The GitLab community gathered on November 13-14 for the Q4 Hackathon, and I never get tired of saying that we again set a new record for the number of MRs submitted (109). It was great to see many new community members join with their first MRs and also follow the tutorial sessions. If you missed any of the tutorial sessions, you can find recordings on the Hackathon playlist. Also, if you have any suggestions for tutorial topics at future Hackathons you should definitely let me know in the comments section below!
What did we accomplish?
I mentioned during the kickoff session that it'd be nice to cross the 100 mark for the Hackathon MRs and we saw over 70 MRs on the first day alone. Out of the 109 Hackathon MRs, 79 of these were merged by November 25th, so again big kudos to wider community members and reviewers who made all this possible.
There are a few things I think deserve special mention. First is this Epic that was created by Gitlab's Senior Frontend Enginner Winnie Hellmann before the Hackathon. The Epic had "bite-sized" issues that contributors were able to tackle during the event and led to almost 30 MRs during the Hackathon. I think this is a great template that we can use for future Hackathons to make it easier for participants to find issues that they can work on. Winnie was also active in providing timely reviews of these MRs and this was certainly appreciated by the wider community.
The second highlight was this MR from Utkarsh Gupta as he helped make sure gender-neutral pronouns are used in our handbook. MRs like this help make sure that we continue to have a great community at GitLab in addition to having a great software and documentation. As you can see in the next section, Utkarsh made a lot of contributions during the Hackathon, but this MR made me feel proud to be a part of the GitLab community.
Hackathon prizes
For this Hackathon, we created a tech organizer for everyone who had their MRs merged by November 25th and 18 people will be receiving the GitLab branded organizer. As we did in the past few quarters, we have a prize for second place and Lee Tickett is the winner with 15 MRs merged. The grand prize goes to Utkarsh Gupta with 28 MRs merged, which is another record for the grand prize (the previous record was 13 MRs). Thanks and congratulatations to everyone!
When is the next Hackathon?
I'm happy to announce that the Q1 Hackathon will take place on February 12-13, 2020. It is already advertised on the Hackathon page with a new countdown clock. Please look out for more announcements as we get closer to the next Hackathon date. Also, if you have any suggestions for the Q1 Hackathon please feel free to suggest them on the GitLab Contributors Gitter.
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 [email protected].
"GitLab application screengrab" by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash