I have a theory that the increasing number of these kinds of events ("let's get together and hack!" or "The Foo Contest!") are basically just thinly veiled effo

I have a theory that the increasing number of these kinds of events ("let's get together and hack!" or "The Foo Contest!") are basically just thinly veiled efforts to attract, identify and hire talent. A next-generation replacement for the traditional "post job descript, sift through tons of resumes, figure out who to call, setup interview, devise lame questions, hyper-over-analyze every nuance (on both sides), make decision based on proxies for what we want rather than actually what we want" paradigm of employee recruiting. And if so, I think it's a great thing! Let's see more of it. It's progress. Folks using their brain.