Working bee

Working Bee is the term we use when Growstuff's community/volunteers get together to work on Growstuff.

The term "working bee" is common in Australia among community gardeners and other community groups like churches, scout groups, schools and kindergartens. Usually a working bee will happen on a weekend, and everyone comes along and pitches in to do necessary work to support the community.

The term "bee" is from Old English and means "help given by neighbours" (see Wiktionary for more etymology). In US English, you may have heard of quilting bees, spelling bees, or corn husking bees (check out that link for a great explanation and picture of a Kentucky husking bee from 1910).

In open source/tech culture, days spent working on a software project are sometimes called "code sprints" or "hack days". When we thought about using these terms, we worried that they might be offputting to people who don't consider themselves ace coders. We also wanted to open up the event to people who aren't coders at all, but would still like to get involved in other aspects of building Growstuff.

So, if you would like to attend a working bee, just show up with your enthusiasm, any tools or skills you have, and a readiness to share and learn and work together. By the end of the day we'll have built something together, and had a good time.