[morgante]

I'd like to think I'm a fairly passionate programmer, but I prefer cash prizes. Maybe not obscenely large ones (I'm looking at you, Salesforce), but all the prizes at major university hackathons seem totally reasonable.

A well-organized hackathon is fairly bifurcated. You have new hackers who are there to learn and experienced hackers who want to tackle an ambitious project. For both groups, I think large cash prizes are useful. For the newbies, even if they're not planning to win, the prizes reinforce the message that hacking is something useful and worth pursuing (helping to counteract the societal narrative of geeks being lame). For experienced hackers, prizes are a way of affirming that you've accomplished something amazing, particularly since most of the coolest hacks will never generate other compensation for the creators.

My personal reason for not liking product prizes is an objection to the accumulation of stuff. I really don't need yet another Arduino (won too many already) and would much rather use the money to take my family out for a nice dinner/etc. Most people don't need more things.

The idea of experience prizes (a trip somewhere) is a good one though.