Growing with our users: How the Rust Project is reshaping our communication
RustNLGrowing with our users: How the Rust Project is reshaping our communication by Jack Huey and Niko Matsakis. Over the past fifteen years, Rust has grown from a small project used by Mozilla and few others, to being used by millions of developers. But our communication patterns haven't scaled well with that growth. In this talk, we'll present some of the initiatives that the Rust Project is undertaking, and participating in, in order to reshape the way we listen to and collaborate with our users. Structured efforts like the Vision Doc and User Research teams, the Project Goals process, and the Content Team, as well as ongoing collaborations such as with the Rust for Linux and Rust for CPython projects, each serve as tools to and lessons in how to communicate with and listen more effectively to our users. About Jack Huey (he/him): Jack Huey has been contributing to the Rust Project since 2019 and currently serves many roles, including co-leading the Types and Vision Doc teams, formerly acting as a leadership council representative, and currently acting as a Project Director. His passion in Rust is type system design and experimentation, but spends signficant time on Project health and governance. - git: https://github.com/jackh726 - linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-huey-phd/ About Niko Matsakis (he/him): Co-lead Rust vision doc & Language team, Sr. Principal Engineer at Amazon - git: https://github.com/nikomatsakis - bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nikomatsakis.com - linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-matsakis-615614/ - website: https://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/ This talk was given at RustWeek 2026 as part of the Main track on Tuesday 19 May. You can find a playlist of all talks in this track at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Q1w7Ff68DCvQXADosMcF0aMvLhGXU4S, and a playlist of all RustWeek 2026 talks at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Q1w7Ff68DBpmF38rcIAf8Z9Gj2TnlgM For information about RustWeek 2027, go to https://2027.rustweek.org. We hope to see you there!