The orange lanyards are simply what all the "Attendant" ID badges are now held in, rather than the little paper card that went behind your Convention badge. No surprise, but the RC Administration managed to even over-engineer that process at my RC this year. They caused a huge back-up on the first day, making each attendant show his ID, write down his name, home cong, home address, etc., just to get the stupid lanyard, for fear that someone may forget to return his at the end of the RC. After almost an hour, someone with half a brain finally realized these things cost about $0.02 a piece, and it was no big deal if someone kept one.
As for the protesters, we had a similar one at our RC this year from a local Baptist church. I knew that it was the same guy who showed up for each RC weekend at that facility, but only on Fridays. Of course not everyone knew that, so after he wasn't there on Saturday everyone was patting themselves on the back thinking their being shuttled out behind a wall of attendants on the sidewalk somehow scared him away. More likely was that he actually had something better to do with his Saturdays and Sundays than hang out at a convention center in a suit.