[ElComradio]

It helps to have fairly young people who are desperate to prove themselves in the arena of strict meritocracy.

It helps if they don't have anything else to do for a weekend except cobble together a prototype or even a design document, though the latter is more acceptable if progressive women are involved.

Other than that- hiring booth babes as masseuses for the marathon coding sessions usually involved would absolutely increase success of your Next Hackathon (tm)