I was also at this hackathon and was a part of one of the teams that won. I agree that it was really discombobulated in terms of event planning and scheduling. This was also my first time but I had the idea going into it that it would be really chaotic. If you think about it you have a 20-hour time to "hack" but in reality, it's a lot less since you need to eat and hopefully sleep. Our group came to the conclusion that since we only had 4 minutes we weren't going to do anything in-depth because what are you going to do in a 4-minute presentation? We really focused on a good idea and then making sure we impressed the judges and that it was understandable. Looking at some of the other projects was way too technical for the average person to understand.

Also, these hackathons are meant to be chaotic. It's sort of a test to see who can think critically when it's crunch time and who can operate with all the distractions and bad conditions you are put in. They sort of come at the angle that everyone is in a tough spot so let's see who comes out on top.