Amy’s Kapers

Hacktoberfest 2020

To say this year has been strange is an understatement, and it’s terrifying to realise that October is already upon us! To me October is a couple of things, for example October means it’s Frocktober, and for the entire month I’ll be only wearing dresses to raise money for ovarian cancer, but October also means it’s time for Hacktoberfest!

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Hacktoberfest is a celebration of open source software and a time to encourage people to contribute to open source (and there’s free swag). To be eligible, you only need to make 4 valid pull requests (PRs) between October 1 and 31st.

Each year I hear about this and I keep saying I’m going to do it, but as someone who hasn’t contributed to open source, and typically works with the front end, this has always been super confronting and I never know where to start. Thankfully last year Dominik Kundel helped me to get at least one PR in, with the Open Pixel Art project. This project allowed you to contribute 1 pixel to the grid, and even came along with a special Twilio Quest mission to take you through the contribution process if you haven’t done it before. I still got distracted and didn’t manage to get the 4 required PRs in, but it reminded me that there are still things I can contribute to!

Screenshot of the Open Pixel Art Project which is a 40 by 40 pixel grid, with some of the pixels shaded a certain colour. In the bottom left corner there are a number of pixels shaded red to make the Twilio logo, a red button
The Open Pixel Art Project is a great first open source contribution - [open-pixel-art.com](https://open-pixel-art.com/)

Contributing to Hacktoberfest 2020

This year has been an interesting one, to say the least, but one thing is that it’s gotten me into streaming, and I’ve found it’s a great way to hold myself accountable to actually getting stuff done (I need peer pressure at times). So this year I decided to use my streaming to hold myself accountable to actually participating in Hacktoberfest and to take the chance to highlight projects and contribution areas that are beginner friendly, or are great for people who are more front end oriented (like me).

So what’s the plan?

For the first week of October, I’m aiming to do a stream a day (weekdays only, AWST timezone) going through some of the beginner and front end friendly pull requests. From there I’m going to try and keep streaming at least once a week for the rest of the month but will see how I go at keeping it up and you know, I do also have a real job 😂.

How can I participate?

There’s plenty of options, and you can also search for open GitHub issues that people have pre-tagged for Hacktoberfest, and if they’re good issues for first time contributors.

Come say hi on my Twitch channel, and follow me to get a notification when I start!