Incident

Any event on the day that needs a decision from someone other than the person who spotted it: a medical situation, a code of conduct report, a power cut, a guest who never arrives, a crowd building where it should not. The word matters because it changes the mode you are in. Routine problems get absorbed by whoever is standing there. An incident gets escalated, triaged as routine, priority, or emergency, and handed to one person who decides. Spotting an incident is everyone’s job. Running it is one named person’s job. At community scale this collapses to something small and workable: one person with the run of show who is not on stage, a group chat or cheap radios, and an escalation rule everyone agreed on before doors.

Source: Emergency-management practice, specifically the Incident Command System, which large events borrow for safety planning: one incident commander, clear span of control, and the note that ICS scales informally, down to a verbal plan in a five-minute huddle for a small event (Silent Beacon on ICS; Wikipedia, Incident Command System). The routine, priority, emergency triage and radio etiquette come from festival communication practice (Ticket Fairy on radios, channels and call signs).

First used in: 1.7 · Risk, rules, and safety. Taught fully in 3.4 · When things go wrong.