and possibly just 'younger' folks who've only ever known or worked with whatever came out in the last 1-3 years? the older people get, the less time and intere

and possibly just 'younger' folks who've only ever known or worked with whatever came out in the last 1-3 years? the older people get, the less time and interest they're going to have in spending a long weekend with random people trying to work on something collaboratively. i've done a few - my team (of 3) came in second place (against a team of 16!) with around 20 teams in total. Good feeling, but nothing ever came of it - protip, learn if your team members are actually at liberty to work on the project after that weekend. Mine were both barred from pursuing the project in any meaningful way (work visa for non-citizen, and non-compete with existing employer for the other). Did a followup hackathon later - all teams seemed to self-organize before the event, which wasn't promoted/explained beforehand (but apparently about 80% of the people 'knew' already). Left with working with random people who didn't understand the idea that '48 hours' mean 'consecutive' hours. Two hours into the project, my one partner said "hey, i gotta leave to pick up my kids - i'll be back tomorrow around noon for a few hours"... and then left. That was also my first taste of 'sponsored' hackathon - you had to use one of 4 sponsor-supplied APIs to qualify for anything.