Hacktoberfest 2020 Participation - lets get started

This is why I started doing the hacktoberfest events, maybe you should too.

#Hacktoberfest , #Spoketoberfest , #IntegrationHub , #GitHub , #Digital Ocean , #Now Experience , #MVP

Hacktoberfest and ServiceNow Jace Benson

3 minute read

What is Hacktoberfest

Hacktoberfest is an event run by stewards of open source to encourage contributing to projects that are also open source.

Why participate in Hacktoberfest

  • The more able you have your community, the more that community can contribute.
  • When you have that, you can help any number of open source projects.
  • There’s a free t-shirt. We’re all very well paid, but this shirt will convince most of you.

Okay, now that your convinced (if you’re not see the third bullet, it’s, um enticing).
What kinds of contributions do you have to make for this?
GitHub focuses on “Quality contributions”. What does that mean? Does this solve a problem or issue on the project, sounds good to me. > Quantity is fun, quality is key” - Hacktoberfests Value #2

What is a quality pull request

I’d wager anything meaningful could be a quality pull request. That could be something as simple as cleaning up the CONTRIBUTORS.md file to something as complex as adding an integration to read the public Known Errors out of ServiceNow.

How did I get started

Why did I start doing the Hacktoberfest events? For me, it’s all about doing something, anything. Hacktoberfest started in 2013. I didn’t know about it until 2016. I’m pretty sure I got the shirt that year, but I can’t find the evidence.

Do you want to get more familiar with git? Do you want to learn something new? Great, nothing like Hacktoberfest to push you into something. That’s my take on it. Git can be confusing. Heck, I still have problems. I’d never have learned it without something to do.

I try learn something every October with this event. This year my focus is Now Experience Components.

How do you get started?

Find an open-source project you’d like to contribute to. I know I’ve had some.

Here’s a short list of projects I’d suggest looking at;

If none of those stand out, here’s the link to issues from the official site

What does it typically look like

Most projects follow the “GitHub Flow”. - Find an issue, comment on it to claim it. - Fork the repository - Clone the repository - Create a branch - Make the changes to address the issue - Commit the changes to your fork’s branch - Push your changes to your fork’s branch - Open a Pull Request - Answer questions by the project maintainer and help where you can to get the work accepted

That seems like a lot but really it isn’t that much. Generally, that’s as complicated as it gets.

I’d love to see more folks contribute in the groups I watch. (I’m looking at 8000 strong from SNDevs Slack, and you smaller Discord community).

There’s great content on Dev.to about starting from nothing.

Go contribute!

If you’re still unsure or want more information on how to get started, head on over to the #hacktoberfest channel on sndevs.


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