Hacktoberfest is a celebration of all things open source, bringing together participants from around the world with diverse skill sets to contribute to various projects. To participate, register before October 31, and make four high-quality pull/merge requests between October 1 and 31 in participating GitHub or GitLab projects. Coding tasks are the main way people participate, but other ways to support open-source include non-code contributions such as technical documentation, user experience testing, and writing. Maintaining one's own project can also be a great way to contribute, especially for those with more experience. By preparing their projects for contributions, maintainers can encourage new contributors by adding labels, creating contribution guidelines, and adopting a code of conduct. The event aims to encourage participation in open source, not just coding skills, and offers various resources and support for participants.