> The 'designated asshole' idea works well only if the asshole in question has enough knowledge to recognize whether a question is relevant or not.
I've never been to a programming or computer-science conference, but, at mathematics conferences, moderator duties tend to rotate among the attendees. This means that, while they may not be specialist content experts, they can at least separate the wheat from the chaff. Is this feasible at conferences of the sort the author describes? (It may not be; aside from the big international workshops, mathematics conferences tend to be much smaller affairs.)
I don't think the speakers themselves would want to play the role of 'designated asshole'. After all, the problems with this are largely the same as the ones with having the current speaker cut off bad questions - they need to be polite as speakers.
As you said, I think this works better in mathematical conferences and academic scenarios because people must be willing to accept objective criticism of their ideas.
I've never been to a programming or computer-science conference, but, at mathematics conferences, moderator duties tend to rotate among the attendees. This means that, while they may not be specialist content experts, they can at least separate the wheat from the chaff. Is this feasible at conferences of the sort the author describes? (It may not be; aside from the big international workshops, mathematics conferences tend to be much smaller affairs.)