The worst thing about hackathons is having to politely interact with the 'advisors' organizers always think will be good to have. These are people from various

The worst thing about hackathons is having to politely interact with the 'advisors' organizers always think will be good to have. These are people from various places who want to be part of the hackathon but aren't participants or judges. Imagine finally getting into coding in earnest, finally deep into it, and up wanders a non-coder who has been told to go around to all the teams and give advice. It's almost always a horrible distraction, but you're aware your interactions with them may be linked to the odds of winning, so you have to politely interact. Of course, the advisor realizes at some point you aren't really interested in the interaction, and they feel awkward as well. My advice to organizers: don't use these people unless the hackathon topic is deeply complex domain knowledge, and in that case make them available for participants to go to, but don't make them go around.