Report and plans for 2024.04.16

This report was written on April 16, 2024 (See also the list of previous reports).

Overview

This is the first report after more than 2 years. I won't detail what happened in all that time. I'll focus on the "recent" things.

I started to learn Rust in June 2023 and posted about it for the first time On July 9, 2023 Learning Rust - after one month. I put together some plans with Rust, and one thing I wanted to do with this article is to revisit the plans and change direction if necessary.

Teaching Rust (and Python and git)

I was hoping to be able to teach Rust. I think I am ready, I even recorded several (partial) Rust courses in Hebrew.

I crated the Rust in Israel web site, found several Rust communities in Israel, but most of them are not active.

I gave one presentation at a Rust TLV meetup, but they have not organized more.

I organized two Zoom-base Rust Meetups in November and December 2023 and I've scheduled 2 more for April (in Zoom) and May (in person).

The war that started on October 7, 2023 did not help much either. Although I was rather lucky and noone from my close family got hurt, but I could hardly focus on the learning and on the work.

Although in the Rust TLV Meetup group there are 948 members, in the other Rust groups there are a lot less. I could hardly identify companies in Israel that use Rust.

I blogged a log about Rust on the Rust Maven site, but still, unless I share a link the regular vistor count is only 20-30/day. That's no traffic.

Helping companies move to Rust

This involves teaching and a few months of consulting. As far as I know there are very few local companies that use Rust, but there quite a few that are very good candidates. I just need to figure out how to get them interested in Rust and how will they know to come to me for help.

Open source projects - getting small sponsors

I am not too confident that I can get any substantial income for the development and maintenance of Open Source projects. Very few managed to do this and I doubt I'd be able to create a project that would attract sponsors. I have a number of small Open Source rust projects and there is the Rust Digger and the PyDigger that might be also interesting to continue. Then there is the Meet-OS project that got stuck back in January.

I spent most of my time trying to improve the Rust Digger and I think it went extremly slowly. Partially because of my lack of understanding of Rust, but I think I am wasting way too much time on "politics" and on the social networks.

Meet-OS

Basically and open source project where there can be clients - eg. companies wanting to find employees.

Personal blog posts

I replace the live web site by a static site on GitHub pages. I use mostly the same code to generate the site that I used to serve it. This needs more cleanup.

I created a blog about Israel in English and also about Israel in Hungarian.

LinkedIn

Number of followers:

  • Hebrew: 746 625 (+121) - I know I invited many
  • English: 557 (-)
  • Spanish: 160 (113) - How did this happen?

  • Hungarian: 14 (+3)

  • Perl: 847 (+41)

  • Python: 1,032 (+271) - I invited many
  • DevOps: 400 (+34)

  • Golang: 214 (+3)

  • Personal: 4,691 4,289 (+402)

Twitter

I primarily posted in my two main Twitter accounts.

Number of followers:

szabgab: 2,318 (-98) - Not surprising after I started to post pro-Israeli posts PerlWeekly: 2,703 (-99) - Maybe it was just a natural purge PerlMaven: 584 (+3) RustMaven: 21 (-)

I tried to use the Rust Maven account to share Rust related posts, but apparently I am not doing well as I hardly have any followers.

Instagram

A few months ago I started to post on Instagram on the Rust Maven account. There are now 61 followers. Not a lot of traction but better than on Twitter.

Perl Maven

I hardly post anything on Perl Maven.

Code Maven

I don't post much on Code Maven either.

Rust Maven

The Rust Maven is where I post a lot these days. There are 183 posts so far.

Perl Weekly

The Perl Weekly continues to lose followers.

YouTube

The number of followers on the various YouTube channels:

  • English: 3,073 (+663)
  • Hebrew: 512 (+70)
  • Spanish: 20 (+3)
  • Hungarian: 15 (+2)

Webinars and Meetups

Two Rust meetings are scheduled Code Mavens.

Sport

In the summer of 2022 I started playing Squash after some 15 years break. I have been play 2-3 times a week. I got actually a bit better.

Hiking

For a long time I hardly did any hiking.

Plans

Local

  • Organize Meetups in Israel: both in-person and in Zoom.
  • Find more companies in Isael that use Rust.
  • Build the local community.
  • Longer term plan: have a Rust conference in Israel in February-April 2025.
  • Keep recording the video course in Hebrew and keep sharing it via LinkedIn.
  • Mention Rust in my LinkedIn posts both on my personal profile and on the Hebrew LinkedIn group.

International

  • Keep working on the Rust Digger project.
  • Keep posting in LinekedIn and Facebook Rust groups and when possible also on Reddit.

  • Make sure to be included the in This week in Rust

  • Work on Meet-OS and start organizing events on that platform.

General

I need to find better ways to measure my progress so I won't feel constantly that I don't make progress.