A while back we announced that RustFest will happen this year as an online event. We called it RustFest Global and we want to live up to that name: RustFest Global will be a joint event by multiple teams across the globe, spanning multiple timezones. It’s still set for the weekend of 7th & 8th November. Read on for some details.

In the past weeks the team has been busy making connections, planning and preparing for an online event. RustFest has always been about connecting people through a shared interest: Rust. Even as our conferences took place in Europe, we were always lucky to bring in a wide variety of speakers and attendees from all over the world.

Now in 2020 we can not safely host another event that brings together hundreds of people from all around the globe. Travel is simply not possible nor would we be able to guarantee everyone’s health and safety at a large in-door gathering. With everyone staying at home, the next best thing we can do is to host an online event where everyone gets to watch talks on their computer and interact with others in this virtual space. That also means everyone is on a different schedule, has other obligations and might not be able to follow a stream on a European timezone for several hours straight. We have been thinking long and hard how to take these differences into account as we set out to build a conference experience that embraces these new constraints.

For RustFest Global 2020 we’re teaming up with Rust Tokyo to bring you a RustFest that’s truly global. Our day of talks will be split into multiple blocks of sessions and arranged in a schedule appropriate for a wide variety of timezones, with all talks instantly available right after they aired live to all ticketholders, so they can be watched (again) whenever it’s convenient for you.

You are a night owl or an early bird in Europe? Great, you’ll be able to catch the first talks live. You prefer to get some coffee before hearing about Rust? That’s fine too, another block for you. You are in Tokyo or similar timezones? That block will be some evening entertainment then. And of course as a speaker we can select a time suitable for you!

What about the other timezones?

We’re small teams both in Europe and in Japan and won’t be able to cover a full 24 hour day all on our own, and so we are still looking for teams that would be responsible for a third block of talks in the Americas. We are looking for a small team of people who would be running & moderating a RustFest block in their timezones and helping the existing teams with outreach, talk selection etc. The good news is: all infrastructure and streaming setup need only be prepared once and is already being handled, so the the distributed teams can focus on the tasks related to their own region and talk block (which is not to say they can’t help out anywhere else in the organization, of course).

If you feel you might be interested, reach out via email: team@rustfest.eu.

What about the Call for Proposals?

The RustFest Global 2020 CfP is open now! The CfP will close on Wednesday, 23rd of September at 23:59 UTC. You’ll find all details on the CfP page. In it we also ask for speaker’s preferred time blocks so that we can plan the blocks accordingly. Just like in previous years, we are already working on assembling a talk committee who will be responsible for the blind voting after which, together with the individual teams we will then distill the final selection of talks and assign the talk blocks.

We are looking for Rust topics or topics that would interest Rustaceans (people involved with Rust). The Rust community is a very curious one, so talks about interesting new developments in the world of programming are welcome. Topics covering the social aspects of programming are also met with big interest.