The keys to success, advises entrepreneur Scott Chacon, are passion and failure. Chacon spoke to hundreds of data science students and the campus community on Oct. 11 as part of the Institute’s Distinguished Lecturer Series. More than 800 students and university community members attended and tuned in to the livestream to hear Chacon talk about the importance of his roots starting as a theater major at UC San Diego was following his passion and getting out of his comfort zone, he said, “You learn to put yourself out there and fail miserably, and you learn to keep going.” Chacon cofounded the tech company GitHub and with 3 other founders and grew it to 450 employees in less than 10 years, eventually being acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. His newest passion project is Chatterbug, an online language learning school he cofounded that connects students to native-speaking tutors. See the full HDSI Distinguished Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVJcMGvXB8U

Chacon, Class of ‘02, cofounded the web-based development platform GitHub that boasts 28 million users and is now the largest host of source code in the world. He is also the author of Pro Git, published by Apress and found online at git-scm.com.