[jefflinwood]

I'm not sure if prizes are really all that at hackathons - one big downside is that if you end up not winning any prizes, it makes the hackathon a bit of a downer, even if you ended up making something cool.

I actually prefer doing something fun at hackathons - case in point, the recent create a music app for Slash hackathon during SXSW, where I ditched my original idea to play with Qualcomm's beacon technology instead.

My biggest complaint about hackathons is if the hackathon is actually judged as a business pitch-a-thon, and that part wasn't clear at the beginning.