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

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 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!