Piers Cawley has a great article explaining [what happens at a hackathon](http://www.h-online.com/open/What-happens-at-a-hackathon--/features/112997), using the Perl QA Hackathon in Birmingham as the example. This is the second great article that Piers has written about Perl and its culture for the general masses, after ["Healthcheck Perl"](http://www.h-online.com/open/Healthcheck-Perl-The-Perl-Future--/features/112388) back in January. Thanks, Piers! The hackathon was a who's who of QA folks: Ricardo Signes, Michael Schwern, Andy Armstrong, Curtis Poe, Adrian Howard, David Golden, Michael Peters, Jon "JJ" Allen and Antonia Mayer. Makes me wish I'd been there! Ricardo has his own write-ups on the hackathon at ["An overview of the Metabase"](http://rjbs.manxome.org/rubric/entry/1742) and ["Look back at the Perl QA Hackathon"](http://rjbs.manxome.org/rubric/entry/1741).