Used to figure if the topic was good enough the crowd would just behave, and honestly that idea died for me after watching a similar mess at a debate night in Columbus. A guy I helped book for a housing panel got maybe four minutes in before a handful of people started yelling over him about rent control, and the mods just froze. What saved us was having two student volunteers planted up front whose only job was to cut off anyone talking over the speaker and walk them out if they kept at it. Sounds like overkill until you eat a $200 loss over a water bottle.

Twenty minutes of your life over a key mixup, that's the real tragedy here?

The flux type matters more than most folks give it credit for, especially on those old Minolta boards where the residue gets sticky and cooks on. Running low heat with a no-clean flux can actually make things worse since it doesnt flow right, so Ive found matching the flux to the temp range solves half the problem before the iron even touches down. Your mileage may vary, but switching to a water soluble flux let me drop to 280 and still get clean joints without frying anything.