RustConf 2026: Full Schedule

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08:00 EDT

Registration and Badge Pickup

Tuesday September 8, 2026 08:00 - 18:00 EDT

Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Tuesday September 8, 2026 08:00 - 18:00 EDT
Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Registration

09:00 EDT

Workshop 1: Practical Actor-Based Concurrency in Async Rust (Additional Registration Required)

Tuesday September 8, 2026 09:00 - 12:30 EDT

Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Asynchronous Rust makes it possible to build highly concurrent systems—but structuring shared state correctly remains one of the most common sources of complexity for intermediate Rust developers. Even when code compiles, subtle contention, accidental locking across `.await`, and `Send + Sync` constraints can make larger systems difficult to reason about.
This workshop explores actor-based design as a practical architectural pattern for structuring async applications in Rust. Rather than sharing mutable state, actors encapsulate ownership behind message-driven boundaries, simplifying reasoning about concurrency, backpressure, and failure handling.

Workshops are optional add-ons for in-person attendees only and are not included in RustConf tickets. Workshop tickets can be purchased for an additional fee.

Speakers

Herbert Wolverson

Rust Trainer, Ardan Labs

Herbert is the author of Hands-on Rust, Rust Brain Teasers and the Rust Roguelike Tutorial. Herbert teaches Rust with Ardan Labs, from zero-to-hero.

Tuesday September 8, 2026 09:00 - 12:30 EDT
Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Workshops

09:00 EDT

Workshop 2: Hello, Kernel! Linux Driver Development in Rust - Part 1 (Additional Registration Required)

Tuesday September 8, 2026 09:00 - 12:30 EDT

Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Rust is entering the Linux kernel, bringing memory safety and modern tooling to low-level systems programming. In this hands-on workshop, attendees will learn how to build a Linux kernel with Rust support enabled, set up a complete development environment targeting both x86-64 and aarch64, and write a practical Rust-based misc device driver. We’ll explore kernel-space inter-process communication and the use of background tasks for asynchronous work, giving participants a concrete, end-to-end understanding of how Rust can be used to develop real Linux drivers today.

Workshops are optional add-ons for in-person attendees only and are not included in RustConf tickets. Workshop tickets can be purchased for an additional fee.

Speakers

Alexandru Radovici

Assistant Professor, Politehnica University of Bucharest

Alexandru Radovici is an Associate Professor at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, where he introduced the first Rust-based embedded systems development course. He has been contributing to Tock for almost six years and has also founded and run several companies delivering industrial-grade... Read More →

Tuesday September 8, 2026 09:00 - 12:30 EDT
Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Workshops

09:00 EDT

Workshop 3: Using Advent of Code as an FFI Playground (Additional Registration Required)

Tuesday September 8, 2026 09:00 - 12:30 EDT

Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Using Advent of Code (AoC) puzzles as the substrate, participants build a working Rust FFI library from scratch, wrapping a real AoC solution in a C glue layer and calling it from multiple different target languages. By the end of the workshop, attendees leave with a working multi-language project, a replicable methodology, and hands-on intuition for the pitfalls that make production FFI hard.
AoC problems are uniquely well-suited for FFI practice because they have diverse input/output types (primitives, strings, iterators), a motivating narrative that makes repetition feel worthwhile, no production baggage — you can break things freely — and progressively increasing complexity across 12-25 days of problems each year. Unlike algorithm-focused competitive programming, this approach uses AoC’s rich problem variety to stress-test real cross-platform FFI patterns: string encoding mismatches between Java and Swift, async model incompatibilities, and the lowest-common-denominator constraints that make production FFI viable.

Workshops are optional add-ons for in-person attendees only and are not included in RustConf tickets. Workshop tickets can be purchased for an additional fee.

Speakers

Alyssa Evans

Staff Software Engineer, Ditto

Alyssa Evans is a Staff Engineer specializing in production Rust FFI across Swift, Android/Java, and other target platforms. Less than two years after first writing Rust, she was hired for her FFI expertise at Ditto, a company with 5+ years of production Rust SDK experience. Her work... Read More →

Tuesday September 8, 2026 09:00 - 12:30 EDT
Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Workshops

13:30 EDT

Workshop 4: C→Rust, Beyond the Basics (Additional Registration Required)

Tuesday September 8, 2026 13:30 - 17:00 EDT

Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Rewriting a C codebase in Rust isn’t a big bang: it’s a marathon, where you execute a series of small, deliberate steps. This workshop teaches you how to do it incrementally, based on hard-won lessons from migrating production C codebases over to Rust.
We’ll start with FFI fundamentals (repr(C), bindgen, cbindgen), move to writing correct extern “C” interfaces, then work through a 4-step module rewrite process: encapsulate, rewrite, bridge, swap. Along the way, we’ll cover the pitfalls (mixed allocators, string encoding, performance overhead) and some of the high-level strategies you can use when planning out a large-scale migration. There will be hands-on exercises at each stage.

Workshops are optional add-ons for in-person attendees only and are not included in RustConf tickets. Workshop tickets can be purchased for an additional fee.

Speakers

Luca Palmieri

Principal Engineering Consultant, Mainmatter

Luca Palmieri builds technology products for a living. His current focus is on backend development, software architecture and the Rust programming language.
He currently works at MainMatter as a Principal Engineering Consultant. He partners with teams across the industry to make s... Read More →

Tuesday September 8, 2026 13:30 - 17:00 EDT
Palais des Congrès de Montréal

Workshops

13:30 EDT

Workshop 5: Hello, Kernel! Linux Driver Development in Rust - Part 2 (Additional Registration Required)

Tuesday September 8, 2026 13:30 - 17:00 EDT

Palais des Congrès de Montréal

This workshop is an extension to “Hello, Kernel! Linux Driver Development in Rust – Part 1”. We aim to go beyond purely software-based examples by introducing embedded devices connected over USB. This will allow participants to experiment with Rust driver development against real, external hardware, and better understand how Rust fits into common kernel subsystems used in practice.
These exercises will cover the basics of device probing, binding a driver to a USB device, and handling simple data transfers, all while leveraging Rust-for-Linux abstractions to maintain safety and clarity. The goal is not to dive into complex USB internals, but to provide a practical, approachable introduction to USB driver development.

Workshops are optional add-ons for in-person attendees only and are not included in RustConf tickets. Workshop tickets can be purchased for an additional fee.

Speakers