This post is going to be what I’m hoping to see in the community for this coming year in Rust. First, I’m going to tell you about my year in Rust!

This year was the first year I seriously wrote any Rust. I primarily had been focusing on Haskell over the last ~2 years. The first time I wrote any Rust was at RustConf at Rust Bridge in 2017 & had been casually following some discussion on Twitter.

In February 2018, the Boulder/Denver Rust Meetup rebooted! The meetup is what got me involved with the larger community. At the meetup I found out about a Junior Rust Developer gig! I had the opportunity to write Rust professionally! That was my first gig as a full time software developer. While it wasn’t perfect, it was an interesting experience. I’m now taking a sabbitical at the Recurse Center where I’m continuing to focus on writing Rust. This is all to say, I’m excited about Rust, but I’m still new here & I’m new to programming in general, I’d say.

Approximately 3 months after the reboot of the Boulder/Denver Rust Meetup, Pete Lyons asked if I would be interested in helping organize the meetup. I care a lot about community & bringing people together, so I said yes in the hopes that I could make a positive impact in this space.

This space has made an incredibly postive impact on me. I’d like to list the things that have made me really happy about the local Boulder/Denver Rust Meetup. Most of this credit belongs to Pete Lyons.

• consistency

  There is a meetup approximately every 6 weeks. The meetup switches between Denver & Boulder each month to have a location more convenient for different folks.

• friendliness

  People are willing to offer their time & expertise & will help people out when they ask. Some of the requests & offers I’ve seen have included:

  • asking for clarification on a particular Rust question
  • looking for work/announcements for hiring
  • offering to pair on a project

• welcoming space

  I feel like I belong here & I hope that’s the case for everyone else too.

Call to action for the Boulder/Denver Rust Meetup.

This might apply to other Rust meetups too.

Have a consistent beginner track talk lined up for each meetup

Why have a beginner track?

• There are lots of people just starting to learn Rust!

  Rust is new! It’s been stable for nearly 4 years now. That’s very young! It was first created in 2009 & a language that’s been around for almost 10 years is not a long time.

  Right now, I feel like this meetup group is a lot of hobbyists, folks that have been writing C/C++ code, working on embedded systems, working in other languages, & have been in software development for awhile. I think we could bring in more curious people if we could have talks & material directed at people just getting started. What do you wish you would’ve had someone teach you when you were first starting out?

• Physical, local meetups make getting involved in the larger Rust community easier.

  I’ve gotten a lot of people offering to pair on projects & share their knowledge. Without this meetup I don’t think that I’d be where I’m at with Rust.

• More people can feel like they belong & start contributing.

Beginner Track Talk Suggestions

Not sure where to get started with a beginner talk?

I have suggestions!

• Talk about Rust syntax or language semantics!
• Talk about your workflow, the process you use to write Rust!
• Talk about a crate you’ve used & show code examples about how you’ve used it!

This last suggestion has endless possibilities. Not only would you get to write a neat little code example, but you’d help familiarize your meetup group with the crate. Your presentation could also serve as documentation! This documentation could be passed to crate owners & help document the Rust ecosystem at large! I’m excited to hear what people come up with & perhaps see more docs for crates this year!

Make the meetup more accessible

I want to record the talks.

I want to make slides available beforehand, but at a minimum, after the meetup is over.

I want to ensure that venues are good & easy for people to access.

I want to focus on these action items because I think it will maximize access to the knowledge shared at these meetups & I think that’s really important, for people that have attended & would like to review material, as well as people that can’t show up, but are interested in the topic being presented on.

Call to action for all attendees.

• Offer talks

  If you are an expert on something talk about it! If you are poking around on a project & are excited about, talk about it!

  If you’ve found an interesting problem or are stuck on something, talk about it!

  Sharing what you’re learning & having other share what they know with you is what this space is for!

  You can also take some of the “beginner talk” ideas from earlier and make a talk with one of those!

• Offer mentorship
  • Offer pairing on your project with newcomers
  • Offer pairing on a project they are working on.

• Offer to help

  If you see that your meetup organizer needs something & you can help out, I’m sure they would appreciate a helping hand. A meetup is a meant to be a place where we come together & share positive, exciting things with one another. If you can help make that the primary focus when we all get together, I can guarantee you that the organizer will appreciate it.

Thank you to all the speakers this year!

We had a lot of amazing talks this year! I’d like to list the speakers at the Boulder/Denver Rust Meetup this year!

Thank you so much for your time & energy! Your talks made this meetup amazing!

• Alan Somers
• Andrew Useckas
• Andy Grove
• Chris Krycho
• Danny Browning
• David Simmons
• J Haigh
• Joel Dice
• Nathan Sobo
• Paul Hummer
• Pete Lyons
• Stuart Small
• Tristan Miller