Ressurecting this thread because the general topic of how to encourage new players to participate in Netrunner communities keeps coming up in the increasing diversity thread, where it’s a bit off topic, and Discourse always says I shouldn’t make new threads when ancient threads on the same topic exist.
I wonder if a bring-a-friend tournament using a variation on the King of Servers format might work. Each team of two would have to include at least one player who doesn’t regularly attend, and teams would be paired against other teams by their total prestige, so that you would always be sitting next to your teammate. You could discuss your games with your teammate as much as you like.
I think some deckbuilding restrictions would also be needed - maybe Cache Refresh so the card pool isn’t super huge, and something like Magic’s unified deckbuilding rules so teams aren’t disadvantaged if they share a collection or only one of them has a collection.
Other possible elements: door prize draw just for the new players; longer than usual time limits since new players tend to play slow, and maybe single-game rounds to offset that; a decidedly flat prize structure; an actual planned-and-scheduled lunch break.