by joining the family, events will also be granted the ability to request the support of the RustFest Project: be that infrastructure, consulting or fiscal support in the form of grants.

In addition to support for organizers, the RustFest Project intends to create and maintain software and infrastructure that benefits the community beyond the events we create. One exciting recent example: the newly announced RustFest Project-operated federated Matrix messaging service, RustCh.at.

RustFest Global has also served as the testing ground for another Bay Area Tech Club project, the Waasabi event streaming framework. After great feedback from a successful test run we look forward to the public release. We also anticipate helping others start using the framework for their events.

Thank you for getting us this far!

The RustFest Project team would like to thank everyone who supported us through the years: thousands of attendees; dozens of speakers producing close to a hundred hours of content; all our generous sponsors; and, of course, all of you who helped weave it all into a cohesive whole:

Adolfo Ochagavía, Alberto Mendez, Alexander Varwijk, Ana Hobden, Andrey Listochkin, Angel Sánchez, Antonio Piraino, Benjamin Kampmann, Carlos Báez, Cheng You Bai (cybai), Chiko, Christian Perez-Llamas, Dina-Solveig Jalkanen, Dirkjan Ochtman, Emanuele Tagliaferri, Emma Tracey, Enrico Risa, Enwei Jin, Felix Klock, Ferran Reyes, Florian Gilcher, Geoffroy Couprie, Guillaume Gomez, Ivan Fraixedes, Iñaki Garay, Jan-Erik Rediger, Jeske Eenink, Johanna Dahlroos, Kan-Ru Chen, Kat Hößel, Misaki Makino, Pierre-Étienne Meunier, Pilar Andrea Huidobro Peltier, PotHix, Rafaela Wetzel, Raphael Nestler, Roberto Huertas, Santiago Pastorino, Schleer Zsuzsanna, Sebastian Wicki, Stefan Schindler, Szmozsánszky István (Flaki), Tomohide Takao, Tomás De Mattey, Vanessa Trantes, Vasia Kalavri, Wouter Geraedts, Xidorn Quan, Yenna Listochkina, Yuki, Yuliana Reyna, Zsuzsanna Schleer

Get in touch!

Want to help us define the next chapter in RustFest’s history? Do you happen to have experience with open community governance? Want to contribute to the new organization? Current or future (Rust) event organizer? Know a company who might want to support us in our efforts? Other questions, ideas, musings? Please get in touch!

Send us an email at project@rustfest.global or find us on Matrix: #rustfest-project:rustch.at.