I will now give feedback as someone who was half in and half out of the planning and running department. But first I would like to preface my feedback.
This event was by far the best and most smoothly ran TF2 LAN event that I have ever attended, especially of this scale. Compared to the absolute clusterfuck that is GXL, this event was a pleasant change of pace into the realm of competence and out of the dark pits of apathetic fuckheadedness. Samiface obviously cares so much about the community, I knew that going in and is the only reason I even helped out with the event, so burned have I been by GXL and the goings on there.
What surprised me is that Wade gets it. He really really does. Humble, down to earth small business owner that cares not just about the big esports but the little guy, the classics and "retro" games all the same. When I arrived, he knew who I was and what I was there to do. When teams arrived, he knew of them and their accomplishments. He may not be a part of this community in the same way that a multiyear player is, but that he cares is beyond questioning.
That was the primary good at the event, the amount all the staff cared about our experience was very clear.
The Good:
Samiface, Wade and company. The people make a business and a LAN.
The organization of the invite tournament. Was smooth and with few interruptions, especially day 2. Invite teams were kept well herded and moved into servers expeditiously. I understand quite well how hard that is.
You took care of your volunteers. I've volunteered a ton and you guys buying us lunch/dinner was phenomenal. I'm not sure I've ever been treated as well as a volunteer than at your venue and I want you to know how much I appreciate that.
You listened. Not everything was in your power at the venue, but sympathetically listening to the incessant bitching of the TF2 community is a saint's task and you guys performed (and are performing) it with extreme grace.
The stream looked really good, I was worried at first because of the concerns surrounding casting from live feed and it seeming like you guys were ignoring the advice and requests of a team of people that have been doing this for years, That was quickly dispatched though and overall I'm impressed.
The Bad:
Nothing here is a deal breaker for me, just things to work on in the future.
Open bracket tournament organization... was awful at times. The flow was poor, I got the feeling you all were overwhelmed with the number of signups and the organizational difficulties that only appear at that scale. I had no good way of disseminating sever info other than going over to the players and manually assigning servers. This is how LAN events used to be ran years ago, but its 2017 and we have better solutions now. This got much better the later the event went on, but we still ended up super far behind and with a lot of teams discontent.
PC numbers. This has been addressed ad nauseum. I know you guys leveraged every single PC yall had. When there is a big TF2 LAN, we show up.
Servers... were desktop computers that had been set aside for this use. This is kind of a waste since the usual bottleneck on running a TF2 server is memory, certainly not gpu (doesn't even care if there is one) or processor (doesn't really utilize super heavily) so a pair of dedicated server rigs, even older ones you could pick up for 5-7 hundred would do just fine and not have to be set up time and time again. People were a little discontent (no more so than myself) that it took from when I got there at around 2pm on friday until almost 8 for the servers to get adequately set up. There were other cool things I wanted to do for samiface that would have made the LAN so much easier if we had chit chatted about things before hand and a little more prep work be put into that area the day before. Once everything was up and running, things went super smooth. Perhaps next time I will just bring my servers with me or something.
The PCs themselves had... weird issues. Someone's font crosshair wouldnt work because of a specific version of directx they were using that was no problem on any other computer. Another had no ability to join any server without deleting all their custom stuff. Several computers had to re-install TF2 on restart and the problems marched on. Some of that is #valve'sgame
EDIT:
In case I wasnt clear. I loved the event and would love to come back and would love to be even more involved with planning and execution so that its even better next time.