Straight answers for the person with the radio. Each one starts with the answer, then the reasoning from the dirt. The templates and the full protocols live in the book.
Ten answers is a lot to walk into cold. If you run a committee-staffed rodeo, read these three in this order.
A rodeo runs four risk environments at once. A concert runs one. That's why general event security training gets you part of the way and then fails at the chute.
Read →"Nothing major happened" is the most dangerous sentence in rodeo operations. Here's the difference between a security plan that reacts and an operation designed so the incident never gets a face.
Read →A rodeo operations plan has one job: say who does what, where, under what conditions, with what authority. Here are the five inputs you need before you write a line and the seven things that have to be in it.
Read →The gate is the first sixty seconds every patron has with your operation, and it sets their behavior for the next four hours. Here's what's non-negotiable at the gate and why credentials have to be readable in two seconds.
Read →The staff briefing is the last time everyone is in one room before the gates open. Here's the five-part structure that fits in thirty minutes, and the one rule that decides whether the gate opens.
Read →In an all-metal building at full capacity the radio will fail by the second performance segment. That's a known variable, not an emergency — if you planned for it before the first rider nodded.
Read →Serious incidents are rare. When they happen, the first ten seconds decide the outcome, and those ten seconds get decided in the planning room. The five situations every rodeo operation faces — plus the sixth one most plans forget.
Read →"We had this problem last year too" is the sound of institutional memory failing. Here's why competent committees repeat the same mistake three years running and the two mechanisms that stop it.
Read →The Invisible Operation is the long one — sixteen chapters on the written plan, gates and credentials, the run-of-show, real-time command, and five documented incident protocols. Four chapters are written for the committee with no operations budget and nobody to hire.
Ordering for a board? Committee pricing from $17.99 a copy.
Most rodeos in this country have never had a paid operations director and never will. The money problem is real. The knowledge problem is the one that actually breaks events, and it's solvable for free.
Read →Two printable pages from The Invisible Operation: the index-card post assignment every volunteer reads before the briefing, and the site walk checklist that finds the problems before the crowd does. Free.
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