With RustFest, we’re trying to change a few things that nag us about conferences. One of these is that it’s hard to communicate how an event works and how decisions are made. We believe that transparency is helpful here.

This is why we decided to adopt the “this week in” newsletter style to RustFest and write a little about our planning and our status every week. We will also try to communicate topics one by one through this: how to attend the conference, what the venue looks like, how ticket sales will work, etc. Closer to the conference, the communication will become more focused on actual eventy things.

Last week didn’t seem eventful, but we advanced a few things: we’re currently putting the final polish on our CFP, which is going to launch this week (there will be a separate announcement).

We got a couple of questions about the nature of the event. RustFest itself will be a community conference that tries to both include Rust newcomers while satisfying the needs of more advanced developers. It will not be an academic conference, though. If there is interest in such topics, we can assist in setting up a satellite event. Our current team has not enough bandwidth for that, but we can help with knowledge and connections about Berlin. If you want to make such a thing happen, please get in touch.

Sponsoring

We decided on our sponsorship levels, which will be made available in the next few days. Also, the first sponsors came on board and will be presented, soon. This means that we almost have the first day of the conference covered (if we just aim for basics). Feel free to send us an email if you want to sponsor.

Workshops

We’re searching for a better name for the workshop day. While it should contain workshops, we also want to allow ample space for people to meet and hack with each other. Tweet suggestions to RustFest or send us and email.

Tickets

Supporter tickets will go on sale soon. Tickets sales themselves will still wait a little. We’d like to wait for the first round of sponsorships and supporter ticket sales to end to make sure we have a good gauge of our budget. RustFest is a community conference, which means we want to keep it affordable. This in turn means we need a good estimate of our sponsoring budget before calculating ticket prices.