I participated in one here Boulder, CO as a TA, and yes there were a lot of moving parts, but what I think was important was not deep diving into any particular thing, but getting to the point where they have pushed a "real" app.

I have a few apps of negligible utility that run out on Heroku, and they are no different than the apps Railsbridge participants built.

They got to make something real, and got exposed to real tools and infrastructure.