Add Cross the Streams: Rust Foundation & Rust Project blog

Submitting on behalf of Lori Lorusso, Rust Foundation's Director of Outreach.

Author: tomassedovic

content/inside-rust/cross-the-streams-rust-foundation-rust-project.md

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+path = "inside-rust/9999/12/31/cross-the-streams-rust-foundation--rust-project"
+title = "Cross the Streams: Rust Foundation & Rust Project"
+authors = ["Lori Lorusso"]
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+For those of you who are fans of the original Ghostbusters movie the phrase “Who you gonna call? (Ghostbusters),” may be the first thing you think of but I want to focus on the line said by Dr. Peter Venkman, played by the one and only Bill Murray, “Cross the streams!” Originally the Ghostbusters were told “Don’t cross the streams,” or they would have a total cataclysmic event but at the end of the movie to defeat Gozar they needed to risk everything by crossing the streams and it worked, Gozar was annihilated and the Ghostbusters (and NYC) survived. You may be thinking what does this have to do with the Rust Foundation or the Rust Project? Don’t worry, I got you!
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+As the [Director of Outreach](https://rustfoundation.org/media/welcoming-lori-lorusso-the-rust-foundations-new-director-of-outreach/) my job is twofold: providing both inreach into the project and outreach to the larger tech community and users of Rust. As part of my inreach function I have the privilege to work with members of the Rust Project, sitting in a variety of meetings to find out the Rust Project’s needs and find opportunities for the Foundation to support the project. I am working with the Project Directors and the Leadership Council as a liaison to the Foundation and a resource for attracting funds for the Project to allocate via the Project Priorities Budget, and I will be working with Project leadership to retool the Project Grant Program so it can better serve the Project.
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+Along similar lines is the outreach component of my role - to work with the broader tech community to bring them to the Rust Foundation and Rust Project's tables. Several very popular open source projects have integral parts built in Rust including [Valkey](https://valkey.io/), housed at the Linux Foundation, [bootc](https://bootc-dev.github.io/), [Linkerd](https://linkerd.io/), and [OpenEBS](https://openebs.io/) which are a part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). These projects utilize Rust but may or may not have formal ties to the Rust Project itself or the Foundation. My goal is to go outside of the Foundation and find more projects like the ones previously mentioned and introduce them to various members of the Rust Project so they can share their experiences coding in Rust and create not only a feedback loop as end users but build a relationship with the project potentially becoming members of the Project themselves and the Foundation. The more we can share how Rust is being used and the resources available to support that use from the Foundation and/or the Project the better.
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+All of this sounds great but how does it relate to “Crossing the streams?” I’m very excited to say that I have in fact ‘crossed the streams’ and am now a member of the Rust Project’s newly formed [Content Team](https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/launching-pad#team-content) which in turn has made me a member of the Rust Project itself! Our team consists of TC, Pete LeVasseur, pinkhatbeard, Xander Cesari, Tyler Mandry, and myself. Our first journey into content creation will be at RustConf where we will be sitting down and interviewing speakers and notables in the Rust Project to post on the [Rust blog](https://blog.rust-lang.org/), YouTube, and other online venues. Being a part of this team was the icing on the cake for my new role. Being a member of the Content Team gives me the opportunity to contribute directly to the work of the Project while having "insider access" to the Rust Project's ecosystem. We get to share not only "how the sausage is made", but we get to tell the stories of maintainers, contributors, and end users while showcasing how the work being done in the Project impacts the future of the language and its widespread adoption across many industries.
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+The TL;DR (too late) is that by crossing the streams between my job at the Foundation and my volunteer position with the Rust Project Content Team I am hoping that we are setting ourselves up for success. To me success looks like developing a clearer understanding of the Foundation’s role in supporting the Project, improving communication between the Project and the Foundation as we work together to generate and execute on solutions to obstacles facing the Project, and telling the stories of end users and other projects that are using Rust to advance the open source economy and ecosphere. If you want to chat you can find me on Zulip!