Hacktoberfest Meetup Singapore x JuniorDevSG & Zenika

Hacktoberfest Singapore is a community meetup for anyone interested in open source, collaboration and building in the open.

The goal is simple: bring people together to share projects, exchange ideas, and find opportunities to contribute or collaborate. Whether you already maintain an open-source project, have a personal project you're thinking of open-sourcing, or want to make your first contribution, you're welcome to join.

The meetup will start with two featured talks, followed by an Open Space session where participants can propose topics, share projects, discuss ideas and form smaller groups around things they'd like to explore or work on together.

We hope the meetup helps more people:

• Contribute to open-source projects • Find collaborators for personal or community projects • Open-source their own work • Meet others who are interested in building together • Embrace the idea of being open by default

Come with a project, an idea or simply an interest in open source.

Talks

A mix of talks and open spaces

Open Source for Everyone: Why (and How) to Take the Leap

By Jean-Phi Baconnais (Zenika Nantes) Open source is an integral part of our daily technological lives, whether it involves indispensable tools like GitLab and Mattermost, or languages and libraries like React and Quarkus. Taking the step to contribute remains an intimidating milestone for many people. However, pushing past this barrier and making that leap opens up very interesting opportunities, both on a human and technical part. In this presentation, I will share my journey: from my very first contribution more than 8 years ago to the creation of my own open-source projects. My goal is to prove to you that anyone can contribute, whether you are a developer or not, and to give you the keys to get started with confidence.

Beyond the First PR: The Engineering Behind Maintaining Open Source

By Aishwarya Elango What happens after you open-source a project? Aishwarya will share her experience building and open-sourcing the WDS Operations Portal, and what it takes to make a codebase maintainable and contributor-friendly. From a maintainer’s perspective, we’ll cover: 🏗️ System architecture — structure and key engineering decisions 🐛 Issues — creating clear bugs, enhancements, and first-time contributions 🔀 Pull requests — reviewing and deciding what is ready to merge 🧹 Code quality — evaluating correctness, security, readability, and maintainability 🧩 Codebase maintenance — managing technical debt, documentation, and project conventions 🌱 Contributor experience — making it easier for new developers to understand and contribute A practical look at the engineering work behind maintaining an open-source project beyond the first PR.

Open space

Anyone can propose a topic, project, question or idea they'd like to discuss. We'll then break into smaller groups based on what people are interested in. You could use the session to:

• Share an open-source or personal project and find collaborators • Get feedback on something you're building • Discuss an open-source topic you care about • Find a project you'd like to contribute to • Meet others with similar interests and start building something together

You don't need to prepare anything in advance, and you don't need to be an open-source maintainer to participate. Bring a project, a question, an idea or just your curiosity.