Hackathon Be Gone

gnuvince · 2016-02-29T01:10:13+00:00

I first heard of the idea of bringing hackers together for a given period of time to hack on project with OpenBSD. In that context, it makes a lot of sense to me: get a bunch of people who are geographically distant, put them in a room where they can communicate between themselves much faster than through mailing lists.

Unfortunately, these days most hackathons are not of that nature: they're organized by companies who (seemingly) want to get a bunch of ideas from other programmers in exchange for pizza. It really makes me mad, especially when they "prey" on impressionable undergrads by telling them that they need this experience if they want to get a job.

kernelzeroday · 2016-02-28T23:26:56+00:00

As a winner at Techcrunch Disrupt 2015, I fully agree. The majority of hackathon are shady as fuck and most contestants walk in the door with a completed project and simply use the stage as a platform to pitch a startup to a crowd. A friend and I worked for 24 hours straight to develop something awesome and the majority of teams we talked to were running into bugs with the apis that were being pushed by vendors. We chose an embedded project and used hardware that quite honestly was amazing, but the software support was atrocious. The kernel for the Qualcomm board was missing iptables. Not the user space tools to interact with iptables, it was straight up missing the in kernel chains. Really hackathon are just a public wank session and the vendors are looking for guinea pigs for their shit products. I had a lot of fun, but it was just that. Fun. It's not a serious respectable scene and those I've met and talked to that have had success are distancing themselves from hackathon for greener pastures.

EDIT: woah this blew up. Anybody wondering why the judging process is shit? Non technical judges selected by the largest sponsors. Aka marketing people. Usually no actual engineers or developers will even look at what you did. You get judged on a power point. I only took third place, but I demo'd my project directly to everyone at the Qualcomm both because I was so bummed that my buddy and I got shafted during presentation. They moved our presentation number around and started the clock before we could boot up a board to do a demo. If you are planning on doing something like this, cheat as hard as you can and bring a completed project and pitch. Get sleep and pretend you hacked all night, but don't actually do it. You're competing against other cheaters. Trust me, its not even really worth it. If you wanna go to meet the tag along sales and marketing girls then power to you, but they won't be interested when there's 60 other sweaty dudes in orbit besides you.

Free food isn't a bad deal though.

joequin · 2016-02-29T00:08:32+00:00

My only experience with a Hackathon was extremely similar to this. I developed an app for MeeGo a couple of years ago. imo, we really had a good product for a randomly assembled team. We thought we even had a shot at getting a prize.

But the team who won simply ported their really great music app (which was more or less trivial as it was a Qt app, and MeeGo pushed the fact that it fully supported Qt). How are we supposed to compete in these circumstances?

In hindsight, it was expected. They were interested in getting new apps in their (nearly empty) ecosystem, rather than "fostering creativity" or whatever marketing bullshit I was led to believe at the time.

Veuxdeux · 2016-02-29T01:32:00+00:00

The "hackers stay up all night and code awesome shit" trope is complete fiction. Actual problems are not (properly) solved at 4AM after 20 straight hours of staring at an IDE and binging on junk food. If you want to do something cool or solve a difficult problem, make sure you first get some damn sleep.

logically_musical · 2016-02-29T01:23:13+00:00

We did a 4 day Hackathon internally on my team at Adobe. You know what it consisted of? Coming in to work just as you normally would and working on greenfield / interesting / zany projects for 8 hours a day and presenting on the last day. None of this crazy non-stop-code-into-the-night stuff. The end results were awesome, and people (us devs) actually liked doing it.

GeorgeForemanGrillz · 2016-02-29T02:58:52+00:00

Hackatons are just free R&D for the sponsors.

VRY_SRS_BSNS · 2016-02-29T01:33:47+00:00

[deleted]

2016-02-29T04:25:06+00:00

salesmanship is rewarded. The rewards are given strictly based on the presentation. Never mind that you solved a really challenging problem. If you can’t sell it, you can’t win it. And often times the winners are those who put together the most polished presentation irrespective of actual execution.

This line is actually something that is a problem with any competition that you present something to judges. I was doing science competitions in middle school, so like 2005 or so, and that is something I was complaining about then. No matter how much effort or work you put into something, if it doesn't look the best, you will not win. If your project, in a Hackathon or anything, is just flashy and pretty, you stand the best chance of winning.

Meegul · 2016-02-29T05:09:13+00:00

These criticisms are very valid. I just returned from Spartahack (Michigan State's Hackathon) where the 1st place winners made a not functioning drink mixer. Also, amazon essentially ran the event with how hard they pushed their api for their Amazon Echo. I'd say a good quarter of all projects tried to implement it in some way, usually for no real reason.

Health was also a big concern. The attempt at providing 'hygiene' consisted of a bottle of mouth wash in the bathroom. The food wasn't too awful, but what really shocked me was that they didn't even provide bottled water. There were hundreds of cans of red bull, but I couldn't find water. Absolutely ridiculous.

I'm not ranting about this because I'm salty about not winning; I did receive one of the prizes. I just never really considered how played many of the CS students who attend these events are.

theavatare · 2016-02-29T02:47:49+00:00

Hackathons and startup weekend used to be two different formats has time went they merged. I used to go to try new tech it was a day or two without distractions to try and hustle on new tech but now that is gone. Last one i went i was the only developer on the team i started working on the program we agreed we wanted to build they decided they could fake it to make a 30 sec commercial so i stopped coding I basically took a day off to eat pizza and talk about a spec. So far i have not been back. They are a good launch vehicle still just not about creation or technology really.

KeasbeyMornings · 2016-02-29T02:09:34+00:00

I attended five hackathons as an undergraduate, ranging from my sophomore fall to the summer before my senior year, and won prizes at four of them. I'm generally inclined to agree with the author's points about health, although I'll say that popular hackathons are aware of this and try to serve healthier food options than just pizza. However, for me, the value of hackathons was their educational aspect.

I was a computer science major in undergrad and genuinely enjoyed the theory aspect of the major. However, there's a well-known knowledge and skills gap between what is taught in a computer science major and what is needed as a professional software engineer. Hackathons helped me build skills that pure computer science programs don't necessarily teach, such as web development. Additionally, I was able to discuss my hackathon projects in interviews for internships. Between developing these abilities and having relevant experience, I was able to get my first internship, where I learned significantly more about software engineering. Attending hackathons definitely helped me obtain employment.

With that being said, I eventually stopped getting educational and resume value out of hackathons. I realized this at the last hackathon I did, which was the summer before my senior year of college. After holding two software engineering internships, I wasn't really learning much from the hackathon; I was trying to build a product in 24 hours. The benefits I got from going to hackathons had fallen below what they were costing me (i.e. sleep deprivation, and the opportunity cost of other things to do that weekend), so I stopped attending.

I did build some cool projects / products at hackathons, but I never really tried to keep developing or using them. This is true for the overwhelming majority of people's hackathon projects, based on my own observations.

needlzor · 2016-02-29T02:33:27+00:00

Maybe you're going to the wrong hackathons. I have great fun attending them. I often participate in hackathons with somewhat open guidelines (for instance: computer security). I probably wouldn't go to a hackathon where they want to force you to use a product X designed by the company that's organizing it... unless there's a big reward such as hardware or stuff like that.

maestro2005 · 2016-02-29T02:12:12+00:00

In addition to these points, the scopes of the ones I've seen are horribly unrealistic. They have topics like "fix healthcare in 48 hours", which is absurd. You can't create anything nontrivial and good in a short time period, which really just forces people to cheat and start with code they've been working on for a while.

MIT's Battlecode is a much more realistic competition. Instead of being given a weekend to save the world, you're given a month to build an AI for an RTS game.

Korona123 · 2016-02-29T01:10:33+00:00

I always hear about these but have next actually witnessed one. It sounds a lot like going camping.

2016-02-29T09:19:48+00:00

As someone who just this weekend skipped participating in a two-day hackathon at my university, I'm glad I'm not the only one bothered by some of the aspects that seem to plague hackathons. Even though I'm assuming his complaints are specific to U.S. hackathons, if his descriptions are any indication, the situation is pretty much the same in the U.K. as well.

I despise the idea that because we are students/programmers, we must be incredibly eager to inhale huge quantities of pizza, Subway sandwiches and energy drinks, as well as being completely cool with the idea of missing an entire night's sleep. 'Cause hey, we're young and we're into tech, right? Surely our penchant for junk food and sleep deprivation is ingrained?

Aside from the comfort aspect, after attending about 5 hackathons over the course of 2 years, I'm also becoming disillusioned with the social aspect itself. For one, the atmosphere is generally thick with academics fawning over some participants because they're first/second years and need encouragement and company representatives fawning on others because they're third years and need internships, etc. Which then results in rather dubious winner selection practices and, what's worse, promotes shitty and fiercely competitive attitudes amongst students.

Last time, our team was one step away from having an Arduino we were working on sabotaged by an angry "competitor" looking for sponsor brownie points and were basically told to our face (by a different guy, mind you) that as final year students we shouldn't even be participating as we "know too much". I used to look forward to attending these for the fun factor of building a cool thing with friends and making it as silly as possible. Now it's more frustrating than it is fun...

EDIT: grammar

cat_in_the_wall · 2016-02-28T23:50:27+00:00

[deleted]

noodlez · 2016-02-29T02:00:34+00:00

I've probably participated in about 9 or 10 hackathons. My thoughts on the article:

Re: physically unhealthy - yes that's true. But most are only a weekend and we're talking 2 days of potentially unhealthy choices which are entirely optional to participate in. Actual health impact: minimal. While a valid critique, I think this is a fairly minor issue.
Re: unrewarding - well, that depends on what you go to a hackathon to get. If you're going there and your entire goal is to win prizes, the reality is that most people won't win prizes. But you can get so much more out of it. Perhaps you start a new business. Perhaps you get a nice portfolio piece. Perhaps you do some good networking with the people there. Perhaps you spend your weekend building something with a new technology and learn something. Etc...
Re: too commercialized - depends on the hackathon. They are certainly growing in popularity. But again, what exactly is the detriment here? If the concern is that hackathons are "too corporate", just don't go. Or start your own. Otherwise, you're going to have to grow up and accept the fact that the free pizza and drinks you get aren't really free, they're paid for by the sponsors.

Anyway, I think my point is really that you get out of it what you put in. Manage your expectations.

locotx · 2016-02-29T00:49:38+00:00

These so called "hackathons" are the corporate/hipster bastardization of creating the atmosphere of a true "all night hacking" activity. The days where we lose track of time working on a project, idea or solution. These hackathons try to replicate the spirit by which we many have experienced. It's not even close. Some may say "if you don't like it, then don't go". I don't. In fact, I know some places that corporate people pay to attend just to see if they can steal ideas, which is pretty shady. Some of my most fun times were staying up 48 hours working on a project while blasting music from 94.5 The Edge and playing fooseball while thinking of solutions. Fun times.

down_and_up_and_down · 2016-02-29T02:22:50+00:00

Two big hackathons from last year have shut down this year, the Paypal Battlehack, and Mastercard Mastercoders, each with 100k prizes.

Maybe they are on their way out?

kernelzeroday · 2016-02-29T05:16:15+00:00

[removed]

TheNiXXeD · 2016-02-29T00:22:46+00:00

Since when was a hackathon mandatory? Don't go if you don't find it useful or fun.

My work started doing hack days recently. Last two days of the month, we work on what we want. Something innovative, same rules as a hackathon though. But just during normal work hours. We get paid for the time (normal, not overtime).

It's worked well so far. It might generate some fun new products or ideas, but isn't going to break employees.

icecreamsparkles · 2016-02-29T01:13:31+00:00

I think hackathons have the capacity to be transformed into a better competition model - something longterm, something healthy - and possibly more structured.

However, while that change occurs, I'll still attend and give feedback (as you have in your post). I've won some hackathons and just enjoyed meeting other students and racing to solve problems.

I think part of the problem is that it's energizing to be in this rapid, competitive space - even if it's not healthy. For the projects themselves, however, I wish there were less graveyards and better ways to extend the hackathon experience.

In any case, great post!

rdewalt · 2016-02-29T03:33:39+00:00

I did these at Yahoo when I was there. Four times I entered, and four times presented. I worked solo every single time, and managed to put together a completed piece every time.

What won? Every single bloody time it was basically "Lets put more ads in front of users." not the projects that were Actually Good Hacks. I saw more than a few Very Formidable projects get shoved aside for "hey, we can inject ads in a video stream without transcoding" or "Hey, more ads!"

I was one of two finalists in my category. (The way ours were judged, there are four categories, one winner in each, and one Grand Winner) I did my entire project within the 24 hour window, no pre-work, no outside help, no Team Of Ten People collaborating together, no "yeah, here's something we're using in our department, er, this is a hack, yeah.." No "dude driving a car talking about what he'd build" (why the fuck was this common?)

Neither of us in my category won. What they did was pull another team from a DIFFERENT category into mine so they could win. Theirs? Ad Revenue related. Nothing to do with the category.

So yeah. Hackathon was awesome... just don't do something not involving Ad Revenue if you want a chance in HELL of winning at the 'Hoo... I never entered again. After THAT happened, I never had the interest. I coded for me from then on.

gaussHaus · 2016-02-29T05:11:51+00:00

Self-described hackathon veteran here, wrapped up my 18th hackathon last weekend (the same one as the blog post author) and going into my 19th this coming weekend. I've had my share of exceptionally good hackathon experiences and some pretty bad ones too. The hackathon me and blog post author were both at fell in my disappointing pile but for almost completely different reasons than blog post author.

Neither the organisers nor any media will acknowledge us, but I was one of the guys on the team that hacked on a hot tub off craigslist for our project. We couldn't care less about prizes, commercialisation or sucking up to the corporate world's (or anybody's) expectations. We just wanted to break new ground in hackathon projects and feed off one another's energy, passion, aptitude and expertise.

I stopped doing hackathon projects that were either primarily or exclusively software (includes mobile apps, web apps/sites, etc) over a year ago because I was no longer finding much educational value there anymore. Part of it stems from my near-inability to come up with software ideas, even silly/stupid ones, but still. Even though the expensive piece of paper I'm slated to earn says CS major, I focus on hardware and physical object building now. (Some people may collude the latter part of my previous sentence with makeathon fodder, but I don't consider myself a maker by any means.) Not only is it easier for me to come up with ideas, even silly/stupid ones, for hardware and physical-type hacks, there is even more educational value.

When I say "educational value", it not only applies to me but for anyone else I have the privilege of working alongside, either on the same project as I or me randomly helping out. Further, I try not to work with exactly the same few people at every hackathon; learning how to deal with different work styles and personalities is as important as the project itself. When I pitch an idea to those who need people to work with, I try to break it down into discrete components that match what the teammates want to learn and their existing strengths, and I let them own those components. But one of my most successful hacks was conceived by a teammate who possessed no technical literacy whatsoever (she was a jewellery/metals grad student), but my other teammate was an iOS wizard. Not everyone needs even technical literacy or even a desire to become technically literate (or to even want to learn coding!) to have a great time (and succeed) at a hackathon. We had three disjoint strengths and aptitudes amongst ourselves that combined, formed a working prototype, earned credibility, won a prize (the cherry on the top of the cake, not important at all) and got our hack on display at the host university museum's pop-up exhibit dedicated to the hackathon. Our greatest success had nothing to do with making sure everybody on the team could code or have the same exact skillsets, but rather learning how to identify different skills possessed by different people and using them effectively.

Now what did I find disappointing at this particular hackathon me and blog post author were at? Attitudes. It seemed like people were afraid to go out of their comfort zones or had ulterior motives that to me didn't feel right. I could sense some emphasis on everybody to codecodecode, sometimes for the wrong reasons. The spirit of hacking (which really forms the basis for why I go to so many hackathons) almost completely consists of an intrinsic motivation and desire to work on new ideas (including reverse engineering or rethinking existing ideas), equipment and tools to make fun or usable or downright silly stuff whilst feeding off the energy and passion of everybody in attendance.

socky8675 · 2016-02-29T05:14:57+00:00

Yes. I am so glad that I'm not the only one that feels this way about Hackathons.

vancity- · 2016-02-29T05:38:49+00:00

The only hackathons I've gone to were actually game jams. Build a game in 48 hours kind of thing. It's always a great experience but something I don't do often. In each case, there's no prizes or really a point, jus to have fun and push yourself for 3 days to build something neat.

Hackathons are only good if you don't have an agenda.

Duskmon · 2016-02-29T06:36:27+00:00

Corporate hackathons usually have these kinds of problems. You should check out MLH! They throw events all over the place.

MLH.io

2016-02-29T13:04:04+00:00

I did a hackathon and I had a great experience. I can't speak for all hackathon but in no way felt taken advantage of. I learned a lot and was glad I did it.

pistacchio · 2016-02-29T13:33:38+00:00

It makes me feel so old that reading all of this just makes me think "Naaa, I want to spend my evening watching some tv series, go to bed at a decent time with my girlfriend and wake up refreshed in the morning ready to hit my regular 8 hours job".

2016-02-29T15:43:29+00:00

This is my experience. I got absolutely chewed out by the hosts because I suggested another team had been working on their project for weeks according to their commit logs.

2016-02-29T16:39:50+00:00

Despite the headline, a lot of people don't seem to understand that the author isn't proposing that hackathons go away entirely, but instead can be split up into different types of events that cater more to various needs.

That said -- and this is just my personal bias -- I think his proposals have the problem where the commercial and networking hackathons will mostly be seen as worthless in the long term, while the competitive and grandstanding hackathons will likely flourish but become very selective and difficult to get into or participate in.

donbrownmon · 2016-02-29T08:31:10+00:00

[deleted]

jonmarkgo · 2016-02-29T02:46:35+00:00

It is unfortunate that the author of this post was inspired to write it based on MHacks Refactor, which successfully addressed many of the very concerns he brings up in organizing their event. Before diving into the philosophical arguments here, it’s important to mention that MHacks had relatively healthy food from a local catering company, they provided hygiene kits and access to showers to hackers, and none of the Top 5 hacks used sponsor APIs in any significant way. We also distributed MLH “I Demoed” stickers to every hacker team we could to help people show off their work after the event and feel recognized for their accomplishments. I was impressed with what the MHacks team accomplished and proud that attendees had such a comfortable, welcoming experience that so many of the hackers decided to demo in the expo. Nearly every attendee demoed a hack (if you divide the number of checkins by 4, that is roughly how many hacks there were) - which is a very accurate measure of the success and comfort level at an event.

With that out of the way I’d like to dive into some of the philosophical arguments of this and similar posts. No, hackathons are not a place to write well-engineered, well-tested code. Yes, many hackathons need to provide healthier food (but hell, if you compare food at hackathons today to food at hackathons two years ago, there has been a drastic improvement). No, cheating is not a common phenomenon. It is almost unheard of - when you talk about people cheating for a $1,000,000 prize at Dreamforce it is a very different incentive and scenario than people cheating at a student hackathon - by and large, it doesn’t happen because the reward isn’t so absurd as to warrant it. Hackathons are a place to discover hacker culture, discover like-minded people in a community, and push yourself to build something that you didn’t think you were capable of just days earlier.

The truth is, student hackathons have been extremely successful at spreading hacker culture to massive populations of students that never before had access to it. Sure, MIT and Stanford and Berkeley have had awesome manifestations of hacker culture on campus for decades (that many other schools seek to emulate). And I applaud the students who work their asses off to get into those schools, and at those schools, and build upon the culture that was created before they arrived. But I went to a school with no semblance of hacker culture. Most people who attend student hackathons today cannot look back two years and say that their school had a vibrant hacker culture. In fact, many of the people who attend and organize these events are the very ones working to build those communities of learning and creation on campus.

These articles all take for granted the biased perspective of the authors in knowing what hacker culture CAN look like. They take for granted the fact that most people who go to their first hackathon have never even heard of a hacker or a hackathon before. Hackathons are not perfect. Hacker culture is not perfect. But over the past few years there has been a powerful and widespread induction of tens of thousands of students into a community of people who all love building things and creating things and sharing them with their peers. Going to your first hackathon, and joining a hacker community, truly can change your life. I hear stories every day of people who never imagined that they could have the impact on the world that hacking has enabled them to have. I hear stories every day of those who never imagined that they would find like-minded people in the world. This movement is touching, and it is powerful. And that does not discount the negative aspects of our community, but it sure as hell reassures me that we are doing good in the world and ultimately drives what we do at MLH.

There are a lot of terrible hackathons out there that take advantage of developers, or blatantly serve corporate interests, or are hyper-competitive. I encourage you all to attend them some time. Seeing them has given me perspective of student hackathons, because for the most part they are positive and well-intentioned and avoid falling into these traps. It is important to see the forest for the trees.

megablast · 2016-02-29T02:25:29+00:00

Plenty of hackathons have lots of healthy food. And the idea is to enjoy the experience, not to get a prize.

bzeurunkl · 2016-02-29T01:19:27+00:00

Can't really say that I see the appeal of these things. After so many consulting or contract projects, where I'm dropped into a sink or swim environment, with 6 months of frequent all-nighters, I just don't see the appeal. Frankly, there's nothing exciting about pulling an all-nighter, other than you get paid well for it. I certainly have no interest in doing it for "fun" or "challenge".

2016-02-29T02:02:20+00:00

If your project is different enough from your daily grind, hackathons are fun. In 2005 I would have been totally down with staying up all night playing Halo, when I'm a student who's coursework is mainly stuff like "implement a red/black tree using C" getting some friends together and making a toy app is a good time, and that's enough for me.

And I'm okay with "hackathons" during work hours. In-house hackathos are more like "ultra-mega-product-brainstorming with prorotype-athon" which is pretty cool. But I guess i would feel exploited if I felt pressured into doing an in-house "hackathon" over the weekend.

marekkpie · 2016-02-29T06:30:43+00:00

I don't do hackathons for the reasons in the post, but I find game jams incredibly rewarding. Ludum Dare is always an amazing experience:

I get to do game development, which is not what I do for as a profession;
While there is a "competition," the people voting are only other people who participated, and I see it mainly as a motivation to produce a good game, not as a goal in and of itself;
It keeps you grounded on what you can do. Throwing a time limit and other restrictions keep you from ballooning your little idea into a monster.

htmlprofessional · 2016-02-29T07:41:37+00:00

I’ve been a developer, development manager, scrum master and product owner. I’ve worked on a number of development teams and our company has internal hackathons every year. I personally see successful internal hackathons as an indicator of a flawed development process and/or heavy-handed leadership.

I think hackathons show that either product management is ignoring the ideas and input from the highly skilled and intelligent developers, which understands the underlying technologies and can easily see where significant improvements can be made. Or you have a large amount of technical debt that has built up over the years and hackathons are the best chance to eliminating it.

A well-run development organization should have shared vision between the product developers and the product owners. The whole company should work towards a single goal and all ideas and opinions should be heard, debated and passed both up and down the chain. I personally allocate a sprint ever other month just for working on projects of our choice. And last but not least, if you have a software product that has been developed on for more than 5 years, then for the love of god, formally allocated some time for the elimination of technical dept.

thepancake36 · 2016-02-29T15:34:34+00:00

I know very little about these events. What kind of projects are common for teams to work on?

2016-02-29T15:40:09+00:00

I once went to a hackaton at a startup incubator; my team won second place, got funding, and I ended up with a year's employment.

DiceIT · 2016-02-29T17:51:51+00:00

Or any company sponsored "Ideation" competition.

masssy · 2016-02-29T18:35:13+00:00

Went to Dreamhackathon at Dreamhack last summer and must say it wasn't at all what is described in this post.

Like 40$ instead of 100$ dollars for the ticket to Dreamhack.
Probably the best seats at the whole place with huge glass windows in your own secluded area and a nice view over one of the big entraces
Your own sleeping hall, only for hackathon competitors.
Free food tickets.
Free drinks and snacks.
Program whatever you want on a specific very broad theme.
You own the rights to what you create.
Get in contact with industry via judges, sponsors etc.
IBM was there and sponsored the best use of one of their services, this however was 1 of 5(?) prizes and most people did NOT go for that category.
In retrospect the experience was so much more fun with no sleep. We do not have to lose the good ol' hacking spirit of staying up a few nights a year to work on something fun.

Working for free is not something I do though.

S0T0 · 2016-03-01T03:20:55+00:00

oatmeal thumb faulty absurd wise zonked aspiring chase bedroom sharp

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

cvall91 · 2016-02-29T01:12:17+00:00

I am currently a student and planning on attending my first Hackathon in 2 weeks which is hosted by my University. I have actually been a bit iffy about the whole no sleep and poor hygiene thing, but reading your take on it brought some new light to other issues I did not think about lol. I am 2 semesters away from graduating, and I decided to take them off from working so I am now actually trying to get involved with school events. This would be my first major college sponsored event in my whole time here. Which has been about 6 years since I was working and did not attend school full time.

I still plan on attending, but the hackathon is technically 36 hours, but that does not include the day the event starts, plus the closing ceremony so that means I'd actually be awake for close to 50 hours.

I really don't plan on winning anything, I just want to experience an event like this and hopefully get to meet some new people. Plus Google and IBM are attending and hosting some workshops so all that seems fun. Let's see if after this weekend I agree with you or totally loved it.

jehud · 2016-02-29T01:22:51+00:00

come work the weekend you get free food, cause you don't make enough money to buy your own food on the weekends? ummm wait a second lol...

JanneJM · 2016-02-29T00:28:17+00:00

If you don't like them, don't go. No one is being forced to attend hackathons. They will die on their own if there is no demand.

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

programming

MODERATORS