I think @u_ne_korn is in the non-theatreform category - her experience with games of that size is from the scout-camp based 33AR.
There’s an easy pathway to gaining confidence for theateform. There isn’t one for bigger games. Wellington is still new at this weekend-long thing - Embers is only the second weekend-long campaign run here, and its the only one happening at the moment. If you throw in day formats, where people have to be fed, but not worry about sleeping, we’ve had only two of those, and none are running ATM. So there’s not many games to learn at and not much of a pool of past knowledge to draw on. Throw in the fact that events are organised by very small teams, and there’s very limited opportunities to pass on our limited cultural capital.
Basicly, we have a bootstrap problem. While we can magpie knowledge from Auckland, and maybe get people to write a few things down to warn against the most basic mistakes, everyone is going to be a beginner, and the only way forward really is just to plough on through and hope it works out :-/