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Why Your Next Hackathon Should Be "Useless" - The Philosophy Behind CamHack - James Leung's Notes

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A case for running hackathons that optimise for fun, creativity, and community, rather than utility or polish. After posting about CamHack, I've had a few people ask me how we pulled it off - and specifically, how we managed to cultivate a unique, non-corporate atmosphere. It was, at its core, a collection of ~300 students spending 30 hours together trying to create the craziest, most unhinged project ideas with the theme Unintended Behaviour. To be clear, I'm not suggesting this is the only way to run a hackathon - polished, career-focused events definitely have their place. But CamHack was an experiment in doing things differently, and it worked. My hope is that by sharing how we pulled it off, we can inspire other organisers to try running events that prioritise community over corporate polish. This post is a brain dump of the philosophy behind the event. I'm going to cover: Most hackathons I'd attended were polished, heavily sponsored and kind of boring. They felt less like creativ

After posting about CamHack, a few people asked how we pulled it off — specifically, how we managed to make it feel so different from the usual hackathon. The short version: ~300 students, 30 hours, one theme ( Unintended Behaviour ), and a deliberate decision to optimise for chaos rather than polish. The Intel Lab at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory — our main hacking space for CamHack 2025. I'm not suggesting this is the only way to run a hackathon — career-focused events have their place. But CamHack was an experiment in doing things differently, and it worked. This is a breakdown of the p

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