[Nemo]

Dox,

After reading debriefings and especially yours and nirvAnA's (can't add more appreciation on your post, neither Dox ;-) ), here a few ideas I had. Maybe one of them could be useful in the process of brainstorming.

1 - You may setup a "organizer team" for you tournament. Your team can be composed by anyone you have a minimum confidence in (they can be lowly bronze, team spirit and efficiency is important there). Having a team allow you to make things you wouldn't have time to do. For example, you can have 2 persons dedicated to finding sponsors. You will find that money attract more money. If you put 500$ of your own in the tournament, it's easier to find 2-3 or more sponsors that put the same money in it. There are many pros to setup a team:
* It's more pleasant to work together than alone
* You increase greatly the number of things you can do via your team (make advertisings, some videos, graphics, administrative work etc.)
* You have security by redundancy if any problem happens (if you have an unavoidable impeachment as live sadly impose us sometimes, in case you have to manage a problem like the Majorgate, etc.)
2 - At some time your tournament will drive even more interest and especially from pro gamers, especially if you get sponsors who can add to the cash pool. You may want to keep its root of "great tournament for the whole SEA community" but let foreign pro gamers participate. I think there are formulas that can mix the pros with the casual players in the beginning and then split the tournament in 2, a part for the 16 winners and another for the 16 first non-winner SEA. The cash-prize divided for the most part to the best and a minor part (1/3th, 1/4th) to the casual SEA gamers.
It could take this form for example:
* Groups of 32 seeded. 5 games with Swiss-system tournament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament) You affect 1 organizer per group to manage it (and maybe one caster for each)
* Best 2 of each group go for the "Major tournament" (256 players makes 8 32-groups and 16 players in Major tournament) (with your star caster, Kelly I guess)
* Two best SEA players of each group (non already in the "Major tournament") go to the "SEA tournament" (with your second best caster)
With this each player have played at least 5 games in the tournament and had the chance to play a "big fish". You have your major tournament and your SEA community final Tournament too (you can do them on Sunday if necessary).

There are certainly problems I don't see with this formula but it's mainly brainstorming that might give another point of thinking.

Gl and, once again, big props for what you already did.