I'm Jorge and I work as a software engineer at Foursquare. I'm sorry to hear that you're frustrated at our hackathon. Certainly some people are chatting and socializing, but that's only natural when you put a lot of people in the same room. From what I can tell though, the vast majority of people are actually building something today.
Some people have brought projects that they started before today, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. The hackathon wasn't meant as a sprint to see who can churn out the most code in a day, but rather a gathering of developers who are excited about the Foursquare API and what can be built on it. We want people to share ideas about what they're building and what's possible to build on top of our API, and yes, also to encourage people to build new stuff. (That said, not everyone has brought prior work to the hackathon! I know at least one team that has built several apps on top of our API in the past, and they've started a genuinely new project from scratch for the hackathon.)
If you feel the main room is too noisy, there's lots of side rooms at General Assembly which are a little quieter. You'll see teams in the side rooms making generous use of the white boards to design their app and plan out the necessary work for building it.
Again, I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If you have any suggestions on how we can make future hackathons more conducive to coding, feel free to ping me in meatspace. (I'm sitting against the big white wall by the water cooler. My name tag says "Jorge".)
One easy way is to give away prizes to the top 3 apps built at the hackathon. The reason why people actually coded at the iOS hackathon were the prizes (I attended). Obviously submissions built prior to the hackathon would be disqualified so this prevents people from building it, then attending.
There's still lots of socialization, but I believe hackathons should be centered around code, otherwise you might as well just call it a foursquare mixer. There were lots of really cool apps built at the iOS hackathon -- I'm really glad it was so hacker-centric, however the prizes were significant. Paypal gave away 3 iPads to winners that night.
Also, if the goal is to get people learning about the foursquare API -- the only way people will learn is by practicing. I learned a lot from others at the iOS hackathon -- even stuff I thought I already knew well. I think foursquare would get a lot more mileage if they just added a few small prizes to fuel competition.
Some of my friends are marathon runners -- they say that if the city sponsoring the running event offers no prizes, almost no professional runners will show up, but if the city offered a $100 small prize, there will be a significant amount of pro athletes attending. Does foursquare want pro hackers attending, or do they just want scavengers who are attending for the free food?
An iPad is not a significant prize. A professional developer earns an ipad every day or two at their day job, and that is guaranteed even for the fourth best work product of the day.
Significant compared to most hackathon prizes is what I meant. Most hack day prizes are a pat on the back or useless company schwag. I don't believe hackers attend hack days for the purpose of actually making enough money to fund their living styles.
Jorge ... thanks for your note. And I want to thank Foursquare for organizing the event. You guys didn't charge to let people in (unlike some other events), provided free food the entire day and were very helpful in answering questions. My main goal was to learn to use your API and I did. I appreciate this a lot!
My frustration wasn't directed solely at the Foursquare hackathon. Like I said ... I've seen this happen at a number of other events I've participated in. Clearly, since the hackathon isn't over yet, I cannot speak to the apps written by the participants (in the original post, I was referring to past events organized by others). Clearly some amazing coders are going to show great apps they've built in a short period of time. My intent is not to belittle that effort.
I completely feel you pain on this one. I attended the New England College Hackathon last weekend and was utterly disappointed. During the 12 hours we were there, they managed to only feed us once and we were bombarded by windows surveys and evangelists looking for free / cheap labor.
To make matters worse, the judges only picked winners from the local area (and made poor choices IMHO). The second place winner did NO coding at all the entire time and the first place project was 4 months old.
Something needs to be done about this. Hackathons need standards too!
I'm extremely sorry to hear you were disappointed. Like dtrejo said, there are a LOT of things we hope to change for next time. Please don't hesitate to shoot me an email if you have any other feedback.
Also, I can't resist pointing out that all but ten lines of code for the first place hack were created during the Hackathon: https://github.com/dfield/ConcertMasterHero. That said, I did not accept the first place prize because I was an organizer.
Side rooms are a saving grace. I went to a Techcrunch hackathon (and I shall never go to another) where we were told that nobody could use the side rooms - we all had to sit in the noisy main hall area. Obviously the PR opportunity was the primary motivation behind the hackathon.
I'm Jorge and I work as a software engineer at Foursquare. I'm sorry to hear that you're frustrated at our hackathon. Certainly some people are chatting and socializing, but that's only natural when you put a lot of people in the same room. From what I can tell though, the vast majority of people are actually building something today.
Some people have brought projects that they started before today, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. The hackathon wasn't meant as a sprint to see who can churn out the most code in a day, but rather a gathering of developers who are excited about the Foursquare API and what can be built on it. We want people to share ideas about what they're building and what's possible to build on top of our API, and yes, also to encourage people to build new stuff. (That said, not everyone has brought prior work to the hackathon! I know at least one team that has built several apps on top of our API in the past, and they've started a genuinely new project from scratch for the hackathon.)
If you feel the main room is too noisy, there's lots of side rooms at General Assembly which are a little quieter. You'll see teams in the side rooms making generous use of the white boards to design their app and plan out the necessary work for building it.
Again, I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If you have any suggestions on how we can make future hackathons more conducive to coding, feel free to ping me in meatspace. (I'm sitting against the big white wall by the water cooler. My name tag says "Jorge".)