Our pit is far from perfect, but I'd suggest the following:
- Plan your pit in advance. Even sketch it in CAD.
- Practice the complete pit setup back at home, from start to finish
- Pit flooring is extremely nice when you're spending the better part of 3 days standing up
- Keep the number of people in the pit as low as possible.
- Use space efficiently with shelving
- Have a robot cart that allows you do to most of the work on the robot while it's on the cart, thereby saving space
- Skip the huge TV's and flashy displays unless they are compact and won't get in your way
- Have a simple and neat setup for battery storage and charging.
These are just the basics - those with really nice pits can surely give some additional insight. At events I've been to, some of my favorites are 696 and 254 - utilitarian yet very nice looking. I'm sure others can share great examples and photos.