Thanks for putting this discussion together everyone.
As someone who works for an all-remote company all the time, one of the things I noticed watching these talks is how much I have learned from the way we do things every day. There are small things that I would love to see in future iterations: vocalizing questions if the person asking them cannot; keeping notes and questions in a separate document that anyone watching can toggle between; keeping faces in gallery view instead of “person speaking is one giant face” view; and having everyone in a room be on their own machine.
Even with all that, though, I still really struggle with the idea that distributed conferences are anything other than a slightly wilted substitute for the real thing. As I said, I work remotely with folks every day and while I have reasonably strong relationships with them, the company still gets together once a year or so to really cement ties in a way that seems only possible in person. You can build a decent amount of closeness with informal video calls and shared goals, but I still feel closer to people I’ve seen once a year at ICLC than I do to some coworkers I see on the phone every day, just for the power of informal presence.
For someone who doesn’t have children, or drive, who lives in energy-efficient apartments, who makes other lower-carbon choices, I feel as though being able to prioritize real-time relationships with my carbon expenditure is a valid choice.
I also have concerns over the way distributed conferences seem to privilege the European experience. In many communities the European members already have large amounts of power and privilege. As was mentioned, most attendees outside Europe even with hubs are going to have to fly to the hub. But then, when they get there, it is half the people, and maybe not the half with the most effect on the community.
To try to end this long complaint on a positive note, I would love to see more investigation of other options that don’t overlook the value of presence-based relationships. Maybe that’s longer exchanges over shorter conferences. Maybe it’s looking at conference location to reduce flight distance, but keeping it in one location. Maybe it’s alternating types of conference. Maybe it is considering formats that suffer less by diverging more: say weekly streams. Maybe it’s burning down the internet entirely and only communicating via postal text. 
But thank you again everyone for your presentations. They were super interesting.