From now on you can buy Supporter Tickets to RustFest Zürich! Secure your place and make the conference more awesome! Our diversity ticket & sponsorship applications are also open now for helping people from underrepresented groups attend RustFest. Please consider applying, or supporting the initiative by making a donation to our diversity support pool.

We have opened applications for free diversity tickets and travel sponsorship at diversitytickets.org, if you are a member of an underrepresented group and would like to visit RustFest this fall, please consider applying. Applications remain open until midnight of Monday, August 14 anywhere in the world (all timezones). Please head to diversitytickets.org for details, and feel free to email us at diversity@rustfest.eu if you have any questions.

Travel & accommodation support for awardees

Besides free conference tickets we are able to offer support for expenses related to the conference (including travel, accommodation, visa fees, etc.) to applicants who request these. Please let us know in your application what kind of support would you need to attend RustFest, and we’ll try our best to help you. Feel free to e-mail us with any questions, and check the announcement at diversitytickets.org for details.

Diversity support pool donations

All 15 diversity tickets offered at RustFest are already budgeted and are offered to eligible applicants. We understand, however, that just offering free tickets sometimes isn’t sufficient for someone to afford and be able to attend. For this reason, we try to provide every assistance (documentation, help with visas, childcare, etc.) and monetary (travel, accommodation support, visa fees etc.). As with every organization out there, our time and resources are equally limited. To offset this, we have created something called a “Diversity Sponsorship pool”.

Our Diversity Sponsorship pool is a monetary fund reserved for the sole purpose of enabling our diversity program’s awardees to attend and enjoy RustFest. Its initial budget is seeded by our sponsors and various other revenue streams (e.g. ticket sales), for Zürich this budget is 3,000 Euros. That, as you might imagine is very slim to be shared by 15 awardees, which is the point where you can help!

When buying your ticket you are able to contribute to our Diversity Sponsorship pool for donations. These are pay-what-you-want style donations that you can find in the RustFest ti.to ticket shop, and by buying them you support us in our mission to help more of our awardees afford enjoying RustFest with us.

Please note that contributing to this pool does not include conference access, they are not tickets. An actual conference ticket needs to be purchased for attending RustFest.

Any remaining donations/funds in the Diversity support pool that are not distributed at RustFest Zürich roll over and are added to the next RustFest’s support pool. These funds will never repurposed for anything else, but diversity support.

Supporter conference tickets

In a so-called “reverse early bird” fashion we are also releasing today our first batch of tickets that are called the Supporter Conference tickets. At RustFest we try to keep ticket prices to a minimum to make sure a wide range of people can afford buying them. This, as you might imagine limits our possibilities budget-wise, and to be able to provide (and afford) some non-essential services that would enhance our attendees’ experience, we had to make hard decisions. Some of these deemed “non-essential” services include talk recordings, live talk transcription, on-site childcare and conference T-shirts, in no particular order. Please note that non-essential here doesn’t mean we don’t think these features are important, but rather the fact that it is possible to have a conference without talk recordings – but e.g. not without a venue.

We welcome company sponsorships, but by buying the Supporter tickets anyone can contribute to these goals.

Supporter tickets are followed by Regular conference tickets in the following weeks. Regular tickets will be priced at 100 Euros, while Supporter tickets are exactly double that amount. We will also be offering discounted Student tickets for all attendees enrolled in schools or higher education institutions.

Mentoring (a.k.a “conference buddies”)

Our conference proposal mentoring is aimed at helping people to speak at RustFest. In addition, we are starting a “Conference buddies” program is modeled after Web Rebels’ program, and want to offer matching between an experienced/seasoned conference-goer and a newcomer for anyone who requests it to help them navigate RustFest and enjoy the conference more. This is completely voluntary and is offered to any attendee later on before the conference as a separate opt-in. If you are interested in this please stay tuned for more later!