If it's a biggish place, I think hackatons should take place during work hours. I knew a place where hackatons were 3 days in the week during work hours (techni

If it's a biggish place, I think hackatons should take place during work hours. I knew a place where hackatons were 3 days in the week during work hours (technically you could stay after, but as it was a competition it felt partly like cheating). One of the point to make it work was to have it focused on somewhat viable or useful ideas (you could submit stupid stuff as well, but not in categories with prizes), so the company gets it's share of benefits from the event without having to screw the participants. In a way it's like condensing a few weeks of "20% time" into a few days, and not "come to work for free during the weekend, it will be so fun"