Announcing HackFest 2017.1: SilverStripe 4 Alpha Edition

SilverStripe 4 is under active development, and we want to get you involved in pushing it towards release!

We're running an SS4-themed HackFest on Saturday, April 22nd at both of our New Zealand offices, with a focus on helping community members to contribute in one or more of the following areas:

Bugfixes and Features

Help improve the stability of the next SS4 development release! We'll have a refined list of issues ready to be tackled by developers of all levels - whether you've only recently started with SilverStripe or have been using it since the beginning.

Module Compatibility Updates

Plenty of popular modules are still in need of updates to support SilverStripe 4, and this is your opportunity to give something back to modules that you might have been utilising in your projects for years. We'll have a list of high-profile targets, but if there's one in particular you'd like to tackle we're happy to help.

Documentation improvements

If you're not confident about contributing to core / modules, or you're more of a content author than a developer, there's still ways for you to help! SilverStripe 4 has a number of design and behaviour changes, so it's important to have accurate documentation to support this. We'll have some key focus areas to choose from, and if there's any wording or layout changes you've been wanting to make, this will be the time!

Fort Building

To mix things up a bit, in Wellington we'll have a fort building exercise after lunch! This is your opportunity to take a break from building resilient software and build some resilient hardware instead.

Diana Hennessy, SilverStripe Channel Excellence Manager, in her fort creation at a previous SilverStripe hackfest

The event will also be streamed online, so if you can't join us onsite you can still participate remotely. We'll be organising teams to help everyone make the most of the day. Lunch will be provided, and there'll be swag for achievements!

If you're interested in running a hackfest in another city - let us know and we'll help you make this happen (please email community at silverstripe.org). 

So, if you're as excited as we are, pop over to the Auckland or Wellington Meetup pages and RSVP. We hope to see you there :D

Header image credit: Wonderland, released on Flickr under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)