Good question, and I appreciated Johns answer too, I like that approach. It sounds like the way you guys are setting it up should be supportive of "all the tools are here, use them if you'd like, we highly encourage it" which is great.

I typically do 48 hour hackathons which is completely different but also fun. I can see them being harder to keep the momentum going, especially when everyone is sort of burnt out at the end (at least me). Which probably plays into more the idea of "that was fun, let's go back to our lives" problem. I hope the long running hackathon helps build the spirit of getting something usable and clean that might have a better chance for the creators to succeeding afterwards, both in spirit and ability.

As a lifelong dev that typically does these hackathons with other lifelong devs, it's a very big leap both in knowledge and safety to consider moving the project into the next steps of a serious product/company. Funding, general startup/company knowledge, etc. are typically the bigger gaps of knowledge than actual development. People come from all kinds of different places, but I don't need help creating a lightning app, I need help creating a company lol. But I'm going into this hackathon with the thought process of: what if the idea we work on is great and how will we finally take that leap now. So very excited about this hackathon, even if our project doesn't work!