Hacktoberfest 2022 : Swag, Rules,Tips and more - A detailed guide

Hacktobefest is a great way to unlock new opportunities and colloboration in open source projects

What is Hacktoberfest ?

Hacktoberfest is a month long event conducted by DigitalOcean every year to encourage everyone to contribute to open source projects. As you can guess from the name Hacktoberfest ( Hack + October + Festival ) is conducted every October for the past 9 years.

While the main event is in october, month of September is dedicated to preparation for the event and is termed as Preptember (Preparation + september).

Interesting facts about Hacktoberfest

• Hacktoberfest was launched in 2013 with 700 participants. In 2021 it had more than 141,000 participants.

• In 2021, 348 different programming languages were used to submit 294,451 accepted pull/merge requests to support of open source projects as part of Hacktoberfest (Source)

  

  (Pic credits: https://hacktoberfest.com)

Hacktoberfest is a great opportunity for both open source contributors + maintainers to achieve their open source goals.

• In Hacktoberfest 2022 People of any experience level (beginner , intermediate, advanced) and with any expertise (technical or non technical) can participate in the event.
• Tenhnical projects might not need an introduction. For non-technical projects, repositories with Low-code and Non-Code projects are great choices for non techn folks.

• Here are some examples from Hacktoberfest source website:

  

(Pic credits: https://hacktoberfest.com/about/ )

How does Hacktoberfest work?

Hacktoberfest is for open source projects. As we know that Github and Gitlab are the two main platforms for open source contributions, you can participate in Hacktoberfest either as a contributor or as a maintainer.

• Every company/organization which maintains open source projects gets registered into Hacktoberfest event by opt-in their github/gitlab repository with hacktoberfest label.
• Contributors can discover the projects by searching for repositories containing these tags and send merge requests during the event time (October 1st to October 31). We will discuss more in How to discover Hacktoberfest projects
• If 4 of your merge requests are accepted you can receive swag for Hacktoberfest (discussed more in swag section)

Let’s look at more details on how to participate in Hacktoberfest.

How to participate in Hacktoberfest ?

As discussed earlier, you can participate in Hacktoberfest either as a contributor or as an open source maintainer.

Hacktoberfest registration window is between September 26 and October 31

Participate as a contributor

• Register to Hacktoberfest between September 26 to October 31.
• Pick an open source project from the list of Github or Gitlab containing hacktoberfest tag.
• Send 4 pull/merge requests accepted between October 1 and October 31 following PR/MR rules stated in the following section.

Participate as a maintainer

To opt-in your repository for Hacktoberfest, you can

• Label the project/repository with hacktoberfest tag
• (or) Label the PR/MR with hacktoberfest-accepted tag if they qualify PR rules.
• Merge these requests during October 1 and October 31 timeline.
• Reject spammy requests with spam or invalid label.

Rules for Pull / Merge requests

Here are the rules for PR/MR requests to be qualified for hacktoberfest.

• Submitted PR/MR should be part of participating repository with hacktoberfest tag.
• (Or) It should have hacktoberfest-accepted
• If your PR/MR is being accepted for Hacktoberfest via an overall approving review it must also not be closed.
• PRs are qualified only if they are merged between October 1st to October 31st.
• PRs must not be tagged or labelled with spam tag.
• PRs must not be tagged with invalid label.

Hacktoberfest swag / prizes / rewards 😍

• The first 40,000 participants (maintainers and contributors) who complete Hacktoberfest can elect to receive one of two prizes
  • The Hacktoberfest 2022 t-shirt
  • A tree planted in their name (or)
• In addition, each company or project organizing the event have their own giveaway swag.
• Here is the list of companies giving Hacktoberfest swag
  • hacktoberfestswaglist.com
  • hacktoberfest-swag.com
  • Camunda hacktoberfest swag
• For maintainers Hacktoberfest provides special Reward kits (limited in supply).

How to find projects participating in hacktoberfest ?

To find projects opted for hacktobefest, you can use the following links.

Github : https://github.com/topics/hacktoberfest

Gitlab : https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/hacktoberfest

You can sort by date, popularity and other options and contribute towards your favourite project.

Tips for Hacktoberfest

• Don’t make spam contributions. Hacktober fest popularity has grown a lot in the past few years. So the amount of spam PRs have also increased ( eg: Spamtoberfest ). So Hacktoberfest is aggressive on finding spam PRs and disqualify them. So make sure your PRs add good value to open source project.
• Focus on Quality instead of quantity. Think about show casing your contribution on your resume
• Each project has its own contribution guidelines. So make sure to read them before sending a PR.
• Once your PR is qualified, it takes about 7 days to be accepted officially for Hacktoberfest.

Hacktoberfest social media

It is highly encouraged to share special moments on social media with the following tags.

Hashtags: #hacktoberfest OR #hacktoberfest2022

Username: @digitalocean OR @hacktoberfest ( Twitter link

Connect on Hacktoberfest discord channel: Hacktoberfest discord channel

Conclusion

Open source contributions if done right can add a great value to your professional profile both as contributor and as a maintainer. Lot of companies actually rely on open source to drive their entire product lifecycle. So events like Hacktoberfest are a great way to network with like minded people and potentially unlock new opportunities. So give it a try and let us know if you have any questions.