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The term Hackathon is a portmanteau of the words HACK and MARATHON.

[portmanteau :bringing two words together to make a new word with a new definition]

[hack :a hacker is someone who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and circumventing limitations of programming systems and who tries to extend their capabilities - Verna Gehring]

[marathon : a long lasting or difficult task]

A Hackathon aims to bring people together, to solve an existing problem or foster innovation with the help of technology. As we found out, having a computer programmer on your team is a huge bonus, and for some projects it will be absolutely necessary, however the ideas and project can be explored and developed with just a pen and paper. Participants with plenty of time could also use this as an opportunity to upskill, as the three of us found out. The Hackathon presented a forum to not only learn more about technology, but with a law firm librarian from the USA, an academic law librarian from the USA and a law firm librarian from Australian, we had the opportunity to discuss many of the current issues facing law librarians. For organisations and communities, a Hackathon represents the opportunity to put lawyers, librarians and IT professionals together in a productive and progressive environment that provides real success and opportunity.

Our brief research today has found many multi-million dollar companies, such as GroupMe and PhoneGap, that were conceptualised and founded at Hackathons. But our focus today has been on the idea of civic Hackathons.

[civic hacker : someone who collaborates with others to create, build, and invent open source solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to their neighborhood, city, state, or country - Wikipedia]