Am I wrong in thinking that there's some little dongle thing that lets you plug PS3 arcade sticks into 360s or vice versa?

There could be... I should totally look into that. BRB EB.

I was actually planning on bringing a double US arcade sticks for use during the tourny, but did not have time to pick it up.

If we have one next year i will make time to pick it up

Please do. OzHadou would love you for it.

You may have seen complaints about it, but I have had quite a few people telling me that they prefer it that way and I believe Ed has had the same thing happen too.

As for controllers, as long as I am working at SMASH, I don't want to see people pulling out controllers and putting their own in. Unless there is some way to control it so that everyone can pick whatever controller they want and keep it regulated. We will have too many controllers "go missing."
We won't have as many amateur players playing with sticks. I can tell you that now :) There is already quite a few of the not so hardcore gamers saying that they are too intimidated to play these games against the ones who are elite at it. Sticks will only help that, IMO.

well it's hard being an awesome gamer too you know...

There is a way to control it, but it may take a little bit of extra organisation. Like with the ITG tournament last year, depending on how long SMASH! is open for and whether or not it's on two days, you could run two tournaments- Stick/arcade machine and controller. Or, at the very least, bring in some PS3's.

I'm not a hard-core gamer so my apologies if the answer to this is obvious but would it solve the problem if there were a selection of controllers? So if you wanted to play with a pad, we had that and could plug it in, and if you wanted to play with a stick, we had that and could plug it in, too. Obviously more work for us but it might get around the logistical problems of people bringing their own controllers and plugging them in.

That probably would work, but then what if certain people in a certain round want to use just pads or just sticks?
I'd recommend having three 360's and three PS3's. One of each console would be just pads, just sticks, and one pad and one stick. EG:

360 #1 - Pad/Pad
360 #2 - Stick/Stick
360 #3 - Pad/Stick
PS3 #1 - Pad/Pad
PS3 #2 - Stick/Stick
PS3 #3 - Pad/Stick

That way it's possible to avoid the whole 'pads- no, sticks! No, pads! NO, STICKS! NO, 360! NO, PS3!!!' bs.

But then you run into the problem of casual players vs. tourney players... again, problem. The only way around that is two run two tournaments.

*Wow. I just made my initial suggestion entirely redundant with that last comment.

Oh, I meant we'd have two pads and two controllers (per console) and we'd just plug them in as required.

That solves one issue to some degree. While it'd be best to have three of each console and three of each kind of controller, I guess we'd have to work with what we have. Even two of each console would help.

However, there's still the issue of the separate tiers. Has it been decided whether or not SMASH! will be a one or two day con in 2011? Or if the Games/Arcade area could be allocated more space, sort of like the separate room in 2009? I was getting worried that the vendors in lower Town Hall were getting antsy about the loud noises from the games area.

SMASH! will be a one-day event next year but we'll have more space than we did this year. The big problem at this stage is the cost of hiring/obtaining multiple televisions and consoles but I think we'd certainly like to expand this area.

Ah. I didn't even think of that...
If it's possibe to get enough tv's and consoles, then we've satisfactorily solved both of the pressing issues.
Just out of interest (again), what will be the opening times for SMASH! next year? Just for ITG-related issues.

Not sure about times yet. I think we won't know more about that until closer to the event but I think we want to open it for as long as possible (given it's one-day).