Hacktoberfest 2020
Tags: hacktoberfest, opensource, github, development
Published: 2020-09-25 00:32:47

---
title: Hacktoberfest 2020
published: true
date: 2020-09-24 23:43:00 UTC
tags: hacktoberfest, opensource, github, development
canonical_url: https://www.benjaminrancourt.ca/hacktoberfest-2020
cover_image: https://www.benjaminrancourt.ca/temp/hacktoberfest-2020-logo.jpeg
---
Have you ever heard of **Hacktoberfest**? Yes, you read me correctly, I did not write Oktoberfest, the annual beer festival that happens in October. 🍻

[Hacktoberfest](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com) is a month long virtual event to **celebrate open source** contributions on [GitHub](https://github.com/) and it is presented by [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/), [DEV](https://dev.to/) and [Intel](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html). It is **open to everyone** and is **free**. The event begins October 1st and it will last up to Halloween. 🎃

To encourage contributions to open source, they come with a simple **challenge** : **made four quality pull requests** to any GitHub public repository during the entire month. They do not even need to be accepted and merged to be counted, so you do not need to worry if a maintainer does not respond to your contribution.

The first edition was in 2014, and it is the **seventh edition** this year. In 2019, **almost 500,000 pull requests** were open and **more than 60,000 people** completed the challenge. 😲

## How to participate
If you want to take part in the event, you only need to:

1. [**Create a free account on GitHub**](https://github.com/join), if you do not have one already.
2. **[Sign up on the Hacktoberfest event page](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/)**, to track your progress. You can register anytime between today and October 31st. 👻
3. **Code and make four pull requests to any public repository on GitHub**. Any contribution counts in your total, as long it is a quality contribution. It could be to add a feature, to fix a bug or to improve the documentation.

If you have questions about Hacktoberfest, take a look at the [official FAQ](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/faq), it is pretty completed. 🙋

## Rewards 🏆
If you successfully complete the challenge, DigitalOcean will **reward** you for contributing to the open source community with some **swag** : some stickers and a beautiful, and comfortable, **t-shirt** like the ones that I received these past years. 👕

![](https://www.benjaminrancourt.ca/temp/2020-09-12-hacktoberfest-t-shirts.jpeg)<figcaption>My t-shirts from the previous editions</figcaption>

Shortly after the event ended, all participants should receive an **email** to choose their swag. The participants will have the option to choose the t-shirt colour (white or blue) or, a novelty this year, to **donate a tree** in the [Hacktoberfest forest on Tree-Nation](https://tree-nation.com/profile/digitalocean). 🌳

If you decide to take the t-shirt, but still want to compensate your carbon emissions, **you can plant a tree on your own** on Tree-Nation.

In the same email, DigitalOcean will ask for your postal address, for the sole purpose of receiving your swag. It is free of charge, even international **shipping**! 📦

## Personal goals 🚩
As sometimes I contribute to open source projects (like [sherby-metadata](https://dev.to/ranb2002/sherby-metadata-482p)), I would like to spice up the challenge. Above all, I think that it would not even be a challenge for me, as last year I quickly completed it under a week.

Therefore, I decided to raise my challenge by adding some other goals that I would like to achieve during this month:

- ✔ **Promote Hacktoberfest with a post**. I hope you enjoy the post you are currently reading. 😉
- **Donate to the** [**Eleventy project on Open Collective**](https://opencollective.com/11ty). 💰 I believe Eleventy, the static site generator I use on this website, is really great and I am genuinely looking forward to having more functionalities developed.
- **Create and publish two NPM packages**. I did some nice features for my blog that I think that would be beneficial to the Eleventy community. But, as they are really coupled with my source code, they will need some refactoring and, mostly, documentation with examples. 😇
- **Write at least 15 minutes by day and publish one post a week**. ✍️ I am currently trying to start a writing habit and according to the literature, it takes 21 days to incorporate something as a habit. So, at the end of the month, I hope that it would be easier for me to write about everything that I love in technologies.

Will you tackle the Hacktoberfest 2020 challenge? 💪