HacktoberFest Review

Hacktoberfest 2022

Now that HacktoberFest has ended it's time for a review. This is the third time I've completed HacktoberFest and the first time I've been a maintainer. (I'll have another post on that later)

Hacktoberfest runs the month of October. This year that meant it started on a Saturday. Many kick off events wouldn't occur till the work week. I had two trips scheduled for the month and would be off line for both. Plus my son had Fall break ans a couple students off days in the month. I didn't want to wait till Monday so I started looking for issues early.

Issue 1: Best Practices

On Saturday morning I found CodeThesaurus, a project that compares software languages. I got assigned a documentation issue. Helping write a guideline to how to fill out the cards in the system.
I had to get familiar with the project and their repos. They had a repo for the project itself and another for the docs. I experimented with the program to get a feel for how the Thesaurus worked. The issue had some overall examples of what the best practices should be. I followed that list, added a few things I gleamed from using it. The more I compared the code samples, the more I understood what the maintainer wanted. I chatted with them a few times throughout the month and had something for the project by month's end.

Issue 2: Virtual Coffee

Virtual Coffee held its Kickoff event on Monday the third. We had a live stream led by Dan Ott, @danieltott. He talked about the history of Hacktoberfest, what the group's plans were for the month, and we worked through a member issue.
New members could add themselves to our members page. Current members could add a badge to their profile. We could also add a frame to our profile images.
Afterward I noticed I need to update my socials there but decided to wait till after Hackoberfest so I don't flood the maintainers with extra PRs. I'll update sometime in November.

Issue 3: Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean held their Kickoff event on October 4th. They walked through the history of HacktoberFest and had a panel with representatives from several companies. The panel presented their issues that they needed help. The host walked through how to submit a PR with the Digital Ocean example issue Cloud Haiku. There was also a HacktoberFest trivia Kahoot.
I wasn't planning on doing the Haiku but days later while waiting in the car line for my son's school to release I came up with one. I wrote a draft it in my memo app and once home wrote it out and submitted a pull request.

Issue 4 & 5: Transcribing Podcasts

Virtual Coffee has a podcast. They use an automated program to transcribe the episodes. They wanted to improve the transcriptions to be more accurate.
I listened to an episode corrected mistakes. Then fixed gaps where it missed someone talking or misheard them. I also removed some filler words.
I listened to each podcast multiple times to get it right. As a bonus I really got to learn on the topics. One was Todd Libby's, @colabottles accessibility episode. Making the web equal and accessible. Todd had a ton of info and resources on how and why to make your projects more accessible.

The other episode was the 2021 Preptember episode, Hacktoberfest is coming. In the episode the Hosts @bekahhw and @danieltott and guest host @kirkcodes reviewed what Virtual Coffee community did for HacktoberFest 2020 and their plans for what VC for 2021. They talked about how working through HacktoberFest 2020 helped bring the VC community together as it was our first big event.

Issue 6: ThisDot

ThisDot Labs has repos that have lots of lists for devs. They have lists of developer slack groups, diverse speakers, podcasts, and more.

I added to their conference list. MagnoliaJS just announced their 2023 dates so I added them to help get news out. The conference is October 17-18 2023 in Jackson Mississippi. MagnoliaJS

Wrap up

This was a fun year with mostly documentation work. It felt good to complete HactoberFest as a contributor and maintainer with two trips taking up seven days of the month.

Virtual Coffee was a big part of me finishing HacktoberFest this year. I want to thank Bekha, Dan, Kirk, and Ayu for the help. Read about what the group did in our DEV blog HacktoberFest RoundUp

Did you participate in HactoberFest?