Hello, Texas Gamers. I'm the guy who's coordinated the two NC Game Days so far and I wanted to pop in and drop a couple of small lessons I've learned that you're welcome to take or leave:
1) Make note of the e-mail addresses of all the people in the games you are running. If you are a player, make note of the e-mail address of all the GM's you are playing under. We had a situation where ENWorld went down just a day or so before Game Day while we still had a few outstanding issues to iron out. Fortunately it was back up in time for us to coordinate a few last minute details but if it hadn't, we'd have had a few problems communicating with each other.
2) Maybe plan a dinner before and/or after the Game Day. Some of the best times we've had have been getting to know each other outside the games themselves. Plus, a post-game wrap up dinner is a great time to hear the stories of what happened in the games you didn't participate in.
3) Make sure that at least a couple people bring a copy of the schedule. This is obvious of course, but I screwed up and left mine at home so I felt like it was worth mentioning.
4) If most folks are planning to bring their lunch or grab something quick nearby the venue where the Game Day is being held, you could try watching The Gamers video at lunch time. We had somebody bring a television and DVD player and watched it while we had lunch (it's only about 45 minutes long). It is tremendously funny, hits way too close to home and I think it's more fun to watch with a big group of gamers.
5) If possible, have somebody take pictures. We had this at the first game day and the guy taking the pictures even took pictures of everybody's dice and then set up a game of "Who's Dice Are These". It was a lot of fun to look back after the fact and see how much fun everybody was having in the pictures. For the second Game Day, that same guy couldn't bring his camera and we didn't have a backup. We'll remedy that next time.
6) GM's may want to keep a pad handy and write down those memorable gaming moments or quotes as they happen. The laugh out loud funny moments at the NC Game Days have been too numerous to count. We wish in retrospect that we had written down a few more of them to recount to the folks who were playing in other games at the time.
I haven't read the whole thread, so if some or all of this has already been stated, sorry for the redundancy. I hope everything goes smoothly and you all have a great time!