2.Have a structure to it. E.g. Would start at 8 am on Saturday, finish on 8 am on Sunday, upload demos by 10 am, and do anything using X library in python.
Then just let the participants do whatever they want, don't unnecessarily linger or ask too many questions. Remember, people are there to enjoy themselves, and code whatever they think is a good project. Don't judge.
Both vi and EMACS seem to have taken the "fuck the users" approach to heart. I suppose I might be of the wrong mindset to operate either application, though the developers could have at the very least taken the time to provide a decent set of documentation for their astonishingly-complex applications.
With tons of books and documentation for both the editors, why on earth are you cribbing. And do take a look at the use cases before ranting about a software, vi was designed to reduce the amount of traffic when editing over the network, nobody envisioned it to stay till 2009.. but it stuck a chord with the devs and it stayed. Vi/emacs design manifesto was never to create a user-friendly system. You are always free to use notepad/gedit or whatever you kids are using these days.
With your bare hands?!?