This isn't just conference-specific. I know people from cultures where long names are quite common. Just like Theodore contracts to Ted, there's a reasonably si

This isn't just conference-specific. I know people from cultures where long names are quite common. Just like Theodore contracts to Ted, there's a reasonably simple culture-specific way of shortening them, and most of them do shorten them, e.g. Venkataramarajan to Venkat or Consolación to Conny. Note that often the contraction isn't obviously related to the original name (e.g. William => Bill). This is why any system that takes names should have a way to specify a "Display Name", which may or may not follow the firstname lastname pattern. Particularly when those names need to be printed out for conferences.