I’ve seen this as well, hackathons now days are more of a competition for visionaries, project/business developers, middle management etc. rather than code monkeys.
I get why this shift of happening, the hackathons are held by governmental authorities, large foundations, big corporations and such. The slides presented are easier to explain and talk about with non-programmers and the judges are usually people that are accustomed to making decisions based on presentations and papers rather than proof-of-concepts…
I think there is a place for both the old and “the new” type of hackathon. But the organizers should make it clear beforehand what is the expected output of the competition.
I’ve seen this as well, hackathons now days are more of a competition for visionaries, project/business developers, middle management etc. rather than code monkeys.
I get why this shift of happening, the hackathons are held by governmental authorities, large foundations, big corporations and such. The slides presented are easier to explain and talk about with non-programmers and the judges are usually people that are accustomed to making decisions based on presentations and papers rather than proof-of-concepts…
I think there is a place for both the old and “the new” type of hackathon. But the organizers should make it clear beforehand what is the expected output of the competition.