Hacktoberfest Maintainer Experience

This is my second time as a maintainer at Hacktoberfest, and the experience was so much better than last year. The more familiar you are with the maintenance and the whole process during Hacktoberfest, the better the experience becomes.

A major reason for the better experience was especially the interaction with other Open Source Project Maintainers. I owe a lot of that to @eddiejaoude many Twitter Spaces 🐦.

If you want to listen to them, here are the recordings 👇🏽:

1. Like Your Open Source Projects Shoutouts https://twitter.com/eddiejaoude/status/1708481872383082607
2. Open Source Challenges https://twitter.com/eddiejaoude/status/1711396149339279606
3. Get the job with open source https://twitter.com/eddiejaoude/status/1716122322506059824
4. Making open source a success https://twitter.com/eddiejaoude/status/1718673664806137997

YurisCodingClub

Let me share with you information about the organization, its projects, people and growth.

About the organization

This club helps career switchers get into web development and accessibility by learning how to code and contributing to open source.

All projects are designed for UX designers, front-end developers, and QA tester to contribute to open source. Many issues are beginner friendly.

I especially encourage people using assistive technologies on a daily basis (screen reader, magnifier, tab, braille, and more) to become part of a community to make the application accessible from the very beginning.

How many contributors did I have?

20 different people have contributed to my projects 😯. I am very grateful to each and every one of them. Because of their participation, the code base has grown and the usability has improved significantly.

All projects are currently being updated and new issues are being added. I want to make sure that the developer experience is as good as possible. I hope to see 👋🏽 some of you back at YCC when everything is nicely set up.

AccessibilityMentor project's most engaged contributor was @cbid2 - congrats, you did a great job 🚀

HTML Quiz project's most engaged contributor was @corinamurg - amazing job 🚀

How many PRs did I merge?

I merged 43 pull requests during Hacktoberfest 🥳. That was 23 more than last year.

While I struggled with stress last year because Hacktoberfest was something completely new to me, this year I was able to focus much better on the quality of the Pull Requests submitted.

I also managed my time better to offer better help to contributors whose open source experience was still in its early stages, to make their experience as a first-time contributor as good as possible.

YurisCodingClub welcomes its very first maintainer 🥳

I had a really great experience with so many contributors in this Hacktoberfest. Clear and detailed PRs, easy communication, all in all it went smoothly.

But one contributor in particular caught my attention. I quickly realized that we were having fun working on the projects and were on the same page in terms of our goals for the project. That was when I decided to invite the first official member to join my organization, YurisCodingClub.

I am so happy that this invitation was accepted. Not only that we are now working together on open source, but also knowledge and work are shared (I am no longer the sole PR merger 😜 - I hope you considered that before accepting my request, @corinamurg)
When it comes to teaming up with someone, I think it's rare to find someone where you feel like the way they work and their goals are the same. I don't make those decisions lightly.

Welcome aboard, Corina. Let's learn from each other and grow together 💟.

Conclusion

While I left my project pretty much untouched for a year after the last Hackathon 2022, that's not something I'm going to do again. Open source now has my full attention. I now realize what can be gained by contributing to open source, as a maintainer as well as a contributor, and I will not let this opportunity pass.

Julia Undeutsch on LinkedIn: Hacktoberfest is always an exciting time for me. As a self-taught…

Hacktoberfest is always an exciting time for me. As a self-taught developer, I know how important working in a team and on a real project is for getting your…

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