I don't do hackathons because I don't do coding on a laptop and I certainly don't do good coding while jetlagged. At this point my rig has a 42 inch 4K monitor flanked by two matched 30"ers. And I am starting to think about swapping out the 30"ers for two more 4Ks.
The hackathon is one of the things I think could probably be more productive as a virtual experience.
What I plan to do for the Mesh is to set up a test service using the reference code that is conservative in what it accepts and liberal in what it sends. Which is something I can do using my approach to coding.