---
date: 2025-05-08
url: https://hackmd.io/Zz-YOdDXRsKLghQDZJOx-w
---

# 2025-05-08

## Attending

People: nikomatsakis, Josh, TC, Ernest Kissiedu, Jon Bauman, Nadri, Enow Scott

## Agenda

* Status updates
* What we've done so far
* RustWeek plans
* Post RustWeek perhaps

## Status updates

* NM: I had a few conversations which were recorded
* JB: Tried to read survey responses to get a sense of who might be interesting for C++ interop
* EK: Overlaps with conversations you had with Scott, we had a conversation yesterday nailing down the cohort that would be good to talk to on a community level. EK, Scott + Mordecai nailed down the individuals from Rust Africa association that would give the most insight.
* Nailed down the focus that it won't be in the same line as the individual interviews that folks are having.
* Bigger scope focusing on how ecosystems are managing themselves, e.g., Nigerian ecosystem and how it contracts to the South African ecosystem.
* Same thing for South America, Hernan Gonzalez has been reinvigorating folks over there and partnering up with people from Peru.
* Today I had a talk with two people from Rust Bangalore that would be a Rust India cohort, quite eager to speak.
* Going to work on looping in some folks from Hydrabad, Delhi, and Mumbai, which would be a group of people you can talk in one bunch.
* I left them know that this won't be happening until the end of the month. I'll schedule them once we are all back from Rust Week, lot of movement on my end.
* We can get into nailing down the format. I've said probably somewhere between a panel and round-table in a more informal flow. If there is a specific way we want to format this conversation, I'm here for it.
* JT: Easier to do 20 interviews than to schedule 1.
* NM: I blocked out some 1h to 2h blocks here and there and created a calendly targeting those specific times.
* TC: What we did for program management interviews is that Joel and I basically wrote off our Thursdays and tightly stacked a large number of interviews.
* TC: I'm here in a supporting capacity. If you need anything from me, please ask. The main reason I'm here is because we are doing a number of things on program management, and I'm keeping visibility on them. The person we hired to support us on this, Tomas, is going to be onboarding in June, and my focus will be on getting him involved in the Project and in program management activities like this one.
* Nadri: Same as Josh. Time zone doesn't help.
* Did you do the 3-way interviews?
* Did one.
* Scott: Ernest summarized the round table for folks from West Africa. Niko has been getting developer perspective. How long you've been using Rust and stuff like that. We're coming up with the community leaders who can also give their owns ideas about how they started Rust meetups in their local communities, how they're managing it, stuff like that.

## What we've done and learned so far

* Scheduling is hard
* Niko has been noticing that getting too specifics is hard
* I am thinking about pivoting to more specific questions like "what was the last thing you found hard"

NM: I'd like to be able to categorize the sources of friction. Some things I have found interesting include a conversation about how learning Rust requires you to learn a lot of things upfront. Another was about how the use of AI might help to lower the learning curve. I'd like to hear actionable things that are specific. I'm curious to hear the Rust Week exercises.

EK: One thing that I wanted to make a point is that it may be you asking these questions that can have overheard. Oh my god, I'm talking to Niko. There's a coaxing and almost pulling it out. Make people really feel settled to rag on the language if they want to, not feel they're offending you.

NM: I've certainly tried to sidestep that but I think it suggests a good reason to have more people doing interviews.

TC: The other thing is the old quote/cliche, "if I'd asked them what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse".

NM: Ideally I'd be asking them more about the sources of friction.

TC: Yeah, right, we want to know what problems they're trying to solve.

NM: Holly said the same thing about if people know who their interviewer is

TC: You can end up cueing people, and by cueing them on friction, maybe that's pushing them in the wrong direction. Imagine I'm using Rust as a company and C/C++ interop is the thing we're struggling the most with. If the big priority for me has to do with interop then that's what you want to be talking about, not my little frictions and frustrations. I've lived those for ten years; I can probably live with them a bit longer.

JT: I think it can go both ways. Knowing who the interviewer is there is a certain degree to which it can affect the interview result but it *is* the case that if people genuinely feel their input is useful and valuable, and they know they are talking to the right person about being able to get those changes acted upon, that is one potential way to get folks talking, to give them the impression that this input will actually affect change. I don't know if anybody else has read this specifically, I hate the name of it, but I don't know another thing like it, has anyone seen the book "the mom test"? It's about how you'd ask your mom for feedback, you don't ask directly for feedback, you ask the kinds of questions, what was the previous experience you had? You don't ask them directly what's their problem, their solution, talk about their experiences.

NM: Yeah, makes sense, I think the last person I was talking to, I could've asked e.g. "tell me about some of the questions you asked the last time you were teaching someone".

## RustWeek

* Mara has reserved a room on Thu at I think 10am
* I want to say
* Note: Thursday is the pre-all-hands, and has many things going on for various people (e.g. interop discussions)
* Niko plans to talk on the project track
* last slot on Wed at 5pm
* Niko plans to talk on the industry
* Interviews
* Conference participants during
* Project members during All Hands