If anyone wants tips on how to run a tournament, I'd certainly ask Voltaire. This went extremely smoothly.
I concur with this. Nicely run, Voltaire. What really made this format work was that most players were treating it as a fun event with new friends. I especially applaud keeping everything on schedule -- even though being clocked really hurt me in the first game.
I do have a couple of suggestions, though:
1) Have one other person help. Voltaire did really well, but it would have made me feel a little better if there was someone else walking around counting piles and starting hands before each game began, able to answer rules questions, monitor play, etc. There were some slip ups that could have been avoided if there was just a little more help. (Estate in a Province pile, missed curse in the final game, etc.)
I felt like I had to monitor my opponents a lot more than I was expecting and would have liked to have been able to focus more on my own play. (Player tried to buy a card then play an action; another player tried to play more than one action, people forgetting to put cards back for courtyard, etc.) To a great extent this cannot be avoided in an all-cards tournament because so many people are unfamiliar with some of the cards. So them's the breaks, I guess.
2) Give an example at the start of what an acceptable shuffle is and what an unacceptable shuffle is. There were two cases at my tables where people were not really shuffling, but luckily there were enough people at each table who were able to explain what a correct shuffle was, and players were deferential, so it ended up not being a problem, but it could have been.