Hackathons are developer events with a goal of increasing developer knowledge on a specific technology aspect in a casual, collaborative environment. They are also designed to encourage participation by people who are not familiar with the technology, basically providing them with an immersive quick start.

Hackathon Events are:

• built around a single programming concept (for example: DotNetNuke MVP Pattern)
• encourage participation locally (at event site) and remotely
• broadcast online
• provide materials and dev environment setup guidelines ahead of time
• allow anybody to participate
• are peer-judged by the Hackathon participants
• have one or more winners who earn the title "Hackmaster"
• have great prizes for winners and runners up
• require all submissions to be Open Source with MIT license

While the initial hackathon is focused on DotNetNuke, hackathons are technology agnostic. In the future, expect to see schedule hackathons for other technologies. If you would like us to help you organize a hackathon event for your user group, give us a shout.