That's pretty much it for this year folks, just a few hours left until the biggest annual party on the planet gets underway.

On behalf of everyone at ALM Works, I'd like to say thanks to all of you for being with us this year. We wish you a safe and pleasant journey into 2014, which we hope will bring you unbounded success and prosperity.

And now for some nostalgic reflections on how fantastic 2013 was

This was a great year for me personally, due in no small part to my having spent the latter half of it with ALM Works. Here are a few of my favourite moments:

August

The wildest corporate outing I ever survived

Cocktails, guns and a Mexican restaurant might sound more like plot elements from an action movie than a plan for a corporate weekend event, but the result was a team outing to remember. We survived and had a great time in the process.

We also figured out who had the best chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse

September

Preparing for October

September is a big hazy blur. All I can remember is that we were preparing for something big in October. Seriously, was there even a September? Maybe this was a leap year or something.

October

Atlassian Summit 2013, San Francisco

My first Atlassian Summit, my first trip to the American continent and my first proper jet lag.

In all the excitement of the Summit and San Francisco's diners, I forgot to visit the Golden Gate bridge.

Sorry bridge, maybe next time

The Summit was a blast. We created noise with our asteroid shooting game, intrigue with the mysterious purple rubber thing that we put in the tote bags, and delight with our giveaway t-shirt that featured a stylized blueprint of the first interplanetary probe ever to fly past Mars.

It's still out there somewhere

We also announced our plans to release Cross, a multiple JIRA instance synchronizer, an Outline Importer that will turn pretty much any indented list into a structure of JIRA issues, and an upcoming next-generation release of the Structure plugin.

November

T4AT ticket prize draw

How do you draw the winner of a free ticket to the Tools4AgileTeams conference on a Friday evening? By shooting polystyrene rockets around the office, of course.

It may look like we're having fun, but... wait, who am I kidding...

Structure coding contest

The Structure Coding Contest that we announced in November officially starts in just a few days. It will provide an ongoing opportunity for developers to pit their wits against one another and prove their mettle by competing for kudos and prizes in our devious coding challenges.

The first challenge is now open so there's nothing to stop you getting your code on over the festive season.

December

Corporate Culinary Genius

For our corporate New Year party we went out for a meal. That we cooked ourselves. Awesomely.

See if you can guess who isn't part of the ALM Works team in the pictures below:

Mouse over for witty captions, click for full-size glory

That's all for this year folks, see you again in 2014!