A lot has been written about passion lately, and even another recent blog post of mine is relevant (http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/04/17/how-employers-measure-...). I don't think passion has to be demonstrated by 'only' doing coding 24 hours a day, or going to meetups every day. I know very good technologists who don't attend meetups or hackathons, but you can tell in how they talk about technology that they have passion. It's hard to quantify, but I think for the most part good companies tend to get it right more often than not.