The event is organized by Chaincode Labs, “a New York City-based research and development group that explores cryptocurrencies and other peer-to-peer decentralized systems” according to their website.
The lab is further hiring 4-6 developers to work on bitcoin’s protocol and development to address the lack of new entrants to the bitcoin development space since 2013. Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Corallo stated:
There are a ton of Bitcoin developers who have never contributed to Bitcoin Core, or to low protocol development — lots of them because they feel ill-equipped to do so — for instance because the idea of going through a rigorous review like we have to do sounds really daunting. So we’re looking for those people to really learn how that works, and come to think about the issues.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-core-ramps-up-efforts-to-compete-with-eth/