With MHacks, one of our main focuses was to bring in students who had never been to a hackathon before. There's honestly not a better vehicle that I've seen for getting students pumped about CS.
It surprises me that organizations like Code.org don't take advantage of hackathons to spread their message.
Why hasn't this happened yet?
check out www.tjhackathon.com. We're planning on expanding to various locations to do just that.
Code.org so far has just been a bunch of big names putting their name on something to make noise. Very little real change from what I've seen.
It's actually an extremely effective way to give new people a wide basing in computer science and, more importantly, get them excited.
I'd love to see more marketing to new people in regards to hackathons.