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Hackathons are techno-creative events during which participants get together in a physical location. They may be hosted by civic communities, corporations or public institutions. Working individually or in teams, usually for several days, participants develop projects such as hardware or software prototypes. Based on a digital ethnography of two events in the Netherlands and Denmark, this article investigates project development practices at hackathons. In particular, it analyses how participants organized their project work and which technologies were used in support of their creative endeavours. Hackathons are increasingly competitive rather than collaborative events, involving time pressure, inducements such as prizes, and requiring efficient skills utilization. I argue that this facilitates the following tendencies: Firstly, strategic effort is put into final presentations. Projects need to be convincingly presented, and persuasively pitching an idea becomes crucial. Secondly, there is only limited time for personal learning, since participants’ existing skills need to be efficiently applied if a team wants to stay competitive. This encourages division of labour within groups: a tendency which seems especially problematic given that IT skills biases are often expressed in terms of gender. Thirdly, participants are more inclined to use technologies that are proprietary but appear ‘open enough’. In light of this observation and by drawing on the concept of technology as resource and opportunity, I discuss the techno-political implications of utilized technologies. With this analysis, I aim at contributing to the critical debate on hackathons as productive but likewise ideologically significant fields of ‘hacking cultures’.

Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices needed during the COVID-19 pandemic were widely reported in early 2020. In response, civic DIY volunteers explored how they could produce the required equipment. Members of communities such as hacker-and makerspaces employed their skills and tools to manufacture, for example, face shields and masks. The article discusses these civic innovation practices and their broader social implications by relating them to critical making theory. Methodologically, it is based on a digital ethnography approach, focusing on hacker and maker communities in the UK. Communities' DIY initiatives display characteristics of critical making and 'craftivism', as they assessed and counteracted politicised healthcare supply shortages. It is argued that their manufacturing activities during the COVID pandemic relate to UK austerity politics' effects on healthcare and government failure to ensure medical crisis supplies. Facilitated by open source design, communities' innovation enabled healthcare emergency equipment. At the same time, their DIY manufacturing raises practical as well as ethical issues concerning, among other things, efficacy and safety of use.

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Despite the creative economy relying on digital technology and the digital economy needing creative input, policy and research alike tend to miss or underestimate interdependencies between these two economies. This article argues for the importance of acknowledging interdependencies and overlaps between the cultural and creative economy and the digital economy – while likewise refraining from implicitly conflating the two. Starting from a comparative literature review that identifies key features of creative economy and digital economy literature and the few detailed works on overlaps, it elaborates on this argument by examining two case studies. In discussing and comparing digital games and do-it-yourself electronics e-commerce, this article illustrates overlaps of practices relevant to both, digital and creative economy, and elaborates on why it matters to acknowledge interdependencies rather than merging the two.