My Rust Nation 2024
I’ve finally had a chance to pause after getting back from London. An immeasurable thank you to Ernest Kissiedu for the invitation to present.
Because I suck at selfies, but selfies are extremely popular, here is a selfie of me not looking at the camera:
A real business
Seeing my logo next to many others definitely made me take a breath and realise that I have created something meaningful. So many people have supported Tim Clicks, via financial contributions and positive messages during difficult times.
For people who have been following me for a while will know that my Rust consultancy, Accelerant, is less than a year old.
I decided to use the flagship Tim Clicks brand as the logo and it looks amazing. The branding work for Tim Clicks is all done by John at Underscorefunk Design and I recommend them wherever I can.
The conference began for me before the conference
If you’re interested in podcasts, you should consider listening to the recording of the Twitter Space that I recorded with Ernest in the lead up to the event. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to chat about Rust and the opportunity that Rust offers the world:
Four talks in a week (including a full day workshop)
Rust London
Giving an impromptu lightning talk at Rust London was a fun highlight. I was able to rehearse a few lines from my talk, which was a nice bonus.
Rust in Enterprise workshop
I wasn’t too sure what to expect when Ernest pitched the idea of hosting a workshop for the conference. I was already quite busy and overworked. In the end, it was a really incredible day.
ALTPhoto: Rust Nation via LinkedIn.
Talk: Unwrapping Unsafe
I spent weeks on this. Possibly more than 100 hours of research. After all of that time though, I decided to change the focus of talk radically to focus on explaining unsafe for the audience. It’s strange to see that condensed down to 30 minutes or so. But there’s bound to be another talk or two on this topic in the future.
Talk: 4 levels of error handling in Rust
Unfortunately, a speaker had to pull out. I offered to step in and am quite happy with the result.
The conversations are the best part
The talks are amazing, but the best part of a tech conference is the ability to shake hands. It was also really wonderful to connect with many people who I have only met online.
Possibly one of the most exciting points was to agree to start a partnership with Ben Wishovich, co-maintainer of Leptos, to provide full stack web development to clients.
Reflecting on a year
[Content warning: mental illness]
Flying home, I spent lots of time writing in my diary. Lots of that time spent coming back to my guilt at missing many deadlines for projects, such as my in-progress courses, which are very late. Suicidal thoughts have been a near-constant part of my background noise as an adult, and that background noise is much louder when I only have my own head to listen to.
Travel also imposes a large cost on my kids. I am almost constantly worried about my impact that my trips have on my girls. But I also know that we have lots of wonderful time together. I tend to work from home most the the time as well, which means that I get to spend more time with them than most Dads.
Connecting with me
I want to keep the discussions going, whether that means helping you with Rust or something else. Here are a few links:
- Join my Discord server, CLICKS LOUNGE. This is the best way to keep a conversation going.
- Find me on LinkedIn. If you would like to add me as a connection though, please send me a note rather than sending an anonymous request.
- Support me on Patreon.
At some point, I would like to expand this into a fuller post but I’ve promised myself to time-box this one and make progress on some other tasks.
Wishing you all the best!