It's also a showcase of the best of the diversity of America's landscapes.

You're correct.

I don't have enough friends to even fail. 2/5 and then it alerted me I'd have to get more friends.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that still seems like a lot of nines.

Not if you need less than 30m of downtime a month to run your business.

Also as a high school pupil myself, I think a great limitation for these hackathons is the location. I didn't participate in any until they came rolling into town (HS Hacks), and the distance means I'm definitely not going to be able to go to this one. Contrast this to the college experience, where one can more (I assume) easily sign up and just go.