Partnering with Quira was instrumental in the success of our Hacktoberfest 2024 activation. The ability to precisely target experienced contributors through Solver Quests significantly improved the quality and relevance of contributions to MindsDB’s open-source initiatives. Quira’s platform seamlessly aligned with our goals, bringing in exactly the kind of talent and engagement we hoped for. We’re genuinely excited about the results and look forward to future collaborations
— Costa Tin, Marketing Manager @ MindsDB
About MindsDB
MindsDB is an AI data automation solution that unifies petabyte scale enterprise data, enabling enterprise-wide informed decision-making in real-time. Their open source project mindsdb/mindsdb is a query engine that enables anyone to build AI that can learn and answer questions over federated data. It has accumulated over 27,000 stars and has circa 800 contributors.
✌️ Dynamic duo: Creator Quests + Solver Quests
Recently, MindsDB leveraged a combination of Creator Quests and Solver Quests to enhance their activation during Hacktoberfest 2024.
- Creator Quests are asynchronous, hackathon-style challenges that reward developers for completing specific tasks. Organizations can use them to promote projects, beta-test new features, or expand the reach of a release.
- Solver Quests enable organizations to place bounties on GitHub issues, incentivizing contributions with cash, swag, or digital badges.
🎃 Hacktoberfest with MindsDB
Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration that encourages developers of all skill levels to contribute to open-source projects. Many open-source organizations participate by triaging issues and challenges for developers to solve, often offering rewards. MindsDB launched a Creator Quest as a top-of-funnel entry point to their own activation, encouraging participants to explore MindsDB’s repositories and solve some open issues.
Some issues posted during Hacktoberfest were not beginner-friendly and were instead aimed at more experienced contributors. Quira supported MindsDB’s Hacktoberfest activation by enabling them to broadcast some of their more complex issues to developers who met specific qualifying criteria. For example:
- Developers had contributed to at least one repository they did not own.
- They had activity throughout the year, not just in October.
- They had experience in Python, JavaScript, and integration building.
- Their accounts had been active for over a year.
To do this, MindsDB created Solver Quests on each of the issues they wanted to see developers of this kind. Then, Quira identified users who met these qualifying criteria and invited them to tackle these issues.
The experience profile of contributors engaging with these Solver Quests closely resembled the profiles of existing contributors in mindsdb/mindsdb.
