Announcing the GitLab Hackathon

What makes GitLab a great community is that contributions to the GitLab product come from everyone, regardless of whether they are employed by GitLab or not. Concrete evidence of broad community contribution can be seen in the more than 2,500 merged “community contribution” MRs. This community contribution not only helps to enhance the GitLab product, but also brings fresh ideas and perspectives.

MRs from community members not employed by GitLab

What's the deal?

In order to build momentum and to provide a forum for community members to get together, I'm excited to announce that we're holding a GitLab Hackathon on September 27 and 28. This virtual event will kick off at 07:00 UTC on the 27th and the focus will be to work on issues that are "Accepting merge requests". As an incentive, anyone who has their MRs merged within a week of Hackathon period will receive a voucher for GitLab swag. We will also have a bigger prize for the person with the most MRs merged.

What else is going on?

In addition to hacking, we plan to invite community experts for quick presentations plus Q&A sessions on various topics over the two days. These sessions will also be recorded and available on GitLab YouTube channel. The Hackathon will be followed by the Issue Bash from September 29-30.

Where can I find help?

For communications during the Hackathon, we will use the new GitLab Community room in Gitter. We already have a gitlabhq room that’s been active with support discussions. However, we wanted to create a separate community room where contributors to GitLab can come together to have community-related discussions and to help each other as people have questions while contributing to GitLab. This is open to everyone, so please join the room if you are not part of it already.

How do I get started with contributing?

A good place to start is the Contributing to GitLab page, where you can learn how you can contribute to GitLab code, documentation, translation, and UX design.

If you have any questions, you are always welcome to reach me at rpaik@gitlab.com.

Cover image: "Gitlab application screengrab" by Pankaj Patel.