Ask HN: Advice for Hackathon?

I am planning on attending the TechCruch Disrupt Hackathon this weekend. It looks like it will be a lot of fun and hopefully I will meet some cool people.

I have never done a hackathon like this before. Do you have any advice for doing well at one of these events? If you participated in the Disrupt hacakthon in NY, what was your experience like? What kinds of hacks were made and which ones did well?

Right now I don't have a team, I'm just doing it on my own. Should I look to join a team or convince some of my friends to do it with me, or is it viable to do this alone?

One idea I had is to make a HTML5 gel electrophoresis simulator. You input a selection of basepairs (ideally the user will be able to use a genebank), select your restriction enzymes, and then the simulator will output what your expected gel will look like. This would be useful for students and researchers because often your gel comes out really smudged and ugly so it would be nice to know what it was supposed to look like. I also have another idea that is much cooler, but would re-use some old code of mine, so I'm not sure if it qualifies.