@yarotska.near [Posted on Developer DAO Board](https://near.social/#/devgovgigs.near/widget/Post?id=750) ## Idea: DevHub travel stipend for NEARCON hackers – Share your thoughts! Lo and behold, [NEARCON IRL Hackathon](https://nearcon-hackathon.devpost.com/) is happening again! Last year over 500 people hacked their way to winning over $180k in bounties, and about a hundred projects were successfully submitted. This year, NEAR Foundation is planning to go even bigger. So big they even booked a whole venue just for hackers (yay 24-hour access and lots of personal space!). Last year, our crowd couldn’t have been more diverse not just skills wise (from public sector experts to hardware engineers) but also geographically. As an event coordinator, I met hackers from Korea, US and Ukraine traveling thousands of miles to Portugal to join us at NEARCON. And this all was possible thanks to NEAR Foundation granting travel stipends to those who successfully submitted a project. This year, a lot of people unfortunately won’t be able to travel due to mass layoffs and overinflation across the globe. On the other hand, NEAR Foundation has to spent their treasury in a leaner way, so they won’t be able to provide any travel stipends. And I am concerned that a lot of talented and seasoned Near devs couldn’t afford their trip to Lisbon. To ensure that our most valued community members would be able to make it to NEARCON, I’m posting a request for the Developer DAO to reserve **$20k for the travel stipends**. The stipend is meant to support true builders: Web3 and Web2 devs, marketers, designers and engineers who would be asked to share their portfolio and previous hackathon submissions (not necessarily Near hacks). Here’s the eligibility criteria I’m suggesting, and I would appreciate your input in comments: + Female developers can count on this stipend because the pay gap is unfortunately still very real + People under 30 y.o. and students + People traveling from overseas (US, Canada, APAC etc.) + Previous Near hackers with a proven track record Please share your thoughts on this, and let’s build great things together!