Oct 1, 2020 – By Jen Weber

Have you ever spotted something in Ember code or documentation that needed fixing? Did you want to get involved in contributing to open source, but you have no idea where to start?

Good news! It's Hacktoberfest 2020, and you are invited to participate in Ember-focused special events and mentorship opportunities through the month of October. You can make some commits, meet some new people, and maybe get some free stuff!

What is Hacktoberfest?

Hacktoberfest is an annual, worldwide celebration organized by DigitalOcean and sponsored by many companies that use open source software.

Here is the premise:

• Sign up anytime between October 1 and October 31.
• Make 4 valid Pull Requests to any public repositories on GitHub.
• If you are among the first 70,000 developers who complete the challenge, you get a prize. This year, you can select between a T-shirt and a tree planted in your name.

Many open source project maintainers put in some extra effort during Hacktoberfest to make it easy and fun to participate in open source.

What is happening in the Ember community?

Here's what you can expect this year!

• On Saturday, October 10th, past contributors will be available to pair with anyone who wants to help out! If you have questions or need some help finding an issue to work on, this is a great place to start. Mentors are available 9am-10am ET, and 9pm-10pm ET. Click the links to see times in your own time zone.
• On Friday, October 16th, there will be an Ember Contributors Workshop! Tickets are sold out but you can read more about the event on the EmberFest website.
• At any time, join the #hacktoberfest channel in the Ember Community Discord to connect with other developers. You can find a buddy to pair with, a mentor to guide you, or toss around ideas.

If you are someone who is willing to help mentor new contributors, please let us know in #hacktoberfest on Discord. Addon maintainers are welcome to post issues they need help with too!

Additionally, there are several more groups within the Ember Community Discord where you can find others to collaborate with. There are Discord channels for women, LGBTQ+, and people of color. If you belong to one of those groups, you can ask to join in the #discord-server-admin channel.

How do I choose what to work on?

It all depends on your interests! One of the best ways to get involved in open source is to pick up a teeny tiny issue so you can learn the flow and what to expect. Then, consider making an improvement to something you regularly use; for example, a feature, test, or fix to API documentation.

For ideas, you can visit Ember's Help Wanted. The Ember Learning Team and others are curating some super beginner-friendly issues. In Help Wanted, you can find these issues, along with more intermediate and advanced issues. If you want to help, comment on an issue to let others know that you are working on it. If the issue you want to work on is taken, try asking if the other volunteers would like to collaborate!

Can I participate if I am not working on Ember things?

Absolutely! Hacktoberfest is a celebration for all open source projects. Ember is just one of many.