Several notes:
First, that this is the best, most organized place you've found for information on the subject bodes not very well for the organization that's out there currently. We've got a great community that loves dominion, but as someone who's read every post here, there just hasn't been all that much on this subject.
For the purposes of gathering information on the existing tournament state, this site had the most. The fact that it is also highly focused on the game is a big plus. So its certainly a good place to have this particular conversation. In terms of other organization, its certainly not as formalized as it could be. How far any of this goes will depend on Jay's larger marketing plans for the game and his company.
Second, there should be some standardization as to the rules. There have been various tournaments I've seen, and various proposals, where you have: different ways of picking kingdoms, different numbers of players, wildly varying numbers of rounds, different ways of breaking ties, etc. And that's fine, I guess, but for something that are all qualifiers to the same thing, I would think you would want some uniformity on these fronts. We can discuss (and it's come up now and then) what the preferred options are on these things, but I don't know how much say you'd have on that anyway, and how much is up to Mr. Tummelson.
If history has taught me anything, I'd have a lot of say on the assembly. I have several great resources (including Jay's demo team and multiple community outlets) to help establish what best practices are. I have no intention of assembling this without substantial input from others.
Third, Donald X., the game's designer, seems to be a great person to talk about the nuts and bolts of a Dominion tournament, if this is possible. And I'd guess it is - he's quite helpful when posting here. But you might want to have some specific questions to ask, too. Or not. I'm not sure, but I feel like he's the #1 person I'd want involved if I were looking at running a tournament.
Sounds sensible, and I may pursue that if and when my plans become reality.
Fourth, you need to have a strong set of rules, as regards to things like note-taking, collaboration, etc. etc. What constitutes it, how do you check for it, how much is allowed, what happens to people who get caught. We're probably a bit over-paranoid here, but hypothetical discussions about this stuff crop up. You need to be prepared for it as much as you can, and more importantly, you need to have a good set of people and procedures in place to deal with any problems, both the ones which are potentially foreseen, and any wacky things you might not have been able to guess at.
Agreed, with the most important part being the people. When I organize events on this scale, I leave a lot of authority in the hands of the individual organizers to make decisions in order to ensure a smooth and fair event. I can't be there personally for most events, so I make sure they aren't going to be second-guessed by me.
Fifth, you want to balance access and fairness as you can. I.e. geographically, you want to have a good number of places represented, so that I don't have to travel 1000 miles to get to a qualifier. The internet helps here. On the other hand, you can't just break it up geographically, because there are some parts of the country where you're going to get a LOT more players, and if you split on pure geography, you're making it much harder for people from those regions.
I am setting the boundary at no less than 150 miles apart for sponsored events, though free qualifiers can certainly occur in smaller areas and multiple times in major metro areas. I think that is reasonable. I believe in reasonable geographic distribution, but player density is definitely the larger factor when it comes to providing sponsored support.
Finally (for now anyway), I don't know what your restrictions are here, either, but you want to have a balance as to the total number of seats, between letting lots of people have a chance, and having it be reasonably small enough that it's not a total crapshoot. I mean, I know Mr. Tummelson is more concerned with fun than with determining who the best player is. But even from a fun perspective, it's not so fun to get to only play one game, get a bad shuffle of the cards, and you're done. You want to have things be long enough that you feel like you had a real chance, or at least that if you didn't, it was epicly bad luck that you can reminisce and complain about for years to come
That is definitely a big concern. I see the existing format has single elimination in the final rounds, which can be rough. I will be running a poll with multiple format options to see which one gathers the most community support.
Thanks for the thorough input!