Were you at the NYTimes Open Hackday? My teammate and I flew in from Michigan (to be fair, I'm originally from the Tri-State area) to participate, and we damn well weren't just there for networking. That having been said, the networking is incredible. I participated in a Yahoo! Hack U event up here in the great white north, and landed a job this summer out of it (and an offer from Yahoo, which I wound up turning down); the offers that a little bit of networking at the NYTimes one turned up were incredible as well.
Honestly, it's all about balance. My teammate and I spent 99% of the time at these two events coding. We walked in with absolutely no code pre-written, and emerged from both events with a fully-functional application, the synthesis of which we plan to put into full production in the near future. However, the one or two hours of networking that we engaged in, be it during "hacking time" or not, were extremely valuable (and, arguably, helped shape part of our final applications).
I was also at the TimesOpen Hack day, and spent most of the day coding. There was a lot of chatter there, though (some of it contributed to what my app eventually became). Bring headphones for when you need to start building. Thankfully no one there presented deckware.
Honestly, it's all about balance. My teammate and I spent 99% of the time at these two events coding. We walked in with absolutely no code pre-written, and emerged from both events with a fully-functional application, the synthesis of which we plan to put into full production in the near future. However, the one or two hours of networking that we engaged in, be it during "hacking time" or not, were extremely valuable (and, arguably, helped shape part of our final applications).
Just my two cents.