It takes a village

There’s more to a project than just the code

I know so many people “in tech” who don’t write code. There are so many people and careers involved ‘in tech’, that to limit those to just people who code seems silly. I was really interested in a post on Twitter about using the phrase ‘in tech’ making people feel they need to somehow validate their existence in tech to be part of something. But I think that everyone who uses technology is ‘in tech’ and should be part of the making and progression of that technology.

Building a successful project isn’t just about the code written and so many people I know contribute to projects and communities completely regardless of their ability to write code. Ask any UX-er about a well-coded web application and I’m sure they’ll tell you it doesn’t mean anything if people can’t use it!

Reasons

Hence the reason behind this website. I think Hacktoberfest is awesome and the willingness of maintainers to open up and welcome all contributions is really cool. I’m often inspired by all of the awesome people around me in the Tech Nottingham community and I learn so much from them, I’ve learned about building animations, Alexa Skills, accessibility, the beauty of “two unit tests - no integration test” gifs, beekeeping and poetry writing!

So, the point is, this website is for everyone to contribute to. Please head to GitHub and add a post! Your post can be anything you want - write a blog (like I have here) or if you want to code - write a JavaScript game or you can add a video and sing a song, do a vlog or even try your hand at some poetry. Make your post about what you want to do.

Lets make it pretty

I would also love contributions to this site, at the time of writing this, the site is using the basic Jekyll theme so please go nuts and style it up! If you’re an artist, add some artwork - I would love a made with love favicon with a blog post explaining what it is and why. I’m going to make an issue for that.

Hacktoberfest oktoberfest

I think most of my experiences with Hacktoberfest have been emotionally exhilarating and challenging! I was lucky to have some local community projects I could contribute to in my first year of taking part and that definitely took the edge off a bit. Claiming live issues on unknown projects felt very alien to me but after a difficult time trying to get PRs in, I claimed this little one (you can see my changes here). The maintainer was so friendly to me and it was such a nice issue for me to work on that it gave me the confidence to claim more and to now take part this year and to work on this site.

If you’re confused, need help or just fancy a chat, please get in touch. You can raise an issue on the repo, email me, tweet me or find me on Tech Nottingham slack. Don’t give up or keep quiet, I want to help.

Happy Hacktoberfest!