IIRC they have a young girl on stage at the IgNobels and her job is to repeatedly shout 'boring' if you overrun your timeslot.

That's amazing!

Oooh, can I recruit you to cut off question askers who aren’t asking questions? Talks need someone not shy about enforcing that it’s question after the presentation, not offtopic rambling time.

Attend grad school. Questions are almost always a way to try and prove how smart you are.

Or analyst conferences, etc.

Generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of public raising of hands type Q&A's. They turn into more of a comment than a question and showing off sorts of things as you say. Maybe a few pre-submitted questions electronically or just save them for later 1-on-1s.

I quite like the way that in some sessions they make you submit questions into a webpage and the chair will pick the questions to ask - it really makes a difference when they can say "there's a few other comments you can read online", rather than drag on the q&a session.

Yeah at my indie conferences [0] if we live-stream the event that means we have an online audience too. I require everyone to submit their questions to a private chat server, even if you're there in person, and I curate them in real-time.

[0] https://handmadecities.com

You know it. “Well, in my experience doing this since 1997…” “Lemme stop you right there.”