This is a submission for the 2024 Hacktoberfest Writing challenge: Maintainer Experience

I have attended Hacktoberfest, the month-long celebration of open-source, every year since 2017. In 2021, I attended for the first time as a contributor, maintainer, and organizer. This year, I'm organizing a Docker-themed Hacktoberfest event, called Hackdockerfest, for the fourth time in a row.

Oktoberfest 🍺 + Hacktoberfest 🦑 + Docker 🐳 = Hackdockerfest 🎉

2021: Organized the First Hackdockerfest

Back in 2021, I wanted to become a Docker Community Leader and organized the first Hacktoberfest event in the Swiss Docker community. The event was called Hackdockerfest, and as it was in the middle of the pandemic, it was held online.

This is how it went:

• We created a GitHub repo called Hackdockerfest.
• We asked people to add security tips for working securely with Docker.
• The collected tips were to be used for a YouTube live stream on October 25th.

To summarize the takeaway in a few points:

• Reduce your Docker image size.
• Use multi-stage builds.
• Check for vulnerabilities, e.g. using Docker Scout.

2022: Organized the In-Person Hackdockerfest

By October 2022, I had started a local Docker community in Freiburg, Germany, and was a Docker Community Leader. Our second in-person event there was the Hackdockerfest.

• We had two presentations, one about the technologies used by the hosting company, Recyda, and one about SBOMs.
• Some 7 people attended the event, among them:
  • Stefan Ruf, who contributed to the Hacktoberfest project, and
  • Julian König, who became a Docker Captain by the next Hackdockerfest.
• There was a Hacktoberfest project: Create an events website using MEAN stack and Docker, and document each step.
• The result was to be published on the Docker's blog.

We received contribution from 4 people, and the blog post was published on the Docker's blog on March 2023:

• Containerizing an Event Posting App Built with the MEAN Stack

A few takeaways from the event and the article:

• SBOMs are important for supply chain security.
• You can generate SBOMs for your Docker image using docker sbom or docker scout sbom.
• Have your Docker image built periodically to get the latest security updates.

2023: Hackdockerfest 2023 with News from Docker Con

A lot happened between the Hackdockerfest 2022 and 2023:

• We had 4 other meetups.
• We had our first Freiburger Docker Captain, Nicholas Dille, as a guest. And it attracted some 20 people for the first time.
• Then I become a Docker Captain, as did Julian.
• Docker Con was held in Los Angeles, which Julian attended.
• I'm still waiting for my visa to be approved.

The Hackdockerfest 2023 was held in the same location as the previous year, with:

• Julian König as a speaker, talking about his experience at Docker Con.
• Stefan Ruf as a speaker, talking about using Docker Compose with Traefik.
• It was Friday the 13th, so Jason Voorhees was also there.

Some takeaways from the event:

• You can use Traefik as a reverse proxy for your Docker Compose services.
• You can use Docker Compose to define your services and Traefik to route the traffic to them.
• Docker Compose is perfectly suited for local development and small production deployments when you want to avoid the complexity of Kubernetes. Docker Compose has some less-known features, like the include and secrets features, that can be leveraged in a production environment.

2024: Hackdockerfest 2024 with a New Docker Captain

We had two more Docker meetups in Freiburg between the Hackdockerfest 2023 and 2024. One of them had two Docker employees as speakers, coming from afar, and the other was held at JobRad, the largest bike-leasing company in Germany.

And of course the last meetup led me to being hired by JobRad as a Backend Developer.

For the coming Hackdockerfest, we will have Docker Captain Timo Stark as a guest speaker, coming all the way from Nuremberg to talk about his experience with building open-source projects. He was working at NGINX before, and now he has his own company.

This year, we also have a new Docker Captain in Freiburg, Jonas Scherer, making us 4 Docker Captains in the city.

This year, we will have:

• Open-source projects to contribute to (Hacktoberfest).
• Drinks (Oktoberfest).
• Food (Fest).
• Docker Swags (T).
• Quiz.
• And a lot of fun.

The event will take place on October 25th, 2024, at Hombultsaal, Freiburg, Germany.

Hacktoberfest 2024 Project

The project for this year's Hackdockerfest is to create a Docker Compose Cheat Sheet. The project is hosted on GitHub, and you can find the issue here:

The contributions are going to be mentioned at the event, and the final result is going to be published on Docker's DEV.to blog (and maybe on Docker's blog).

Conclusion

I have come a long way since my first Hacktoberfest in 2017. We have also come a long way since the first Hackdockerfest in 2021. It's amazing to see how much we have grown and how much we have learned. We started with 1 person showing up and had more than 30 people at the last event.

I'm looking forward to the next Hackdockerfest and the next Docker meetup in Freiburg. And I'm looking forward to meeting you there. 🐳