[slashedzero]

The "Hackathon" part in "Hackathon Hackers" is totally relative. Your "hackathon" depends completely on the people judging it. Being judged by a bunch of suits with no connection to the technical world? Prepare for Uber for Facebook Cats. However, if you go to a hackathon where the judges are intimately familiar with the technology at hand, you'll get more praise for technical hacks.

In mainstream culture, the latter gets far less press, but the rewards of those hackathons in terms of networking are priceless.

[adrusi]

Unfortunately, the judges for the major collegiate hackathons are usually almost all from technical backgrounds, but they're representatives from companies looking to hire, and they're told to judge by factoring in entrepreneurial value.

[r0naa]

Spot on.

Jeff Dean was a judge at TreeHacks but some of the top prizes where shitty hacks (App to wake up or something). Most of the prized hacks were really impressive though and involved a lot of engineering. I was really excited about that.

Same feeling at Hack the North (Waterloo) some shitty Airbnb for X but overall some really impressive and cool hacks. Speaks volume for the engineering culture at both Universities.