YC Hacks – August 2-3
While some sort of tokens provided to some exceptional teams might be fun I'm sad to see the Hackathon-As-Competition idea promulgated. The origins of the term are about a collaborative event where the marathon-style combined creates a sense of cohesion or at the very least fun that encourages some sort of shared problem solving. Not everyone has to be working towards a single unified goal, but the usefulness of this style of event is for certain classes of collaborative work where the fever pitch allows the combination of innovative ideas with laying down a lot of code.<p>As soon as you turn it competitive, you lose the <i>benefits</i> of this type of event, beyond those you'd get from just a con with a "best in show". While ostensibly you create what you present at the hackathon, teams with greater pre-made components get a significant advantage. To counter that you then have to lay down rules and that just brings the tone of the event down. My criticism is specifically about the usefulness of competition in hackathons, rather than about competing teams in other kinds of events.<p>It doesn't seem like the competition aspect is as emphasized here as in many other hackathons, which is great. I hope the prizes remain an ancillary bonus rather than the focus.