We need a conference that one can only buy a ticket somehow directly through a node that they themselves have administrative access to.
It'd be nice to have actual cipherpunks, but at the very least one should need to, you know, run the bitcoin software if they're to be taken seriously at a bitcoin conference.
Perhaps just sell the tickets with a transaction type that at this point isn't supported outright by anything other than bitcoin-cli.
That all said, I'm not sure it's fair to judge the state of Bitcoin by what some circus put on in the city of high time preference by Shitcoin Magazine went like. It may be different all around, but they're the last ones that should get to decide what Bitcoin's vibe is.
Personally I think I'd be more likely to go to a Nostr conference than a Bitcoin one at this point though.