[raymondgh]

I've been to around a dozen in the past year, here's my take:

Stable Wi-Fi. Don't charge for admission. Adhere to a strict fresh code rule. Limit teams to 4 or 5. Stick to your judging criteria (fun, business, innovation -- whatever it is, be consistent from start to finish) and find non-sponsor judges to choose the overall winners of an interestingly themed challenge. Provide enough water and food for everyone. If you're hosting it in San Francisco, there are plenty of hungry people who will eat the leftovers. Have 2 rounds of presentations if there are more than 30 submissions. Have someone go around and tell hackers to simplify their ideas and explain the meaning of a weekend MVP.

Follow these and you should have an acceptably successful hackathon. If you want to be memorable though, try something new!

[hyoogle]

Hey! I'd love to learn more about your favorites of the ones you've been to- would you mind sharing which ones they were?

[raymondgh]

Sure! They've actually varied a lot and I've liked them for different reasons, but across all categories I can say I don't like science fair style, really appreciate non-pizza food, and won't wear low-quality t-shirts more than once.

Competitive: Salesforce, Capital One, and AngelHack events are fun because there's a clearly defined goal and some concrete metrics. I really enjoy seeing the pitches at the end and thinking about how we all interpreted the challenge and responded.

Creative: YC Hacks, GitHub Music Hack Day, Yo Hackathon, and Brainihack all elicited some pretty fun stuff. I missed the Brainihack this year though, too bad! Techendo was pretty cool too, albeit small.

Cooperative: Some hackathons had lots of small prizes or none at all. Paypal Battlehack was really fun, a Change.org hackathon was stress-free and friendly, and I learned a lot at a Swift "hackathon" where even the smallest accomplishments were celebrated.

I haven't been to any college hackathons yet, but I'm looking forward to Hacking EDU in October!