Notes from the field
Eighteen years of running event security, from the fence line at 2am to the trailer where the calls get made. What happens out there, and what it taught me to build.
The post name that was a changelog
I pulled a real schedule export the other day and found a position called "Breaker #1 EAST (Moved from roamer 3)." That parenthetical is the whole problem with how we run events, written into a cell because there was nowhere else to put a decision.
Read it →The open post nobody caught
A guard goes on lunch. You pull the next body over to cover. Simple. Except the body you pulled was holding a post too, and now that one's empty, and the whiteboard doesn't know that, and you won't either until the client asks why Gate 4 was dark for forty minutes. The math of relief, and why it breaks every tool that isn't built for it.
Read it →Three numbers that should match and never do
What you contracted to cover. Who signed up to work. Who actually showed. On every event I've run, those are three different numbers living in three different files, and the gap between them is where you lose money and credibility. How I stopped reconciling them at 1am with a highlighter.
Read it →Why I bill per event, not per head
Every workforce tool I ever used charged me per user per month. For an industry where the roster lasts a weekend. I want to explain why that pricing model doesn't fit the way event work happens, and what I'm doing instead.
Read it →What the client never sees, and why that's a problem
The contract says what you'll cover. Then the event happens somewhere the client can't see, on a whiteboard in a trailer, and at the end you send an invoice and hope nobody asks for proof. Why that question is coming for every operator, and what I want in hand when it arrives.
Read it →More notes as I write them. If there's something from your own site you want me to dig into, the early-access email reaches me directly.