Yeah... as a straight white guy, I don't even want to get into the question of the conference being "necessary" or not. I wish it WASN'T necessary, but then I also wish that two beautiful young Nordic maidens in bikinis would take me to their log cabin, lay me down on an animal-hide rug and massage my manly chest hair, while hand-feeding me melon cubes and reciting Chekhov's two-man one-act play "The Bear". (Don't ask.) The moral being, you can't always get what you want.
On a positive note though, these two actors seem like really nice people and great ambassadors for the community. This was a great thing to do.