[matthewsimon]

I was at the same FourSquare hackathon today, and you're right -- there was a lot of socializing going on, and there were people who seemed to be trying to figure out how to present their previously-existing project or startup.

On the other hand, the New York hacker scene is anemic enough that we can use any chance to socialize and network that we get -- and there were people there actually coding things from scratch today, myself included.

I had to leave before the presentations, and haven't see most of the apps people have been working on, so I can't comment on the "overly polished" aspect of this... But in an ideal world, I would hope that people would be able to enjoy whichever aspects of the event were relevant to them, and not get sidetracked by the people who were on a different track.