Melissa Severini joined us in December of 2013 for the 9th installment of our Passion Projects talk series. Her talk explored the dynamics of managing humans in a startup environment and prepared us with tips for handling any emergency. Check out the full video of her talk and our panel discussion below.

Photos from the event

Thanks to everyone who came out for Melissa's talk, including our musical performance for the evening, Mara Hruby.

Photos courtesy of our fab photog Mona Brooks of Mona Brooks Photography.

In November of 2013 we hosted our 3rd annual Dodgeball Tournament. With the help of the participating teams we raised money for 4 awesome non-profits. See the action from the tournament in the video below.

If you're interested in joining the next Dodgeball Tournament, send us an email to dodgeball@github.com.

Ligaya Tichy joined us in November of 2013 for the 8th installment of our Passion Projects talk series. Ligaya's talk inspired us all to give more charitably and left us with a concrete plan of action to get better at giving in 2014. Check out the full video of her talk and our panel discussion below.

Photos from the event

Thanks to everyone who came out for Ligaya's talk and made it a night to remember, including our house band for the evening, Emily Jane White.

Photos courtesy of our fab photog Mona Brooks of Mona Brooks Photography.

Leslie Bradshaw joined us in September of 2013 for the sixth installment of our Passion Projects talk series. Leslie dropped some serious RealTalk™ about her career in tech, creating healthy work environments for the people we work with, and how to stay focused in a distraction-fueled industry. Check out the full video of her talk and our panel discussion below.

Photos from the event

Thank you to everyone who came out for Leslie's talk and made it an awesome night!

Photos courtesy of our fab photog Mona Brooks of Mona Brooks Photography.

We announced our second annual game jam, the GitHub Game Off II, back in October. Today, we're revealing the winners and giving you the chance to play and fork these great games!

All of our winners will receive shiny new iPad Airs, while runners up will enjoy some amazing swag!

Transcube

A 2d puzzle platformer based on the concept of transforming into different "blocks", with their unique properties, and making your way to the end of the level with the provided transformations » view the source · play

Swap

Swap is a new take on the classic tile-based puzzle game, where you change which character you're controlling to reach your goal » view the source · play

Psiral

A turn based strategy game in which four wizards battle to reach the fountain of endless energy » view the source · play

Protocol 390

To survive in People's Park, you must supply the prophet with change » view the source · play

Heal Em' All

Imagine, what if the cure exists? What if the zombie plague can be stopped? Explore old, abandoned graveyards, heal as many zombies as you can, and find your way out. But be careful not to become one of them! » view the source · play

Runners Up

CHANG€

An intense game about the extreme life of supermarket cashiers » view the source · play

Color Quest

An infinite runner following a black and white pixel's quest to change into a color pixel » view the source · play

Room For Change

RfC is a randomly generated action RPG. You play as a chubby archeologist who is tasked with retrieving three sacred artifacts from the pyramid of the legendary Pharaohs » view the source · play

Custom Tetris

Play the classic Tetris game the way you like it! Adjust the rules, change the sides » view the source · play

Hyperspace Garbage Collection

General Hyperspace Waste Management Solutions » view the source · play

MEGA GIRL.git

Megaman inspired game » view the source · play

BitBot

An HTML/JS game where you control a bot, which must sense, plan, and act » view the source · play

Jekyll & Hyde Collide

A multi-layered infinite side-scroller » view the source · play

Chromacore

2D musical platformer set in a dark, black & white world that progressively becomes more colorful and happy through successful gameplay » view the source · play

Turkey Cooking Simulator

Literally, a turkey cooking simulator » view the source · play

Thank you to everyone that took part! Thanks also to our incredible judges Adam Saltsman, Aleissia Laidacker, David Czarnecki, Matt Hackett, Kyros Starr, and Romana Ramzan.

The GitHub Game Off will return in 2014.

Kick off the new year right by joining us on Thursday, January 9th for our first Passion Projects talk of 2014 with Dana McCallum.

Dana is a senior engineer at Twitter, co-founder of Lambda Ladies, and a licensed commercial pilot. She was the lead engineer on Twitter's API for two years, helped create Twitter's advertiser API, and now works on social graph infrastructure. As an advocate for women in engineering and the LGBT community Dana has helped create advocacy teams at Twitter and other companies, and served as a delegate on women's issues in India with the U.S. Department of State. You can find Dana on GitHub and Twitter.

About the event:

• When? Thursday, January 9th from 6:00-9:00pm
• Where? GitHub HQ, 88 Colin P. Kelly Junior St., San Francisco, CA
• Space is limited — you must register to attend this event.
• Food and beverages will be provided, along with a live musical performance by Running In The Fog, before and after the talk.

If you joined us for our third annual dodgeball tournament last Sunday, we thank you and your team, and we hope you had as much fun as we did. It was a great day, and we raised a lot of money for some awesome causes.

Heroku ultimately prevailed and took home their second OctoTrophy! We couldn't host the event without the participation of the community, and we’d like to thank all of the companies and organizations that came out and took some hits for charity: Heroku, Constant Contact, Twilio, Atlassian, New Relic, Pivotal Labs, Thumbtack, Perforce, HRK, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, Go Daddy, Outcast Agency, and Airbnb.

And, if you haven’t gotten a chance yet, take a look at the 4 fantastic non-profits that we chose to support this year: Streetside Stories, Second Harvest, Year Up, and Family House.

Additionally, we owe a huge “thanks!” to the World Dodgeball Society, for serving as incredible referees and just generally being awesome; SportNGIN, whose easy-to-use bracketing system was the backbone of our scheduling and scoring method; Slider Shack, who supplied all-you-can-eat tater tots and mini-burgers to our hungry athletes; and Garden Creamery, who soothed their wounds and their pride with tasty cold treats.

We ran our very first game jam last year and had so much fun, we decided to throw another one!

The Challenge

You have the entire month of November to create a web-based game loosely based on the theme "change".

What do we mean by loosely based on "change"? We literally mean, loosely based. Some examples might be a FPS where you throw the loose change in your pockets at the enemy or perhaps a puzzle game where you have to change form to overcome obstacles.

Your game. Your rules. You can participate either as an individual or as a team. You're encouraged to use open source libraries, frameworks, graphics, and sounds in your game.

The Prizes

We're giving away shiny new iPad Airs (16GB models) to our 5 lucky winners. Runners-up will receive a $100 credit for the GitHub Shop, where they can grab some of our shirts, hoodies, stickers, and more!

All winners and runners-up will be showcased on our blog.

Judging

We have a handful of judges who are eager to play your games!

• Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman - Game maker and dad, creator of Canabalt and Flixel.
• Aleissia Laidacker - Team Lead AI at Ubisoft.
• David Czarnecki, Lead Engineer at Agora Games.
• Matt Hackett, Co-founder of Lost Decade Games.
• Kyros Starr, Gaymer and Tech Writer at GitHub.
• Lee Reilly, Gamer Dad and Software Developer at GitHub.
• Romana Ramzan, Denki's Player Champion, Global Game Jam Director.

The Rules

• To qualify for entry, you must fork the github/game-off-2013 repository to your individual or organization account. Not sure which account type would be best for you? Check out this handy help article, which explains the differences between the two types of accounts.
• All entries must be web-based, i.e. playable in a browser. HTML5, WebGL, Unity, Torque 3D, Node JS, and Flash are all possible - just be sure the source is made available on your fork.
• You must be over the age of 13.

Instructions

• If you don't already have a GitHub account, sign up for a personal account now - it's free!
• Fork the github/game-off-2013 repository to your individual account (or to a free organization account).
• Be sure to follow @github on Twitter for updates.
• Make sure your code is pushed to the master branch of your forked repository before Dec 1st!
• Make sure you have a README file that includes a brief description of your game, what open source projects (if any) you used, and a screenshot.
• Your repository should have a brief description and the playable URL entered into the fields shown below (this will make our judging process easier):

Comments / Questions / Help

• New to Git, GitHub, and/or version control? Check out our help documentation to get started!
• Questions about Git/GitHub? Please email support@github.com and be sure to include 'GitHub Game Off' in the subject.
• Questions specific to the GitHub Game Off? Please create an issue. This will be the official FAQ.
• The official Twitter hashtag is #ggo13.

Last year, 20 teams faced off on the dodgeball court, (in the name of charity, of course). It was a ton of fun, and we were able to raise over $62,000 to give to four amazing non-profits.

We hope you'll join us this year, for the 3rd annual GitHub Dodgeball Tournament!

We've brought back the folks from the World Dodgeball Society to help with the tournament. This year, we have room for 22 teams to compete in the tournament next month. All you need to compete is 10 to 15 of your strongest co-workers or friends, a donation of $3,000, and to register. Then join us Sunday, November 17th at the SoMa Recreation Center!

We will all be playing for four amazing local charities:

• Second Harvest Food Bank: mobilizes individuals, companies, and community partners to connect people to the nutritious food they need.
• Streetside Stories: cultivates young people's voices to develop literacy and arts skills, fosters educational equity, values diversity, and builds community.
• Family House: Provides housing and support for low-income families of children with cancer or life-threatening illnesses.
• Year Up: Inspiring students to pursue careers in science and technology.

The Facts:

• What: The Second Annual Octocat Dodgeball Invitational
• Where: SoMa Rec Center, 270 6th Street
• When: Sunday, November 17th from 1:00pm - 6:30pm
  • 1:00 to 1:30 - Sign in and warm up
  • 1:30 to 4:30 - Tournament play
  • 5:00 to 6:00 - Finals
  • 6:00 to 6:30 - Awards ceremony
  • 7:00pm - After-party, details coming soon

Register here: http://dodgeball.github.com/

GitHub believes in giving back to the community. We sponsor conferences, help run hackathons, host charity events, and now, we're trying something new. On October 8th, 2013, in conjunction with our new GitHub for Good program, we will be holding our first-ever blood drive!

Join us in giving the gift of blood at a mobile collection unit coming to SOMA. In addition to knowing that you've made a huge difference in someone's life, as a thank you we will be offering tours of our cool new digs as you sip on your recovery glass of OJ. We'll also have a few other surprise goodies for all successful donors. You can sign up here using sponsor code GITHUB to find our specific event. The facts:

When: Tuesday, Oct 8th 11:00a to 5:00p
Where: GitHub HQ

Please note: You must sign up in advance to participate!

A few reasons to give blood:

• Every two seconds someone in the U.S. needs blood.
• More than 44,000 blood donations are needed every day.
• A total of 30 million blood components are transfused each year in the U.S. (2006).
• The average red blood cell transfusion is approximately 3 pints.
• The blood type most often requested by hospitals is Type O.
• The blood used in an emergency is already on the shelves before the event occurs.
• More than 1 million new people are diagnosed with cancer each year. Many of them will need blood, sometimes daily, during their chemotherapy treatment.

We hope you’ll join us in supporting the American Red Cross and those in need of blood.

We're now five installments into our talk series Passion Projects, which we created to help surface and celebrate the work of incredible women in our industry. Each of our speakers has a unique story to tell and they're all stories we think are worth sharing with you, our community.

Recently we sat down with past speaker Rachel Myers to talk a little more about Railsbridge and the path that led her to become a developer.

Jessica Hische joined us in July for the fifth installment of our talk series, Passion Projects. Jessica dazzled us with her talk about procrastiworking. Check out the full video of her talk and our panel discussion below.

Photos from the event

Thank you to everyone who came out for Jessica's talk and made it an incredible night.

Today we're excited to share a new episode of OctoTales - our video series about incredible companies using GitHub to work better together. This episode features Balanced.

Since 2011, Balanced has been using GitHub to build a better payment system for marketplaces. By having public discussions with their customers, getting feedback on product design, APIs and features, they stay focused on making something people want.

If you would like to be a part of the OctoTales series, tell us your story at tales@github.com

About a year and a half ago we announced Improved Subversion Client Support - an improvement to the original service that provided better write access, partial checkouts, and access to branches and tags using the Subversion trunk/branches/tags convention.

Now, it's time to shut down the old SVN support.

The old service is currently running on svn.github.com, and will be turned off on July 31. If you have any SVN checkouts of GitHub repositories from svn.github.com, you should recreate them using the new github.com URL. Since svn.github.com only checked out the default (usually 'master') branch, you should change checkouts that use URLs like this:

https://svn.github.com/user/project.git/

To this:

https://github.com/user/project/trunk/

In April we announced the second annual GitHub data challenge. Since last year, GitHub's public timeline data on Google BigQuery has grown by over 80 million events, including 3.8 million new repositories, 38 million pushes, and 8 million comments on issues, pull requests, and commits.

After receiving some amazing entries in the previous challenge, we were excited to see what people would discover with another year of data. The results blew us away: we saw many more entrants and novel applications of our data. GitHubbers ranked their favorite entries, and after tallying the votes, we're happy to announce the top 3 entries for the 2013 GitHub data challenge.

First Place

The Open Source Report Card, by Dan Foreman-Mackey, analyzes a GitHub user's contributions to produce a "report card" with statistics and automatically generated prose.

Second Place

How often do people use tabs over spaces in Java? How many commits have lines wrapped to 80 characters? Popular Convention by Outsider uses GitHub data to analyze conventions in selected programming languages.

Third Place

David Fischer's visualization of open source contributions by location shows the geographic distribution of contributors behind the 200 most active GitHub repositories.

Thanks

Congratulations to the winning entries, and huge thanks to everyone who submitted an entry! Our top 3 winners will receive gift certificates to the GitHub Shop for $200, $100, and $50, respectively.

We can't wait to see what the next data challenge will bring!