I get what you're saying. Hackatons shouldn't be time when technical debt is being paid, and fortunately in my organizations it's not the case. We do get enough

I get what you're saying. Hackatons shouldn't be time when technical debt is being paid, and fortunately in my organizations it's not the case. We do get enough time to refactor etc. but it's still kind of hassle to go through that process of defining the task, bringing this up, putting it on the product backlog, discussing it and only then doing it. Hackaton inverts this and gets rid of all the process - do whatever you want without talking to anybody and only if it works out, we can discuss it, merge it etc.