Food was really top notch. They kept us fed for the entire duration of the hackathon with tasty buffets. Internet wasn't a huge issue either (big W), only down for 1 or 2 hours here and there, otherwise pretty consistent throughout.
The judges were actual judges. Alumni and employees at Google, Microsoft, ex-Goldman Sachs, ETHGlobal finalists, and more. Super technical and quite collaborative during mentorships too. Didn't feel like the usual "pick a winner based on vibes", they actually knew what they were talking about.
Sleeping arrangements were okayish. Not a lot of space but the classrooms had comfy chairs to lay down on (block train merch eye mask cameo). The campus itself was pretty though — KJSSE is large with lots of trees and sports grounds where you could just roam around between coding sessions.
Organizers were friendly, hackers had freedom to roam the campus which is quite pretty and large. Most other participants I talked to also had the same feedback, KJSSE usually organizes their hackathons really well. Almost no complaints ever.
They also host A LOT of hackathons per year. Almost 5, probably more across multiple domains. Which is pretty cool. And all of them have a baseline quality much higher than other university hackathons (based on my own as well as other participants' feedback).
Built ExploitArena: a Web3 bug bounty protocol with sandboxed exploit verification, and ended up winning. Couldn't have asked for a better send-off to the weekend.
Cheers to the KJSSE team for organizing such a solid event! 🥂