[sgt]

> hackathon is a (physical or virtual) competition where people contribute code to you in a manner you decide on and get prizes.

Having been through a couple of Hackathons, rest assured that there are plenty of Hackathons that are more focused on the business case rather than the implementation. I've seen hackathons won by teams that didn't write a single line of code. It was all mocked up in Powerpoint or similar.

[ravenstine]

What sucks is when there's a complete mismatch between those two hackathon approaches. I once went to a hackathon where both engineers and designers were invited; the winning team and the teams with the most praise were all the ones dominated by designers that didn't actually implement anything working, and the more engineering focused teams were pretty quickly dismissed. Worse yet, I was literally the only engineer on my team willing to contribute any code. It didn't matter that mine was one of the few projects that actually worked because it didn't look as pretty. (it was a podcasting app that allowed users to leave audible reactions like applause/booing/awww on episodes)

[makapuf]

I'm trying to organise a hackathon now, where there will be two phases : ideas / ppt phase, then implementation where anyone can implement any idea, and both are praised/rewarded separately. If the best idea is implemented several times, that's a good thing !

[thefaux]

Sounds like you may have made the classic engineering mistake of ignoring PMF before building.