---
layout: post
title: "Hacktoberfest 2017 - Part One"
date: 2017-10-10
tags: work black-pepper software life open-source github code hacktoberfest hacktober
---
For those of you that are involved in the world of open source software, you may know that it is currently "Hacktoberfest".

For those of you that do not know this (I was also completely unaware) this is a month dedicated to public contributions to open source software, mainly in collaboration with DigitalOcean and GitHub.

I was lucky enough to have a colleague introduce myself to Hacktoberfest, and encourage everyone at Black Pepper to give their time to the cause. Even more luckily, the management team were excited for the developers to take part in this community event - maybe fixing up or improving tools we regularly use at the same time. 

If you are still following me so far, great - but if you aren't, in essence, members of the public band together to improve the (already amazing range and quality) of public projects hosted on GitHub. This can be through implementing new features in software, fixing bugs, updating documentation, and even more!

Naturally I was really excited to hear about such a great community project, and was eager to get involved. However, as October crept closer and closer, for some reason I was slightly apprehensive about contributing to open source. While I have been involved in writing software for the last six or seven years, both professionally and during my education, I have never contributed to open source projects.

To be honest, it was actually very daunting. While I have contributed to group projects before, that was always with coursemates or colleagues. The people I would be collaborating with for Hacktoberfest would be strangers. Strangers, working out if the code I produced was worthwhile and clean enough to merge in to their projects.

However, since Hacktoberfest actually began, I have become more at ease with the idea of helping out with open source projects. Becoming part of a project's community has helped massively with nerves, and having used the software I have begun contributing to gives me a sense of ownership and a better understanding of what I want in the system.

I won't give too many details away yet, but I plan on completing Hacktoberfest and becoming a regular contributor to open source code, and I encourage anyone reading to do the same, especially given the fantastic excuse of Hacktoberfest!

Keep an eye out for a future blog post in which I talk more about which community and projects I have been / will be contributing to over the course of October, and my top tips around getting involved in the first place.

Add 'Hacktoberfest 2017 - Part One' blog post.
Add 'Hacktoberfest 2017 - Part One' blog post.
