Ask HN: Organising a Hackathon. Many put off by "hack". What Should I Call It?

I would suggest your goal is not to persuade everyone else this is a good idea and then step forward together.  It's to step forward, confident enough people will follow you.

I suggest just announce it, "hackathon arranged for Saturday 15th, torvalds hall, 8-5pm.  Kicks with with talk by f bloggs on architecture of foobar project, by the end of the day we commit working code, documentation, tests and artwork to github.  All skill levels welcome - rememebr real programmers ship.  Pizzas after we commit."

Those who can or are just willing will work it out.  And put up a page with more details, the contrib page, a link to ESRs "how to be a hacker" - http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

People will follow you.  But not till you are in front.

Good luck

Adapt to whatever you're doing, so if you're working with Arduino, Hombrew Arduino Weekend, Homebrew Robot Weekend, Homebrew Lisp Weekend, etc.