Early next week, we’re hoping to release the 2nd beta release of WordPress 3.0 on our journey toward the final version. There are still over 200 bugs in the 3.0 milestone, and we can use all the help we can get on fixing these problems. If you’re a developer, take a look at the list of bugs that still need fixing in 3.0. Write a patch, or test and give feedback on someone else’s. The tickets around custom post types and taxonomies are especially in need of help. Every little bit helps, so if you’re a developer who’s never contributed to core before, maybe now is the right time! Check out our information on contributing to WordPress core, and head over to Trac to see if there’s a problem you might know how to fix. If you get stuck, need collaborators, or have a question about the best way to approach a fix, hop into the dev channel on IRC at irc.freenode.net, channel #wordpress-dev. Core developers will be around over the weekend working on bugs themselves, so if you’re trying to help, don’t be afraid to ask questions. With your help, maybe by Monday we can knock the bug count down to half of what it is right now. How great would that be? (Answer: pretty great)

The sprint will go full force until Monday afternoon, when the lead developers and core committers will all stop to take a breath and look at the remaining bug reports to see how we did over the weekend, so don’t wait! And thanks!