[pastage]

Ads, group think and social belonging/inclusion. That is just stating the obvious, but yes the problems of this event came from the issues you list.

On a side I wonder why it is so hard to make event software like this. I looked at reimplementing a race manager used to track times for cars in Pinewood Derby rally for something akin to this, it take a lot of work to make it "usefull". Especially considering the index card solution mentioned for Swiss pairing seems to be such an easy concept when done manually.

The racing manager software was called DerbyNet, and works great for its purpose.