Third, I talked to a few people who lived in the area and attended because they wanted to learn more about bitcoin. Sucks to be them. There was nothing at the conference that would have been geared towards educating people about what bitcoin is and how it works. Aside from the ever present "TO THE MOON" bullshit that seemed to have been included in at least 1/3 of the presentations I sat in on.
This tells me that people really aren't that interested in the concept.
Most tech shows do a call for papers, and require presenters to provide a synopsis of their presentation. The organizer then chooses among the most promising to speak. I am pretty sure this guy just asked a bunch of start-up guys to come speak about anything, regardless of what they were going to speak about. The content was so.... blech.
There was actually a third room with presentations for beginners...I think Antonopolous held one of those discussions, which I sadly missed.
I've not been to a tech show like you're talking about, but it did feel a little thrown together at times. I think its highly likely you got to speak if you were a financial backer for the conference, which is how a lot of trade shows work...more money = more speaking time.