[smelendez]

I haven't been to a hackathon in a long time, but the best ones I remember were explicitly about getting designers and developers to build something concrete but simple for a good cause. I think in some cases just a working prototype was sufficient for the "client," who could then more easily apply for grants to build a more robust or fully featured version.

POV, the PBS documentary series, used to have weekend hackathons in NYC in the early 2010s that paired the filmmakers with designers and coders. They were pretty good—filmmakers would come with an idea for a website they needed to support the film, basically, often a data visualization component or something to collect information from the public about the subject of the film.

The Tribeca Film Institute did something similar a couple of times, too—I went to one at CERN that they ran where scientists worked with designers, developers, musicians, etc. to build projects presenting their research, and another in Detroit.

I remember others like this as well from other organizations. It's still a bit of a weird format because you're basically doing pro bono or minimally paid freelance work on a tight deadline with your client sitting next to you, but they could produce some generally interesting work.

Some hackathons in this category I remember also had a goal of letting non-coders understand how the coding process works, which is hard to balance with actually getting stuff done.

[susiecambria]

The hackathons I attended were focused on solving/addressing the Washington, DC budget (I know, very weirdly specific, but I'm a major policy wonk) and social services.

To the latter, the benefit for me was to have tech folks help the policy folks ask and answer the right questions. Later, specific projects were started to help social service orgs implement some thing.

Have to say, both events (and I attended several of each) were exciting. . . they challenged me in a way I was unfortunately not used to (except in high school and college) and showed that others were actually interested and part of the solution.

The major plus of the budget hackathons was that we got to see students (middle schoolers, IIRC) who were doing whatever it was they were doing and having a blast. As a child advocate (lobbyist on kids issues), this made me very, very happy.