Who can participate

We are looking for great coders no matter the status, age, gender or background. However, in order to be one of the grand prize winners you need to be able to travel to the FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit to Singapore from March 17-19, 2017.

What are the prizes?

Everyone who gets five pull requests merged during the contest period will receive a digital certificate of participation from the FOSSASIA organization. Out of the top ten contributors in the contest three grand prize winners will be chosen by the jury. The grand prize winners, will receive up to 450USD in travel support (please provide blog post and receipt, reimbursement at the event) and a free speaker's ticket to the FOSSASIA Summit in Singapore from March 17-19. Plus, they will have the chance to present their work at the event. Other top 10 finalists will receive a 100USD travel voucher for a conference of their choice (please provide blog post and receipts, reimbursement after event) and a free ticket for the FOSSASIA summit.

How are the Winners chosen?

When deciding on the Winners, the jury will review the work of the 10 developers with the highest number of points gained during the contest. Developers earn points for merged work and closing an issue. The jury will look at each developer’s work considering creativity, thoroughness, and quality of work and will also factor in the developer’s involvement in the organization’s community like submitting regular scrum reports, helping others to solve issues or writing blog posts for the FOSSASIA blog. Basically we are looking for good developers who are team players. That is why the sheer number of tasks is not the only main criteria. As with GSoC we are looking for quality work. In the end from the 10 highest scoring developers, the jury will name 3 finalists that will receive the travel stipend to attend the FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit. Because some tasks are more involved than others just by the nature of the type of task (for example, heavy coding versus solving a text typo bug), it is entirely possible that someone who completed 15 issues could be chosen as a Grand Prize Winner over someone who completed 35 issues. If they are both among the top 10 contributors, they are eligible to be among the Winners.

How does the contest work?

* At first developers sign up on a Google form here to participate.
* Then they request to be added to the FOSSASIA Code Heat team on GitHub via the mailing list or on our Slack channel [Get a Slack Invite].
* Each developer then searches for issues that interests him/her and claims ownership of a particular issue. The developer works on the issue and if there are questions asks on the chat channel of the project. The main channel for decision making is however always the GitHub issue itself.
* Once finished, the developers make a pull request from his/her own forked repository to the development branch of the project and submit their work for review.
* Pull requests need to pass Travis builds, code CI tests and ensure migrations work.
* Mentors and core-developers from the organization evaluate the work submitted. If the work is accepted, the developer earns 1 point for each accepted pull request and 1 point if they close an issue. So you could earn two points if you close an issue with a pull requests. [Please Note: Sometimes developers try to “beat the system” by submitting lots of small improvements as pull requests. Please consider that the jury is mainly interested in the substantiality and quality of code contributions and the sheer number is not the main criteria.]
* After the pull request has been merged developers can claim another issue to work on if they wish.
* If the work needs polishing, the task remains open and the core-developer may give the submitter additional time and guidance on improving their work.
* If the work does not meet expectations, the task can be reopened for another developer contestant to claim and work on.

When does the contest begin? Can I join the contest at any time?

The contest begins at 9:00 AM (SGT/GMT+8) on September 25, 2016 and runs until 23:00 PM (SGT/GMT+8) on February 3, 2017. Participants should take the time to read through the contest website and familiarize themselves with the introductory information and Readme.md of the project before starting work on an issue. Interested developers can join the contest at any time during the program.

How do developers register for the contest?

1. Once the contest is announced developers will be able to sign up on a Google form here.
2. They should then request to be added to the Code Heat contest team on GitHub via our Slack channel or Mailing List. All developers should then make their participation public by showing their membership as “public” in their GitHub profile. Please request an invite for GitHub here on our Slack channel [Get a Slack Invite] or on the mailing list.

Why should developers participate in the contest? 

The contest is intended to introduce developers to the Open Event and AskSusi projects and to give them the opportunity to become part of the development team. The contest gives developers the opportunity to put their skills to use in an exciting software project. Many developers are not yet deeply familiar with open source and the contest is an easy way to get involved in this international community of developers, who want to help you learn and succeed. The contest is a gateway to learning new skills as well as learning to work in a collaborative software development team. At the end of the contest, developers can show their friends, teachers, co-developers and family members the work they did on this public project used by people around the world.

What programming languages do participants need to know?

In the Open Event Server project we are mainly using Python (with Flask micro web framework), HTML, CSS, Javascript, JSON, and PostgreSQL.
For Susi we are focusing on the mobile app using native Android technologies and on the Susi messenger bots.
For loklak search the goal is to get a mobile ready website using AngularJS and other Javascript technologies, that are connected to the loklak server through APIs.

What is a daily scrum and where should I submit it?

A scrum is a simple daily update to inform others about what a developer is working on and if there are any impediments a developer encounters. Daily scrums are usually done in a standup circle with all developers of a project. As we are working together online we adapted this and ask developers to submit their daily scrums by email to the mailing list of the project. There are three questions that should be answered in a daily scrum mail:
1. What have you worked on yesterday?
2. What are you planning to work on today?
3. Are there any impediments that prevent you from achieving your goal?
Each answer should include a short sum up of the item and a link to the respective issue/pull request. Each pull request should have an issue that it is related to. Scrum mails should be send out in the morning preferably before 10AM local time.

Which projects can I work on? Can I also contribute to other FOSSASIA projects as part of the contest?

The three projects we are focusing on during the contest are:

1. The Open Event Server with:
* The repository at github.com/fossasia/open-event-server
* The Mailing List at: groups.google.com/group/open-event
* Our Developer Chat at: gitter.im/fossasia/open-event-server

2. The AskSusi repositories in the FOSSASIA organization
* The two main repositories for the contest are at github.com/fossasia/susi_android and at https://github.com/fossasia...bot
* Other relevant repositories at github.com/fossasia...query=susi
* The Mailing List at: groups.google.com/group/loklak/
* Developer Chat at: gitter.im/loklak/loklak

3. The loklak repositories in the FOSSASIA organization:
* Main project for the contest at github.com/fossasia/loklak_search
* Other relevant repositories at github.com/fossasia...query=loklak
* The Mailing List at: groups.google.com/group/loklak/
* Our Developer Chat at: gitter.im/loklak/loklak

We currently exclusively limit the contest to those three projects as there are release goals that we want to focus on. We plan to expand the contest to more projects in following iterations of "In the heat of the code". If you wish to contribute to other projects, we are happy too and these contributions will also help you to build your profile and put you in a good position for applications for future employments and participation in coding programs, but other FOSSASIA projects except of the three mentioned above are not part of the “In the heat of the code” contest this time.

How is the travel funding paid out and what happens if a grand prize winner is not able to get a visa? 

The travel funding is available for the amount of travel costs (flights and standard accommodation), that are really incurred - up to 450 USD. Please provide receipts and check with the committee for open questions. In the event a Grand Prize Winner is not able to join the FOSSASIA summit because he/she cannot obtain a visa or for any other reason, the runner up selected by the jury will be chosen as the Grand Prize Winner and the original Grand Prize winner will receive the 100USD travel funding to attend a local event in his/her area (the original Grand Prize winner will retain the title as a winner). We will determine the best way to pay out the prizes together with the winners.