One hopes the CSF will have a panel to handle all things Dune. I remember watching a panel at a science fiction convention featuring Larry Niven about eight or nine years ago, where the discussion began with Ringworld and ended with an audience member trying to debate the merits of space elevators...there was a long, drawn-out discussion about the economic potentials, followed with Larry Niven shaking his head and gently explaining why he didn't think it would ever work. 

It is somewhat disconcerting to see science fiction commodified in the sense that it is seen as a drawing board for industry. I wonder if this is why there is a small (but visible) break between science fiction and speculative fiction - in sci-fi cons, the spec-fic is often seen as the 'soft sci-fi,' and almost always seems to be more humanistic in its focus (and often the realm of female writers).

The CSF event looks more like a writing workshop than a literary critics' conference: a forum for running scenarios, more than reviewing extant texts. (Although the latter, as your Niven example suggests, often turns into the former.) I hadn't considered the gendered genre division you observe -- I had thought the "speculative" turn was a gentrifying manoeuvre (in the way Margaret Atwood has used it, attempting to preserve her literary cachet but alienating the SF sector of her audience). I fielded an off-thread comment on the post, which I'll paste here (and cite properly if the commentator wishes):

I was interested by your blog post on science fiction as form of research...as predictive, anticipatory, a kind of thought experiment. I assume you know "The Zebra Storyteller".
The crossover has occurred between technology as a means to engage with or master the natural, given world and into the creative transformation of nature to the point of occlusion of any frontier between mind and a naturally occurring world. The landscape we inhabit is more of our own imaginative and technical shaping than of what is given naturally or even historically. As the source of what determines us, it is ourselves that we most need to understand, including our technical prowess and drive for mastery of our condition. A recursive situation: "We have met the enemy and it is us."

P.S.: I didn't know the Zebra Storyteller fable, which is just fantastic -- very apt for SF writers. So apt I called the South African writer Lauren Beukes a zebra storyteller in my micro-review of Moxyland:

Made time to read Moxyland, which I'd only recommend if you use phone or net. @laurenbeukes is a fine zebra storyteller: http://is.gd/jQykyV

Turns out she didn't know it either.

Never heard this term before. Like it a lot (see explanation) RT @sonicfiction @laurenbeukes is a fine zebra storyteller http://is.gd/jQykyV

How very SF it still seems to me to be able to correspond with writers like this.