By invitation only conferences?

So despite all the discussion of opening this up, it is still “by RSVP only”? How exclusive (and therefore ironic)! I know this has been mentioned before but, I mean, when I (or rather “if I manage to”) graduate I won’t be able to ask people to come to see my project presentation? How depressing! And what has just been objected to is not even some new idea. Why hasn’t this been shot down weeks ago when we first brought it up? And the scoping… our project has never been correctly scoped…