Join our #Hacktoberfest 2018 celebration!

*UPDATE* Thanks for your amazing contributions to Hacktoberfest! Emails with the t-shirt redemption codes will be sent in November. Look for them within a few weeks. Thank YOU! 

Since announcing our participation in Hacktoberfest earlier this month, we’ve heard from many community members and contributors, and we’re excited to share more details about how to get started.

If you make at least one pull request* on any Microsoft repo between October 1^st – 31^st, you’ll receive a limited edition t-shirt designed by Ashley McNamara (Cloud Developer Advocate and graphic designer).

How to participate

1. Find a project that looks interesting. You can browse all our of repos on opensource.microsoft.com and filter by keyword, trending, stars, forks, tags, and more.
2. Perhaps you already have a great idea for improving the project. If not, browse the list of open issues. My favorite tip: look for issues labeled help-wanted or good-first-issue.
3. Make a Pull Request to improve the project’s code or documentation.
4. [Important] Complete this form to make sure we enter you in the challenge and register your participation. We’ll send instructions for receiving your shirt after Hacktoberfest ends.

…that’s it!

We’ve intentionally made participation easy and straightforward to encourage contributions from anyone and everyone, across geographies, experience, and expertise.

While you only need to make one pull request to receive a shirt, you’re welcome to make as many as you like (to our repos or via other Hacktoberfest celebrations).

Our Hacktoberfest t-shirt design

 Ashley McNamara, Cloud Developer Advocate, co-creator of the popular Gopherize.me, and advocate for all things open source, graciously donated some time to design our Hacktoberfest-themed t-shirt – and we can’t wait to start sending it to participants. Drum roll, please… here’s the design:

Thanks, Ashley!

A few tips and reminders

Check out this post by Stephanie Morillo, who provides some great tips and practical advice on how to make Hacktoberfest amazing for contributors and maintainers alike.

Also, note that contributions don’t have to come in the form of code. Improving documentation is a great place to start, and you can check out our developer documentation by searching opensource.microsoft.com with keyword “docs” or visiting the MicrosoftDocs GitHub org. 

Happy Hacktoberfest!

* Yes, really! Any pull request. Please keep in mind the spirit of open source, meaningfully improve projects or documentation, and be kind to the project maintainers and your fellow contributors and community members.

Bernd Verst

Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft, focusing on Linux, Containers and Python. Passionate about mentoring students and those early in their careers. German expat in Seattle who enjoys marathon running, jazz piano, karaoke, and learning Chinese Mandarin.

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