"Are you ready for #Hacktoberfest 2019? Support Open Source in October and earn a limited edition T-shirt! @DigitalOcean @ThePracticalDev https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/ "
The above line is the canned promo tweet from the Hacktoberfest website, but it summarizes the event better than I could. Hacktoberfest is a pretty cool annual event that tries to encourage open source contributions with giveaways (t-shirt, stickers). It also helps connect potential contributors with repos that are accepting contributions by using GitHub labels on issues. In our communities at Apache, committers can take advantage of this event to try to attract new contributors by labeling issues on GitHub with the "help wanted" or "Hacktoberfest" label (typically, low-bar, "newbie" type are best). If anybody is interested, I'd encourage you to participate and spread the word, and those of us who are committers to make use of the labels on GitHub issues. If you are a current user of open source, but haven't contributed... consider making your first contribution to fix that annoying bug or documentation gap that's been bothering you! This is a great opportunity to break the ice with an open source community and get a t-shirt in the process! Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the Hacktoberfest event or its sponsors. I've merely participated in past years and find it a good opportunity to encourage open source and to grow our Apache communities.