August 2012 Summaries

GitHub emphasizes optimizing for the happiness of its employees by accommodating the needs of their families, allowing for flexible work schedules and locations that enable staff to balance their professional and personal lives effectively. This approach allows employees to spend more time with their children, care for them when needed, and even exchange childcare with colleagues, fostering a supportive community. GitHub also organizes family-inclusive events, such as catered lunches and family activities during biannual summits, which help strengthen the bonds between employees and their families. These initiatives contribute to a productive work environment where happiness and work-life balance are prioritized.

GitHub Training had an eventful week on Vancouver Island, culminating in a social gathering after a series of public talks hosted by the Courtenay Web Posse at North Island College. The final event, a casual meet-up, was scheduled for August 31st, 2012, from 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM at the Flying Canoe Pub in Courtenay, BC. Attendees were encouraged to RSVP and engage on Twitter with Matthew J. McCullough and the Courtenay Web Posse for further interaction and updates.

GitHub's deployment process allows developers and designers to independently ship updates as soon as they are ready, without a release manager or weekly schedules, ensuring a smooth and safe workflow by deploying branches rather than merging directly to master. This practice keeps the master branch stable and serves as a reliable rollback point in case of issues. To enhance this system, GitHub employs checks to verify build success and ensure no overlapping deployments occur, using tools like Janky and the GitHub API to manage and confirm the deployment readiness of branches. Deployments are managed by an internal service called Heaven, which utilizes Capistrano recipes and integrates with other tools like Hubot and Janky for visibility and efficiency. The workflow promotes continuous integration and deployment, with the ability to monitor and roll back changes quickly, ensuring the seamless release of updates across GitHub's infrastructure. Throughout 2012, the company recorded significant deployment activity, underscoring its commitment to agile development practices.

GitHub's approach to sales is deeply intertwined with its focus on product excellence and customer satisfaction, reflecting its developer-centric ethos. Rather than pursuing aggressive sales tactics or commission-based incentives, GitHub emphasizes building products that largely sell themselves, catering to a customer base that requires minimal intervention. The sales team, referred to as developer liaisons, primarily assists the small percentage of customers who need business-related guidance, operating more like sales engineers or technical account managers. This team is composed of individuals with technical backgrounds who prioritize long-term relationships and helping developers within larger organizations advocate for GitHub products. By eschewing traditional sales commissions in favor of competitive salaries and benefits, GitHub ensures a collaborative work environment where success is shared across the organization. This philosophy underscores GitHub's commitment to sustainability and authenticity in its business practices.

Game Bytes' second edition explores the open-source space exploration game Pioneer, which offers players the freedom to explore thousands of unique planets and star systems, engage in various activities such as trade, piracy, and bounty hunting, and customize ships with their accumulated wealth. The game has a robust and inviting development community that welcomes contributions, ranging from fixing bugs and translating languages to enhancing game assets and developing missions. Pioneer provides a valuable opportunity for aspiring game developers to gain practical experience and collaborate on a GitHub-hosted project, with resources and support readily available through their IRC channel. The article, written by Lee Reilly, a Senior Program Manager at GitHub, emphasizes the welcoming nature of the community and encourages participation in enhancing the game.

Join the community this Thursday evening at the Great Dane in downtown Madison for a drinkup featuring local beer, classic pub food, and engaging conversation, serving as a prelude to the Madison Ruby conference starting the next day. The event will take place at 8:30 PM in the Rathskellar room at the Great Dane, located at 123 E. Doty St, just a block from the capitol.

Philadelphia, known as the City of Brotherly Love, is set to host an event featuring great drinks, enjoyable company, and classic music, with GitHub covering the expenses. Scheduled for Wednesday, August 22nd, at 8 PM, the gathering will take place at Farmers' Cabinet in Center City. Yossef Mendelssohn and Julia Mae are the hosts, promising a memorable evening.

On August 15, 2012, a scheduled database upgrade was planned for GitHub, starting at 22:00 PDT, during which the website and repositories would be temporarily inaccessible. The maintenance was expected to last only a few minutes, with a rollback plan ready if it exceeded 15 minutes. Users were assured that the upgrade aimed at enhancing the site's speed and efficiency. The update concluded successfully, as noted in a follow-up post by Will Farrington.

The inaugural OctoGala event in San Francisco successfully raised $7,000 for Running Chicken, a charitable organization supporting vulnerable children near Kisumu, Kenya, through a children's home and a school-based feeding program. The funds will help cover essential operational costs such as rent, utilities, and educational supplies and will enhance resources like sports equipment and art supplies for the children. Additionally, the event's proceeds will bolster the feeding program that provides daily nutritious meals to students, including during weekends and holidays, and will aid in emergency meal services for the community. The OctoGala funding will also facilitate the launch of a greenhouse farming project aimed at generating sustainable revenues while providing food for the children's home and feeding program, addressing start-up cost barriers for community initiatives with revenue potential.

Jake Wharton, a renowned Android developer and open-source software contributor, developed two influential Android libraries: ActionBarSherlock and ViewPagerIndicator. These libraries were initially created to address specific challenges he encountered during a work project related to managing virtual machine images from a mobile app, a project that did not materialize but led to the development of these valuable UI components. ActionBarSherlock enables the use of the Action Bar UI element on older Android versions, while ViewPagerIndicator enhances the user experience by providing a visual representation of paged displays, addressing the native Android ViewPager widget's shortcomings. Wharton's approach exemplifies the success of open-source development, where his initial code and project leadership attracted a community that contributed significantly, allowing developers to implement these components without rebuilding them from scratch. This collaborative effort highlights the power of open-source projects in improving software development efficiency and user experience across various devices and screen sizes.

Join us this Thursday evening at Thirsty Bear, located at 661 Howard Street, for a social gathering featuring drinks and engaging conversations. The event begins at 8:00 pm on August 9th and offers an opportunity to unwind and connect with others after a busy week of work, especially for those who have been occupied with numerous Pull Requests. This gathering is organized and announced by Kami Richey, also known by the handle @kamzilla.

An inaugural Columbus Drinkup event is being organized to celebrate the presence of three central Ohio GitHubbers and the upcoming CocoaConf in town. Scheduled for Thursday, August 9th at 7:00 PM, the gathering will take place at Brazenhead in Grandview, with complimentary drinks provided. Attendees are directed to head to the basement or seek guidance from the greeter upon arrival. The event is announced by Jason Long, who invites participants to join the social occasion.

GitHub has introduced a revamped notifications system and a new way to follow repositories with updates to the watch and star functionalities. Users will now see a blue notifications indicator when they have unread notifications, and the introduction of "stars" allows users to track repositories of interest without receiving activity updates in their dashboard feed. Notifications are linked to the repositories users are watching, providing updates on discussions, issues, pull requests, and comments, while users can still receive notifications for specific interactions through @mentions or assignments. The new system also includes features like automatic watching when granted push access, thread-based notification roll-ups akin to email conversations, simplified notification settings, and the ability to route organization-specific notifications to different email addresses. Improved notification emails are also part of this release, enhancing user experience in managing their GitHub activities.

An invitation is extended by John Barnette for an informal gathering in New Orleans, where he, along with Shawn Davenport and Ryan Tomayko, will be hosting a night of drinks at Capdeville, a location conveniently situated next to NOLA Hack Night. This event is set to take place on Tuesday, August 7th, at 7 PM, offering an opportunity for attendees to socialize and connect in a relaxed setting.

Continuing their series of events in Brazil, the organizers, led by Zach Holman, are hosting a drink-up in Rio de Janeiro following a similar gathering in São Paulo. Scheduled for Tuesday, August 7, the event will take place at Mud Bug starting at 8 PM, with the promise that drinks will be provided to attendees. The invitation is open to all interested parties, with details and directions available via a Google Maps link.

GitHub has enhanced its notifications system with several improvements, including a new email backend that supports rich formatting and smart mail headers. Email notifications for issues, pull requests, and comments now come with both HTML and plain text options, supporting Markdown elements and GitHub-specific features like emojis and @mentions. The updates also refine the use of mail headers, utilizing Bcc and Cc fields to better signal importance and enable advanced filtering in mail clients, with examples including Gmail's mute and priority features. Additionally, an embedded invisible image in HTML emails allows for automatic read status synchronization between email clients and GitHub's notifications interface, with image viewing permissions needed for this feature to function. These enhancements aim to improve user experience across various email platforms.

Zach Holman, under the username @holman, extends an invitation to fellow tech enthusiasts for a social gathering at O’Malley’s bar in São Paulo, Brazil. The event, scheduled for Monday, August 6, at 7 pm, coincides with the QCon conference, offering an opportunity for fun, entertainment, and networking among local techies. The announcement includes a Google Maps link for easy location access and promises complimentary drinks.

Recent updates have been made to improve the user experience with comment editing and deletion by relocating these actions from their previous hover position at the top right of the comment box to a more accessible location on the far right. This change aims to provide a more intuitive interface, ensuring the edit and delete options are prominently placed without covering the text, thereby simplifying the process for users. The update, implemented by Jon Rohan, is designed to enhance functionality and ease of use.

GitHub is introducing email address verification to improve user support, particularly in cases of password recovery or missing emails, while ensuring that current notifications and emails function as usual regardless of verification status. Users are encouraged to verify their email addresses used for notifications, with a reminder banner planned for those without verified emails.