But what about your buddy David Kirkpatrick? He's a really solid interviewer who could have carried the Zuck interview quite well, IMHO.

I think the real point of the story is the active backchannel that now exists at most conferences. If you team a self-important moderator (I don't know Lacy enough to judge this myself, but so go the reports) with conference organizers who are not embracing the backchannel, well, you'll get something like what happened at SXSW.