# UK and Ireland Rust Community Document

## meetup groups contacts:
* Cambridge
* [Meetup page](https://www.meetup.com/Cambridge-Rust-Meetup/)
Organizers:
* John 07793502428, johnchildren on twitter/github
* Cardiff
* Ciara 07870908486,
* [e-mail]
* twitter @rustcpp_cardiff
* Edinburgh
* London
* [Meetup page](https://www.meetup.com/Rust-London-User-Group/) / [Twitter profile](https://twitter.com/RustLdnUsers) / [GitHub org](https://github.com/rust-ldn)
Organizers:
* Ernest 07534343053, @rustldnusers on twitter, ernestkissiedu on github,
* Giles 07734265675, gilescope on twitter/github/reddit
* Luca Palmieri 07578247905 [@algo_luca](https://twitter.com/algo_luca) / [LukeMathWalker](https://github.com/lukemathwalker) / [e-mail]
* Manchester
* [Meetup page](https://www.meetup.com/rust-manchester/) / [Twitter profile](https://twitter.com/rustmanchester)
* Organisers
* James Fielder, @james_fielder on twitter, [e-mail]
* Andy Lowry, @azd_lowry on twitter, [e-mail]
* Jame Cunliffe, [e-mail]
* Meetup email: [e-mail]
* Oxford

<br>

## Ways to hussle up speakers:
* DM on twitter;
* Engage with project maintainers - most people are extremely flattered to be "head-hunted" to talk about their side-projects;
* Check back with speakers from a year ago - they may have fleshed out their project / be on something new and want to shout about it.

## Lightning talks:
Some large percentage of devs are scared of public speaking. Lightning talks are a great way for them to get some experience AND a great way for the audience to learn more stuff faster.
Pre-recorded talks can also help.

## Who Can We Reach Out To Speak At Our Respective Events?
* David Haig on rust microcontroler projects (friend of Giles').
* David Hewitt (oxford)- would love to get a talk on pyo3: maybe a showcase of what difference a year makes comparing it to 1 year ago? (friend of Giles)
* Would love to hear a talk from someone in Arm?
* http://github.com/teXitoi/keyberon - he's french but while we are online would love to get a talk about his keyboard firmware and encourage everyone to whip out a soldering iron for the first time in their lives and make a rusty lockdown keyboard. (if giles can follow his instructions anyone can do it)
* Peeps from the [Rust ML Working Group](https://github.com/rust-ml/wg) - reach out to them on Zulip.
* I (Luca Palmieri) have a few folks at TrueLayer with little public speaking experience who have stuff to talk about and would love to start out with small events. Happy to be engaged as a speaker myself as well.

## How did rust london get some nice designs?
http://github.com/uracreative did them for us. They only work with open source projectd typically so fairly reasonable prices. (They did rustfest.global)

## Hosting tips

* Assume 50% will turn up.
* You don't need to bribe them with corporate sponsored pizza and beer but they never say no if it happens.

## Online hosting tips
* group questions at the end of all the talks in a panel so that people stay at the end and post-mingle.
* (what's a good question app/website to manage audience wuestions?)
* Great online platforms for meetups:
** The cpp team used one that was great (if pricy) as you sat at virtual tables and got to have a chat with 4-5 others but the name escapes me? Remo I think! - (Giles thought that was smashing).

## pitching levels

* Indicate if it's an easy / intermediate / hard mode talk
* Be really welcoming of beginners - you may be the only rust devs they know.
* Group talks with with themes where you can as this drives bigger audiences.

## Videos
* if you can video the talk that's great - let's get these on youtube. rust london now has a channel with a fair few on. Only devoted rust fans will watch them but that's fine.

## Uk wide events
* Let's colab and do joint meetups. Rust ldn did one with the c++ group - they hosted one, we hosted the other and there was lots of mingling.

## shameless exercism.io plug
Giles for the last few months has started mentoring on the rust track with exercism.io - its an open source platform for learning languages. If you want to take your rust to the next level then try mentoring a little on it - there are always more demand than supply and it's a great way to help rust newcomers from all around the globe.
(I would also advocate it as a great way for newcomers to get stuck into rust as they get real people helping them become idiomatic. I have not seen any other platform that does it this way.)

## shameless book plug
* http://zero2prod.com

## shameless testnet testing plug
* todo