Mara Bos

At the tram stop just now, right next to some of the best bicycle infrastructure you'll ever see, an American tourist came to me to ask me if the Dutch government was doing anything about "this terrible bicycle problem" we have in the Netherlands. 🙃

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@Mara/115286989399468047 Exactly one year ago I stepped down from my main responsibilities in the Rust project, because of burnout. Today, a year later, I employ about a dozen full-time Rust maintainers through Hexcat and RustNL. I'm not doing much technical work anymore, but this people stuff is also pretty fun and motivating. For a while, my plan was actually to fully step down from my involvement in Rust at the end of the Rust All Hands this year, but I'm glad I didn't do that. I'm really happy I found something that feels energizing again rather than draining. Very curious to see where things will be in a year from now.

Can't wait for this new release. 🎮

Now I can finally commit Rust code crimes legally. 😌

Imagine organizing a Rust conference and having zero women on stage. That's just embarrasing. https://oxidizeconf.com/

I feel so powerful now, being able to inflict the wonders of Comic Sans onto every single object in my house.

I was asked recently about the cost of running a (#rustlang) conference and why the ticket prices are what they are. We figured we can just publicly share the numbers for RustWeek, in the name of #transparency. :) RustWeek has many subevents (conference, hackathon, unconference, workshops, Rust All Hands, etc.), but I've tried to extract just the two day conference part of RustWeek 2026: Venue rent: € ~50k Lunch, snacks, drinks two full days: € ~130k (incl. catering services and exclusive access to 1000 person restaurant all day) A/V services: € ~30k (incl. livestreaming, professionals operating the cameras/microphones/screens in the rooms, editing the recordings, etc.) Stuff we set up at the venue: € ~20k (sponsor booths, entertainment, banners, stickers, wifi, etc.) Travel compenstation for speakers: € ~10k External services: € ~25k (accounting, registration & payment, event management, insurance, etc.) Miscelaneous: € ~15k This adds up to roughly € 280k for just the two conference days. (The total for all of RustWeek is ~€ 400k.) The money we get from sponsors covers roughly half of the costs. The other half has to be covered by tickets. We are currently the biggest Rust conference with 850+ attendees. We give free tickets to all the speakers and volunteers, which is almost a hundred people total. The sponsor packages also include a total of roughly 100 tickets. That leaves ~650 sold tickets. Those are roughly 250 corporate tickets (~410 euro after tax), 300 individual tickets (~190 euro after tax), and 100 student tickets (~30 euro after tax). Accounting for the various discounts (early bird, discount codes, etc.) and overhead, this leaves us with roughly 140k. Those student tickets are sold at a significant loss, but it's very important to us to not just run this conference for those with a well paid job. Setting the ticket prices is very tricky, because you have to set them a year in advance, before you know what amount of sponsorship to expect. We only find out *after* the event if we guessed correctly or if we ran at a loss. This year, we made a (very small) profit, which we'll spend on our Rust Maintainers Team: https://rustnl.org/maintainers/

About to get started on a very fun weekend project. :D

More serously, this machine is magic. It somehow cuts wood without charring the edges?

Look at how precise this thing is. Unbelievable.

Metal business cards!

@Florapis@toot.wales Yeah I have one of those too. I love labeling random objects.

@chandlerc@hachyderm.io It's a xTool F2 Ultra UV. Very neat machine. Highly recommend.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@Mara/115373191721487331 Half a year later, I'm *very* excited to report that we got initial funding and have hired our first Rust maintainers! RustNL's Rust Maintainers Team now has two full time maintainers, one intern, and five part-time maintainers, now stably employed to continue their invaluable maintenance work that is crucial for Rust’s long-term sustainability. https://rustnl.org/maintainers/

I also reused two posters that I designed last year: 8. "Box" (Back to the Future)

And for those of you who can't come to Utrecht: In each track we have a professional A/V team handling the audio, camera feeds and slides, so that all RustWeek talks are recorded and livestreamed, for free! 💛 You don't even need a ticket: the livestreams will be broadcasted publicly on YouTube. ✨

"Let's Encrypt has resumed issuance." 😌

Even in the cinema we weren't playing a video file or something. That was just Firefox in full screen playing this live, with the hdmi directly hooked up to cinema system. (Which felt pretty cool. It's not every day you get to hook your laptop up to the second largest screen in the country!)

My favorite part of the credits roll was the very last part, where we announced the dates and location for RustWeek 2027 perfectly in sync with the last "bang" of the audio. At that same time, the info screens downstairs in the cinema all switched to displaying the same information, with a QR code. We had only decided to do this a week before. Only on Monday of RustWeek we got the confirmation that the venues are actually available during those dates. And we only decided on the ticket prices and set up the 2027 website and ticket shop a few hours before the credits rolled. All just in time. 😅✨

Less than two weeks left! Tickets are selling rapidly, make sure to get yours before they sell out! https://2026.rustweek.org/ If you aren't convinced yet, look at how cute our conference badges are: 🦀

And here are all the posters of last year, if you missed those: https://hachyderm.io/@Mara/114502378870262985

It's finally time to announce the opening talk of the RustWeek 2026 main track! https://2026.rustweek.org/talks/taylor/ Don't forget to buy your tickets, before they run out!

I can't believe it's already been two weeks.

I wasn't originally planning to do it all with html & css. This was just supposed to be a mock up before I was going to figure out how to use some kind of animation software. But then I realized that a few css animations and an element were all I needed to finish this little side project. :D

Here are all the PDFs, if you want to print them yourself! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jG5IzA_mLBvXCY5W6Ro6vwyB22Xx9Oxe

For those of you watching RustWeek from home: our schedule now supports switching timezones between the conference timezone and your own timezone! 🕣 It'll also use 12-hour or 24-hour time depending on your locale settings. ✨ https://2026.rustweek.org/schedule/tuesday/ See you next week! 💛

@arch@floofy.tech Nope, it doesn't really heat up much of the material. UV lasers are magic.

@colinstu@birdbutt.com Nope, didn't smell anything. UV lasers are magic, they barely burn the material.

@amy@sk.girlthi.ng Hmmm, tempting, but not sure how I feel about operating a class 4 laser in space with a thousand people. 😅

@RichiH@chaos.social It's a xTool F2 Ultra UV. Pretty neat machine.

@acb@mastodon.social Thanks! Designed it myself. 😊

@shine@gts.churanova.eu Yeah, time to get started on organizing it! 😨😄

@jhostert@mathstodon.xyz Yes! Ralf sent me a picture of it a few days ago. Very happy this poster ended up there. :)

@goedelchen Yeah sure, we'll just bribe the weather man again, like last year. ☀️

@hypha@cafe.mycelium.locahlo.st Yess! :D