This (and several other comments in this discussion) make the hackathon held last year by the company I work for, look like a wild success. * held on a weekday

This (and several other comments in this discussion) make the hackathon held last year by the company I work for, look like a wild success. * held on a weekday (so it wasn't asking salaried employees to come in and "work for free" on a weekend) * engaged the whole company, not just the technical employees * no expectation that you had to go for the full 24 hours straight * no expectation that you'd finish anything but a prototype in those 24 hours * a plan in place to follow up on the most successful ideas and prototypes that were worked on (and that plan has largely been kept up)