Not so sure. I like learning at a pace in which I'm really understanding the technologies that I'm picking up. For PennApps, we do a series of tech talks over the course the week before the hackathon, and I encourage students who don't know how to code to attend those talks. I think "learning" at a hackathon can leave a lot of gaps in knowledge, which is not necessarily terrible but not the strategy I would immediately advise.
Well, when you have an awesome event and you're fully transparent about what's going on and where the money goes, things like sponsorship get pretty simple :) Everyone involved gets some good value out of PennApps (which is why you guys have absolutely no problem finding sponsors or funding your event).
A number of hackathons have done this to great success. If you want to expand a hackathon beyond ~40 teams, you do need to figure out a way to structure demos better, since less 2 minutes per demo is too little time to really show off what you built, in my opinion. And I don't think it's a poor idea to go beyond 40 teams for a hackathon like this (because then you have to start being super selective of who you let in, which sucks for teams who are new to hackathons).
I totally agree that short demos don't do these hackers justice and that being selective on admission also not an attractive option either. In fact, I'm not sure if there actually is a best answer for how to handle the situation. On some level, you always end up having to pick the lesser of three evils and somebody always ends up getting left out because of it.
If I do come up with a good system, I assure you, you'll be the first to know!
This is interestingly non-viral. Although it's one of the coolest links I've seen in a while, it takes much longer to "consume" this, and sharing doesn't have until after consumption. Interesting to note how much less frequently this was shared than some much interesting "popular links".
Yeah, stuff with a scientific bend doesn't get shared, although it has impact. It creates its own niche, with considerably less noise.
Sorry to broaden the scope, but this made me think...
In stock markets, you have the concept of "noise traders", less well-informed traders. They sort of create their own dynamics, sometimes even generating good return on investments, where better informed traders stay out of the market.
Social dynamics... not sure if it's possible to derive some new fundamental laws, because human behavior is too fluid. Maybe in the end (after years of "big data" number crunching) all we get is some empirical observations and weak correlations.
