For the second year in a row, Meilisearch participated in Hacktoberfest. Find below the recap of the event that was initially shared internally at Meilisearch.

We'll be part of Hacktoberfest 2022! And we hope to see even more contributors getting involved.  
  
Find below the slides of this presentation:

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Hacktoberfest 2021 recap

One of the main responsibilities of the developer relations team at Meilisearch is to help our open-source search engine reach as many developers as possible. This involves, among other missions, participating in conferences and events.

Conference organizers usually publish a Call for Papers / Proposals (CFP), which is an open invitation for speakers to apply to their event, usually with a title and an abstract at minimum. Over the last year, I’ve had to submit—or help colleagues submit—numerous talk suggestions to conferences. Being a novice in the field, I set out to discover some of the secrets to successfully responding to a CFP.

I read a lot of articles and even listened to an hour-long presentation about CFPs so you don’t have to 🙌 In this article, I’ll present what I’ve learned based on the most recurrent recommendations.

The abstract
------------

The abstract is your pitch, it’s what is going to be published. You should focus on this first as it is what helps people decide if they want to attend your talk.

### ✅ Do's

**Be direct and concise**

Put yourself in the evaluator’s shoes. If you have 100 submissions to go through, you’ll appreciate the ones which get straight to the point. You should make your abstract easy to skim-read.

**Target your audience**

You need to know your audience,  their needs, and interests. Are you going to talk to developers, designers, executives, or some other audience?

Ok, but if it’s your first time attending a particular conference, how do you get this information?

Well, sometimes conference organizers provide an audience profile. But if it’s not the case, here are some good tips by the great [VM Brasseur](https://twitter.com/vmbrasseur):

*   you can contact them and ask for it

If it’s too late for that:

*   check the sponsorship prospectus: there’s usually information about the audience
*   check the schedule and social media of past editions of the event

**Establish a challenge or a problem**

Your talk should be about something that interests you. It could be a problem you’ve had, or that you’ve helped someone with. It doesn’t matter so much if you have managed to solve the problem or not. You can share your experience and what you’ve learned from it.

It can also be a widespread opinion you disagree with, a tool that has helped you, or something you wish you had known when you started.

Don’t forget, people like hearing stories, so if you think it’s something worth sharing, go for it. If you're not sure, assume that your story may be interesting to others. So go for it, what's the worst that can happen? Either way, try to present it in a way that gets your audience's interest, that’s why it’s important to know who you are going to be talking to.

**Specify the format of the talk you are giving**

The potential audience wants to know what to expect: is it going to be a workshop, a case study, a live demo? We all have different learning styles. Knowing the format beforehand will help the conference participants select the right talk for them.

**Specify the background knowledge the audience should have**

Should the audience know a particular programming language? Is it suitable for beginners? Giving this type of information will avoid wasting the time of the attendees.

**List key takeaways for your audience**

There is a statement from Sarah Mei that stuck with me:

> _People don’t go to talks for the content. People go to talks because they think they’ll become more badass. So help them out with that!_

People want to know what they will learn from your talk, the specific benefits they’ll get from it, what they will be able to do after your talk that they could not do before.

### ❌ Don'ts

**Don’t pitch your company / organization / product**

Nobody wants to hear a sales pitch. Your proposal will be rejected if it looks like a commercial in the slightest.

If you want to talk about something cool your company does, focus on the problem solved.

A little trick is to do what the dotConferences organizers have named the _Steve test_. Imagine an attendee named Steve, seated at the front row. Steve is so stubborn you know he would never use your product. The challenge is to make your talk as engaging and insightful to Steve as to anyone else. It will only work if you focus on the technical insights rather than your product. You can include your product along with alternative solutions and present the benefits and downsides.

**Don’t be aggressive or condescending**

Please have your abstract reviewed by a colleague or friend, preferably a native speaker. Someone who might identify this kind of language or tone you may not have intended to have.

**Don’t present your solution as the perfect one**

Be humble. You may have a great solution, but it cannot fit every need and context. You don’t want to sound arrogant so talk about when your solution is appropriate and when it’s not.

**Don’t include identifying information (name, title, company)**

This information belongs in the bio, not in the abstract. A lot of conferences practice blind reviewing to ensure submissions are reviewed fairly, so if you don’t want your proposal sent back for modifications or rejected, it’s better to avoid sharing these details.

**Don’t deceive the participants**

Don’t make promises you are not going to fulfill. Maybe you will get more people to attend your talk, but at what cost? Leaving the audience with a feeling of disappointment?

#### Standard formula

If you are new to CFPs you may want to stick to the following structure when writing abstracts:

*   Start with a strong introductory sentence that grabs attention (why is your topic important or relevant)
*   Detail paragraph: specific points you are going to address, give people an idea of what to expect
*   List audience takeaways
*   Closing paragraph (if needed)

The title
---------

*   Write it at the end, once you have finished writing the abstract
*   Avoid jokes: you never know how they will be perceived
*   Be polite
*   You can go for clickbait, it works
*   Keep it short, less than 50 characters

In his 2016 “[_Three tips for getting a talk accepted at Fluent_](https://medium.com/@bentlegen/three-tips-for-getting-a-talk-accepted-at-fluent-9eff841efc54)”, Ben Vinegar, gives really good examples of how to modify titles to engage the audience and show your unique perspective:

> '_How to use Angular'_ can be transformed into '_How we use Angular at my organization'_.

> '_How to get involved in open source'_ can be tweaked to become '_How I got involved in open source and you can too'._

Points worth remembering
------------------------

*   You are trying to persuade people to spend X minutes of their time listening to your presentation
*   Bullet points and short paragraphs are your friends
*   Focus on the audience, use “you” sentences
*   People like real experiences about real people: tell a story, create a narrative
*   You don’t have to be an expert on the subject, but don’t suggest subjects you are not qualified to talk about
*   You are the expert on your own experience

Conclusion
----------

I hope you’ll find this article useful. Of course, there is no magic formula for your application to be accepted. There are a thousand reasons why your talk can be rejected, even if you have the best title and abstract in the world. But it’s always better to stack all the odds in your favor!

* * *

_Picture by [Etienne Girardet](https://unsplash.com/@etiennegirardet) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/)_

CFPs: Writing Recommendations

It's the middle of October and more than time for an update on how Hacktoberfest is going at Meilisearch.

Shared objectives update
------------------------

[As mentioned](__GHOST_URL__/contribute-hacktoberfest-2021/) when Hacktoberfest started, we're setting **shared objectives** that will **benefit everyone**. Upon reaching each objective, we will contribute to a few organizations or support people we think are doing great work.

### Open-source maintainers

We chose open-source for our project to share a high-quality search solution, accessible to all, no matter their financial means. Sharing is the basis of what we do. [Meilisearch](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch) and [milli](https://github.com/meilisearch/milli) (Meilisearch's core engine) [have](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch/blob/4bacc8e47d52f95a871028b0179b3dd4e2f9682d/meilisearch-http/Cargo.toml#L77-L81) [many](https://github.com/meilisearch/milli/blob/6e3b869e6a4d33bc814ebafe80d434035139e97d/milli/Cargo.toml#L7-L50) [dependencies](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch/blob/4bacc8e47d52f95a871028b0179b3dd4e2f9682d/meilisearch-http/Cargo.toml#L24-L75), and most of them are other open-source projects. Their maintainers are not all part of large companies. By supporting some of these maintainers, we're contributing to open source and helping these developers to improve the projects we depend on.

These developers are the primary maintainers of:

*   [rust-sipash](https://github.com/jedisct1/rust-siphash) - [maintainer](https://github.com/jedisct1)
*   [vergen](https://github.com/rustyhorde/vergen) - [maintainer](https://github.com/CraZySacX)
*   [pin-project](https://github.com/taiki-e/pin-project) - [maintainer](https://github.com/taiki-e)

### Climate activists

We are aware that Meilisearch has an impact on our planet. We use servers, large datasets, computational power, all of which contribute to global warming. This is something we are not comfortable with, but it is an unavoidable aspect of being a tech company.

That's why we will support three organizations tackling the challenges of climate change:

*   [WWF](https://www.worldwildlife.org/)
*   [Surfriders Foundation Europe](https://surfrider.eu/en/)
*   [Reforest'Action](https://www.reforestaction.com/en)

### Organizations that promote diversity in tech

Meilisearch grows thanks to each team member's personality, skills, and experience. Having [different perspectives](https://www.welcometothejungle.com/fr/companies/meilisearch/values) in organizations leads to better decisions and is the only way to build a long-lasting company.

We will support three organizations that strive for diversity and inclusivity in software engineering:

*   [Black Girls Code](https://wearebgc.org/)
*   [Out in Tech](https://outintech.com/)
*   [Techfugees](https://techfugees.com/fr/)

### How to unlock the perks?

There are **three stages**. We will collectively reach them if the number of contributions to [Meilisearch open-source repositories](https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Ahacktoberfest+org%3Ameilisearch&type=Repositories) is high enough. Each stage will unlock a larger amount of money for these three groups we want to support.

![](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/PR_a742efd3bd.png)

To get the total number of contributions, we will sum up the number of Hacktoberfest-related Pull Requests (PRs) merged in Meilisearch repositories at the end of the month. And we will add the last PRs not yet merged, but tagged with the `hacktoberfest-accepted` label.

In 2020, we had **49 PRs** merged during Hacktoberfest.  
This year, every 49 PRs merged, we will reach a new stage and **add 500€** to the financial support of each of the three groups.

We are already tracking the number of contributions: on October 20th, we had 114 PRs merged since the beginning of Hacktoberfest. Stage 1 & 2 have already been reached 🎉. We'll find a stretch goal later if we're able to reach stage 3 🤞.

A new way to contribute: Awesome Meilisearch
--------------------------------------------

To help you reach these stages, we're adding a new way to increase the number of contributions. You will still have to get a PR merged, but this PR does not have to close an issue.

We recently created the [**awesome-meilisearch**](https://github.com/meilisearch/awesome-meilisearch) repository. It contains a curated list of awesome Meilisearch resources, based on the [awesome list template](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/main/awesome.md).You can contribute to Meilisearch's Hacktoberfest goals by [adding new resources](https://github.com/meilisearch/awesome-meilisearch/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md) to this repository. These resources have to be links to awesome blog posts, tutorials, demos, guides, talks, or just about anything else that teaches people how to do cool things with Meilisearch.

All accepted contributions qualify for the shared goals count!

We're counting on you!
----------------------

Consider keeping on contributing to Meilisearch repositories once you have successfully participated in Hacktoberfest. If you increase the number of merged PRs, you will help unlock new perks that benefit everyone.

Mid-October Hacktoberfest update

What is Hacktoberfest?
----------------------

[Hacktoberfest](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/) is an annual event that runs over October. Instead of celebrating the Bavarian culture (and sometimes drinking too many beers), this event aims at **supporting the open source community**.

2021 marks the eighth anniversary of the event launched by [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/). Over the years, Hacktoberfest has had a seminal role: it has given enough confidence to many developers to become a part of the open-source community. In 2020, around 170,000 developers participated in Hacktoberfest.

Why should you participate?
---------------------------

There are many different reasons why you should [contribute to open source](https://blog.shahednasser.com/how-to-participate-in-hacktoberfest-2021/#as-a-participant). But Hacktoberfest is about joining the community in a mutual effort to drive the growth of open source.

Your contributions are very valuable to any open-source project. Some of our most used tools were born outside the Meilisearch team, and we could not be grateful enough for the efforts of our open-source contributors.

And if you need an extra push, both DigitalOcean and Meilisearch are sending gifts to the contributors.  
DigitalOcean is going to give a T-shirt and a swag pack to the first 55,000 participants of Hacktoberfest.  
Meilisearch will send reusable insulated water bottles to all those who successfully participated in Hacktoberfest and contributed to the [open-source projects](https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Ahacktoberfest+org%3Ameilisearch&type=Repositories) of Meilisearch (look for the repositories with the _hacktoberfest_ topic).  
  
We are also setting **shared goals** that all Meilisearch contributors can help to reach. These goals will unlock perks that will **benefit everyone**.  
We still have to define those perks and will update this blog post accordingly. Some of our ideas so far:

*   financial support to other open-source projects
*   supporting organizations with an environmental impact (like restoration of forests or ocean cleaning)
*   sponsoring organizations promoting diversity in software (like [Black Girls Code](https://wearebgc.org/)).

We would be happy to [hear your ideas](https://discord.gg/meilisearch)!

What happened last year at Meilisearch?
---------------------------------------

Last year, Meilisearch took part in Hacktoberfest [for the first time](__GHOST_URL__/hacktoberfest-with-meilisearch/). We encouraged contributions to the [core Meilisearch repository](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch) and to most of the tools we maintain: API wrappers, framework plugins, SDKs...

![](__GHOST_URL__/content/images/2021/09/all-sdk-s.svg)

Started from the bottom...

It was a real success: we merged over fifty contributors’ pull requests. It was twice more than in September 2020.

This year at Meilisearch
------------------------

With around thirty pull requests from external contributors merged in September 2021, we expect more contributions at this year’s Hacktoberfest.

![](__GHOST_URL__/content/images/2021/09/Group-81.svg)

... now we're here.

We’ve made [more repositories available](https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Ahacktoberfest+org%3Ameilisearch&type=Repositories) for Hacktoberfest:

*   our [documentation repository](https://github.com/meilisearch/documentation)
*   the new tools that we’ve created: the [Dart SDK](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-dart), the [Ruby on Rails](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-rails) and [Angular](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-angular) integrations,  the [Gatsby](https://github.com/meilisearch/gatsby-plugin-meilisearch) and [Strapi](https://github.com/meilisearch/strapi-plugin-meilisearch) plugins

How can we help you?
--------------------

Contributing for the first time to an open-source project can be intimidating. That’s why we are happy to guide you step by step through this process. We have several [good first issues](https://github.com/search?q=meilisearch+label%3Ahacktoberfest+state%3Aopen+is%3Aissue&type=Issues) that can help you get started.

Feel free to ask any questions on the GitHub issues of [the corresponding repository](https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Ahacktoberfest+org%3Ameilisearch&type=Repositories), [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/discussions), or on our [Slack workspace](https://slack.meilisearch.com/) (the [#hacktoberfest](https://meilicommunity.slack.com/archives/C02G1H43J2X) channel is the place to go, but you can also send direct messages to the Meilisearch team members).

We can’t wait to see your next commits 🚀

Meilisearch latest news and company updates

Hacktoberfest 2021 recap

CFPs: Writing Recommendations

Mid-October Hacktoberfest update

Contribute to Open Source during Hacktoberfest 2021