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I imagine a lot of potential attendees (myself included) were dissuaded from attending by the hurricane.

Maybe, but check out the judges page, it's endless.

OTOH, it provided the inspiration for some projects: http://nodeknockout.com/teams/roo

http://nodeknockout.com/judges - 172 judges

http://nodeknockout.com/teams - 297 teams

http://nodeknockout.com/entries - 200 (right now) entries, which I think means teams who have deployed at least once.

Having a high judge: contestant ratio is good for everyone; judges have less work, everyone gets evaluated by a few judges, and it takes less clock time. More work for Gerad and visnup, though