I recently co-organized http://hackitaly.org http://hackitaly.org and it was a great success mainly due to: - focus on a set of predefined APIs, which key deve

I recently co-organized http://hackitaly.org http://hackitaly.org and it was a great success mainly due to: - focus on a set of predefined APIs, which key developers from the relating companies present in the room - a shitload of prizes from those companies for the best projects (each company decided who to give the prizes to) - free breakfast/lunch/dinner - redbull - huge room with tables of 6 people - no ideas pitching, just coding