The tickets that aren't gifted tend to be paid by corporations using up their training budgets, and well-heeled consultant networkers rather than individual coders I suspect.

Can't you see it will be the best event ever for the same reason that this post is on the front page of HN? It's about Rust.

Usually it costs a lot because organizers expect companies to pay their staff to go there and "learn" stuff.

Milking people using rust professionally does not sound profitable.

It's also hard to justify to pay and go somewhere instead of just doing some livestream.