Tldr: Explain why you want to go, and why you think you should be picked, and grouper may potentially fund a trip to hack stuff ( preferably their stuff but also your own )

My own question: What is the definition of a skilled hacker? Are they looking for white hat hackers? What sort of achievments would count to demonstrate this? Writing some great software? Full pen test analysis and attack vectors on some software?

Considering this is "hacker news" this is a pretty vague offer.