I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post, but I had no intention of letting the talk go forward unless the presenter could bring up some really solid

I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post, but I had no intention of letting the talk go forward unless the presenter could bring up some really solid evidence of some sort. Slides, some kind of visual element or documentation were required to earn/keep your LT slot and, for understandable reasons, some people wait until the last minute to submit the final draft of those. To be crass, I threw this person on the schedule and gave them a deadline with every intention of removing them the next day to shut them up so I could go to sleep. The LT schedules change up to and during the event itself and I've rejected a lot of talks once it was clear that the slides or revisions contained inappropriate material. The goal of the event is to give everyone a chance to take the stage, the point is to not curate beyond clustering similar topics together. People sing songs, do dances and any number of crazy little things and sometimes will blow you away with an amazing idea. That being said, I started training my potential replacements for the LTs at the 30c3 for the reasons you stated, among others. I believe today, the talks are assembled by a team of three people with each person taking the helm on a particular day.