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I feel like I've lived some kind of sheltered life now, in that I didn't even know winning was a thing at hackathons until I read this article. I don't think I'

I feel like I've lived some kind of sheltered life now, in that I didn't even know winning was a thing at hackathons until I read this article. I don't think I've ever been to a hackathon that had prizes and winners. When I think of the term "hackathon", what comes to mind are events like the OpenBSD hackathons (http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html http://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html), the Wikimedia hackathons (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Hackathon_2013 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Hackathon_2013), and SuperHappyDevHouse (http://superhappydevhouse.org http://superhappydevhouse.org). You can't win any of those, at least not in any kind of formal sense. The use of the term "hackathon" here seems to mean something else, less of a dev-party and something more like, a time-limited, minimum-viable-product startup competition. Is that a recent thing?

jasonlotito 14y ago
Yes. The term hackathon here is being abused. Hackathons aren't about slides or business plans. They are about actually building something. If there are prizes, they are fun and silly. In the end, every really does win.
shawnreilly 14y ago
I'm not trying to get involved with defining what a hackathon is (or isn't), but I do know that Startup Weekend (www.startupweekend.org) has been hosting events that have prizes and winners for quite some time now.
- taytus 14y ago
  Yes, But SW it's not a hackathon (at least not in Dallas).
- trafficlight 14y ago
  The Startup Weekend I attended in January had winners but it was never the emphasis, and the prizes weren't anything special anyway. I liked the presentation/judging process was nice because it gave you an end goal for the weekend, and it was interesting to see what the judges said about your project.
zem 14y ago
that was my first thought too. my second was a growing bemusement that, having realised that the purpose was not to win, he didn't then conclude that the point was instead to get together with a lot of other hackers and build something. then it finally clicked that the key word in there (which i had skimmed over) was "startup" - they're definitely using the word hackathon in a different sense than the usual one.

jasonlotito 14y ago

Yes. The term hackathon here is being abused. Hackathons aren't about slides or business plans. They are about actually building something. If there are prizes, they are fun and silly. In the end, every really does win.

shawnreilly 14y ago

I'm not trying to get involved with defining what a hackathon is (or isn't), but I do know that Startup Weekend (www.startupweekend.org) has been hosting events that have prizes and winners for quite some time now.

taytus 14y ago
Yes, But SW it's not a hackathon (at least not in Dallas).
trafficlight 14y ago
The Startup Weekend I attended in January had winners but it was never the emphasis, and the prizes weren't anything special anyway. I liked the presentation/judging process was nice because it gave you an end goal for the weekend, and it was interesting to see what the judges said about your project.

zem 14y ago

that was my first thought too. my second was a growing bemusement that, having realised that the purpose was not to win, he didn't then conclude that the point was instead to get together with a lot of other hackers and build something. then it finally clicked that the key word in there (which i had skimmed over) was "startup" - they're definitely using the word hackathon in a different sense than the usual one.