Newsletter

[ozkriff]

It would be great to start a (monthly?) newsletter for summarizing what interesting stuff happens in the rust gamedev ecosystem.

Examples of newsletters from other rust WGs:

• https://rust-embedded.github.io/blog
• https://rustwasm.github.io

Related to rust-gamedev/wg#10 ("Create a rust-gamedev.github.io site")

[aclysma]

I think this is an interesting idea. To be successful, I think it needs to be done in a way that doesn't put a bunch of work on one person. (For ease of writing I'm going to assume we do it once per month, but that's TBD.)

One potential way to do it:

• Add a directory in this repo for "This Month in Rust Gamedev"
• Every month, add a new markdown file with a basic skeleton (similar to the this week in rust)
• Accept pull requests on that document
• Do a final cleanup pass and publish it.. somewhere? Add notices on twitter, reddit, etc.
• Add an empty template for next month's and start accepting pull requests on that for the next one

Would it be wroth trying this as a test run for a couple months to see how it goes?

[AlexEne]

I really need some help with rust-gamedev/wg#10 :)
I called it out in all meetings but the purpose of that task is exactly this or at least it can do what rustawsm and embedded groups do so that being said, I'd be happy for some pull requests to prettify the site + an initial post :D

[ozkriff]

@aclysma

To be successful, I think it needs to be done in a way that doesn't put a bunch of work on one person.

Definitely.

Accept pull requests on that document

Depending on how many people will participate in filling the newsletter (and how often will they do it), PRs may be a too burdensome way of organizing this work.

Maybe we can try using some sort of online collaborative markdown editor (for the initial stages of the draft at least)? For example, https://hackmd.io/ seems to fit for the task, I guess (though I haven't used it for anything serious yet).

Add a directory in this repo for "This Month in Rust Gamedev"

This may create a too big "notification noise" for other users of this repo. If we decide to go "PRs way", I belive we need to create another repo for this.

[ozkriff]

Thought about newsletter's structure: one thing I really want a rust gamedev newsletter to have is lots of images/gifs/embedded videos from the mentioned projects. Games and game-related libraries usually have some nice visual stuff to show.

[AlexEne]

So the site is on another repo. You can open PRs directly for the website repo.
I am slightly confused what you mean by the comment above.
This issue probably would be better moved there actually. I moved it

[ozkriff]

I finally finished a draft/"vertical slice" of a newsletter as I see it (based on @aclysma's template). What do you think about the structure and presentation?

https://gist.github.com/ozkriff/9383de161eb2455cf7d1fda65cdc3696

If nobody objects I'll make a WIP PR tomorrow (or in a few days).

So the site is on another repo. You can open PRs directly for the website repo.

Hmm, yep, notification noise isn't an issue because of the separate repo so, yeah, it's better to stick to PRs workflow then.

[jeffvandyke]

I just came from Newsletter #1 - very nice! I think some folks (including me) would appreciate a email subscription option like This Week In Rust does (twitter and reddit updates don't show up in my inbox). Perhaps whatever email service they use could be adopted for rust-gamedev?

[17cupsofcoffee]

They apparently use MailChimp for this - their free plan only allows up to 2000 subscribers, however, and they already surpassed that in 2016, so they must be on one of the paid ones.

I think this is definitely a good idea, but we'd need to either find a service with a more generous free plan and/or figure out a plan for how it'd be paid for.

[hadronized]

That makes me think I should really have an RSS stream on my website… I need to check how to do that.