| I've been in a few hackathons .. winning prizes in some (usually schwag or gadgets), and also ran a couple myself. They don't work nearly as well with more valuable prizes. In my view, a hackathon is best as a starting point ... for teams, projects and ideas. They are much better chances to "network", particularly for hackers/makers, than so called "networking events", which are usually a waste of time. Hackathons also work great for startups to introduce developers to their technology & culture, and perhaps recruit them. The worst hackathons are when the intended outcome is that the winning team(s) go on to start a company with the proceeds of the win and/or are accepted into some newish accelerator/incubator. In the case of Salesforce and it's extreme prize, the controversy could have been predicted .. there was no way they could police a fair competition (and that was unlikely their goal anyway). Their goal was similar to that of a nightclub that doesn't have the desired demographics, so they gave free cover ($99 "hacker" tickets), drinks and raffle tickets to the desired group (programmers in this case). While the majority of the conference attendees were wandering around, mingling and generally enjoying themselves, every once in a while, they might chance by the "hackathon room" and look upon the poor creatures as they would monkeys in a zoo. Quite the spectacle, it must have been.. |