Preptember 2024

Some of the Hacktoberfest events have already begun. Here in the US, it is still September 30th, but in other parts of the world, it’s October 1st. I spent the rest of Preptember finding projects I would like to contribute to during Hacktoberfest . Here are some of the projects I’ll contribute to this year.

I used some of my advice from the previous article about Preptember and started with the Hacktoberfest.com website and Major League Hacking Events. I signed up for Quira.sh, and joined their Discord. They did have a Preptember project that offered monetary rewards for open-source contributions to work on for Preptember that would count as a PR for Hacktoberfest. That challenge had already been going on for two weeks but I had two days left to complete it by the time I signed up to the site. So, I kept looking for other projects I could better manage with my time. I’ll return to that site later for other upcoming challenges that offer similar benefits.

Major League Hacking (MLH) is offering Authtoberfest. This event is hosted by MLH, and sponsored by Okta (Auth0). It includes events, projects, webinars, and a community to participate in Hacktoberfest, earn Holopins and swag, and build your skills in authentication and authorization. This one requires only two valid-merged pull request contributions to qualify for the swag, but you can always contribute more to add value, make a bigger impact, and deepen your learning. You can learn more about this challenge at Authoberfest.io. I’m planning to participate in this one to deepen my understanding of authentication and best practices.

Another option that piqued my interest this year is Appwrite. While I can work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB in other projects, Appwrite’s Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform is useful when I want to build an application without setting up the database from scratch. Appwrite offers user authentication, databases, storage, functions, and more. They are hosting their first official Hacktoberfest Hackathon, with fun swag, including Holopins. You can participate in teams or solo. You can learn about the requirements at the Appwrite Hacktoberfest website. I’ll work on this one, particularly because it deals with authentication through API gateways. While much of the authentication and security are managed for you, I’m interested in how others approach it when delegating to a service platform.

ServiceNow is a platform that offers AI Agents to integrate into business operations. This year, they have multiple repositories to make all four PR contributions for Hacktoberfest. They are encouraging all four PRs to be made within their projects. You can learn more about their Hacktoberfest requirements on their Hacktobefest Readme.md. I’m going to check this one out so I can learn more about AI.

There are other options to consider, but these are more aligned with my current interests. As I get more done on my projects, I might change my mind on what to work on, but these are my starter plans. There are many benefits and swag when making your contributions, but the biggest benefits are the impact on building your skills and the value you add to the community and the project. Be sure not to make spammy PRs. Nobody benefits from that and it becomes more difficult to provide the benefits in future hackathons and events. It also becomes more difficult for maintainers to sort through the value of PRs that should be rightfully merged. In the comments, feel free to share what projects you plan on working on in this Hacktobefest season.