Unfortunately I can't back it up since I'm not the person in question, nor am I willing to drag this person into the spotlight since he's a good guy who doesn't deserve it.

It's possible that they'd already cut down on the spending by the time you joined. After checking back when I would have seen the case I mentioned, it was in fact 2010 and not 2011.

Also is it possible that the foundation has different practices in different countries? I was in Australia at the time for reference.

Out of curiosity, how common were these local community hackathons? Even flying economy it seems a bit excessive to be flying people across the world for that...