[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.