THE IMPORTANCE OF SAFETY IN THE LIVE EVENTS INDUSTRY

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world. This is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Today, I have three amazing guests. I have Jim Digby. He is the president of Showmakers. I have Ken Keberle. He is the director of education for the Event Safety Alliance. And I have Rutger Jansen, who is the managing partner of Backbone International. Everybody, welcome to the show. Thank you, Les. It's so good to be here. Well, this is podcast 83. We've been doing this for for a couple of years now. And we try to have fun in our podcasts. And today, there's a subject that's near and dear to my heart. And I hope you all as subject matter experts will be able to convey my enthusiasm. The topic is there are no compromises to safety. And I find it really interesting as I have come back for some recent events with the inauguration and working on Super Bowl. And I have seen things that may not pass the safety mustard test. And it's really one of those things today I want to talk about how do we get excited about safety and safe environments. When we plan events, no one should get hurt. And I don't know if that's our But we're going to talk about that today. And my first question, I'm throwing it to you, Jim. So how does one in the live safety business come to realize the importance of safety, you know, you have to take it with a certain level of seriousness, and you got to respect it. Because, you know, it's great to put on a show. But it's even better when everything goes back in the truck, no one gets hurt, and all the audience go home. What are your thoughts? Sadly, the true value of safety often doesn't get recognized until you have either a near miss or a tragedy. And that's, that's unfortunate, because, you know, we those of us who have been in both near misses and tragedy, are trying to share what that experience felt like, or continues to feel like and how it has impacted our lives from the moment of that near miss and or tragedy. So that others don't repeat that sort of thing. So I think there's only so much we can do those of us who have been there and to get other people excited about it. And I think what we're trying to do with the event safety alliance, obviously, is use a carrot, not a stick approach to get people to be aware that the extra knowledge is out there that these experiences are shared in our conferences. And, you know, you have opportunities to get close to safety tragedy without having to go through one, with the hope that it, it may model some behavior for you. Yeah, which, which is actually why I also really got interested in Event Safety Alliance in the beginning, is is when you when you go to a summit, which to me is great, because you hear stuff, you hear from people in the business, you, they talk about and show how things can go wrong. And actually, I think that's when you learn most to hear from others, hoping that the ones that are listening never had an issue. But now all of a sudden understand why you need to do stuff. Because of what can happen. There's, there's too many examples of what went wrong. A lot of times it's really easy. It's kind of stupid production or whatnot. But a lot of times it's in the small stuff, as well. We really could we look at big tragedies, but small tragedies are just as, as the stuff that people don't hear, is people that fall off a forklift or gator or whatnot, it's, and are crippled for the rest of their life. It goes from big to small, obviously. And I think if you have examples of people in the room that like minded, and you share that knowledge, it just becomes better and better, to be honest, and makes you more excited about doing it right and not having any issues. Well, well, well, Rutger, I think, kind of what you're referring to, is people can learn from other people's mistakes. If you you know, history is one of those things that teaches us a lot about the future. And if you don't look at history, you will repeat it. I think that's like an old, like, some euphemism that people just don't make sense. Ken, do you have any thoughts on the importance of safety? And how do we get people to realize this? The idea that Jim put forth is valid, right? Most people have an origin story based in a tragedy, where if what we can do is we create a an immediacy, we use an acronym, let's throw the first one out there called WHFM, what's in it for me? Right? And when we tell our stories, it endeavors upon, it's our responsibility to say, what's in it for you? I've got to make this personal to you. And I'm not going to scare you about a guy losing his head with a chainsaw. I'm going to talk to you about what's valuable to you. And why does this behavior make sense? And not beating people up with regulations, because nobody cares about books. We care about going home, we care about, you know, all those things that make our lives whole, our careers, how much money you're going to lose this week, if you fall off that ladder. So the immediacy, while we start with our origin stories, it comes down to the prevention in the near term and the long term. Well, and I think our summits, Ken, our summits are kind of like a scared straight program. You're referring to the Event Safety Alliance events. Yeah, the Event Safety Summit annual summit is, is in some way a scared straight program. Our first keynote speaker was the plaintiff's attorney for the station nightclub fire. And he had the stage for two hours walking us through what happened at the station nightclub fire when 100 people died needlessly in a doorway. And I know myself, I was like, wow, what just happened? I wanted to leave the business after hearing his stories, and hearing about who had who he had managed to get sued, and when. So there's some of the value in our lessons learned is shock, the shock and awe component of it. Jeez, don't let that happen to me. To Ken's point, what's in it for me? I don't want that to happen to me. Well, you know, it's interesting that sometimes you have to see someone else's tragedy before you can take it with a certain seriousness that the respect that comes with it. And sometimes if you go to a construction site, you'll see a sign that says so many days of safety, that they're actually measuring a 62 days of safe, free, safe environment. And it's like an awareness. But my real question is, I'm gonna throw this to Ken, how do you create the culture? Because it's not just the awareness, there's got to be a culture and really a practice that when people come to a show environment, that safety has to be one of the highest priorities. And as the podcast is, there's no compromises. How do you get that culture instilled in all those people that are on that show site? And it could be a concert tour, there could be crews with hundreds of people. Let's focus on the people that come in there, right? Because everybody has their own story, their own reason for being there, right? If you go to Daytona 500, and buy a ticket for the 500, you're going to get a link that says how to create your personal safety plan. Right? So they've created that culture. But the production side of it, the people that are loading in the show, loading out the show, there's a dozen competing priorities. And sometimes our industry creates that mentality where we change the priorities on people not from we want you to go home in one piece to we want to make this happen no matter what. Every loadout you ever go to, right? Somebody says, Hey, by the way, I want you to know last time they loaded this show out. It was two and a half hours. I bet we can beat that. Right? Everybody not heard that. Come on. 100% Yeah. Well, I've heard I've heard that. I think every show people have had time constraints to either get out of the building, or they're trying to cut a crew so they don't have to pay a meal penalty or something. And, and I guess it's it's kind of like the culture of asking you to do something that may skip a step that creates exposure. Right. And historically, this the safety culture, the safety history, science, etc, tells us that's a bad idea. Right? It's like paying people piece rate. If I pay you to build x number of widgets, you're going to take the guard off the machine. Yeah. Right. If I'm paying you per widget, the guards going away. Right. So this culture of safety, it we have to kind of work, we have to build a safety culture, in spite of a lot of messaging that goes on. Got it, right. We got to tell folks, we have to make it a much more granular message than that. We're going to go 312 days without OSHA reportable. Big deal. Our along gig last three weeks. Oh, for sure. For sure. Right? Most gigs last nine hours. So those numbers don't mean anything. Right? It's getting you home. Gotcha. It's making sure that tomorrow you can earn a paycheck for whomever you're working for. That's very sobering to hear that. Yeah, go going home is part of the victory lap. And making sure you're able to be your father, mother, husband, wife, you know, you're able to perform all the life duties. Right, but also there's and I'm sorry for doing this, right. But a lot of our people will work hurt. Because they want to make the money during the season. Right? They'll, they'll do things that they know are not in their best interest. Because of all the pressures that are on them, earn your paycheck in 90 or, you know, earn a year's wages in 90 days, because that's all the season lasts. Right. So there's a lot of mixed messaging. So it's like I said, we have to get down almost one on one messaging sometimes and talk to our folks. Gotcha. Rutger, what are your thoughts? A big thing was back back when we had COVID. And we came back. We were short of a lot of people. So they hired unqualified people. And the people that were good were hired continuously. So they started working like in a sprint from the get go. And it created a lot of unsafe issues. So there's a lot of different things that make or that create danger, dangerous situations. It's a money, the time thing. It's a it's a COVID thing, for instance, Jim, what are your thoughts on this, the instilling of this culture? Because this culture has to be every day for a concert tour from the first day to the last show day. And it really there's there's no negotiations. If somebody, you know, does something unsafe, you know, how do you make sure that's so important? I think the only instances I've seen where the culture begets better behavior is when it's top down. And there's actual truthful buy in from the person who sits in in the adult in charge seat. And that person starts that culture by demonstrating their care for their team. And that happens at the, you know, crack the truck toolbox talk where you instill in your team and the team that's there to help you locally. Hey, we care about you. You know, these are our hazards that we know about during the day when we're rigging, it's this, we've got pyro tests at one o'clock. If you're feeling tired, or if you're feeling unsafe, check yourself out for a minute, it's okay by us, you're not going to get us cracking the whip on you or whatever other behavioral admonishment some teams give. We care about you, you know, and when you when you set that in from eight o'clock in the morning, it's not, you know, not everybody's gonna buy it. A lot of people are probably going to poo poo it, but you've, you've given everyone the opportunity to care about themselves and each other, because you've made it a priority on the day. So once you set that ball in motion, and you keep it in motion, you show up every day, and you repeat that same toolbox talk, the touring team, the one who hears it every day, sees that they can believe in your commitment to safety. And they then echo that commitment to safety. Over in the camp at Lincoln Park, we just had, I think it was 17 people go through mental health first aid training, as by their choice, we offered it to the team, 17 of the team signed up and did it. And you know, so we're demonstrating through our actions, our care for the human condition. When we gather for the next set of production rehearsals, we'll offer first aid CPR, AED training as well. And these little incremental tools demonstrate our commitment to their safety, and they give them an opportunity to be participants in safety. So that's for us. That's how we do it. I gotta tell you, I love that approach. I think that is approach that is if someone's listening to this podcast, that is a nugget that they can take, it doesn't cost a lot of time and energy to create that culture and reiterate it and, and, you know, ultimately get a great result out of it. So I'm throwing the question back to you now, how do you approach a crew member, you've just set the tone, it's eight in the morning, and we're going to all be safe and put on a great show. And a crew member, you see, or you hear from another that they're breaking the safety rules, or how do you turn on to be the police, the sheriff? How do you approach that? Because that's a big no, no. Yeah, for me, it's a ramp up, like, you know, if it's a, if it's a first defense kind of thing, it's a nudge, nudge, hey, hey, where's that hard hat? You know, it's always the ground riggers, the guys most likely to get hit in the head by a shackle coming from the roof. that don't put their hard hats on. So I'll start easy, soft, and then escalate as the next day they show up without their hard hat and then the next day. But I, you know, I've not, personally, I've not gotten to a place where there needs to be a severe punishment or an admonishment for missing that point. I think we're in a time where the culture of safety is starting to prevail. And I think it's reasonable to expect if someone who is breaking the rules and having to be told more than once, I would say it's reasonable to expect some kind of penalty for that. Have you had to send any of your crew home? Or relieve them? No. Okay, Rutger, same question. You know, someone just broke the rules and it could be like a hard hat, a simple error, so to speak, or it could be a cardinal sin. They rigged it backwards and it's a big time safety issue. How do you approach that? Typically, pretty much the same as Jim. Now, if you go, if you tour, you're with a relatively small group. When I produced EDC, we had 15,000 people working. So it's a bit of a, it becomes a bigger thing. We have, obviously we have safety officers walking around, checking it out. But yes, I've sent people home. Because if you need that many people in that short of a timeframe, you're not always getting the best people. And there's a lot of people that just don't understand or just don't give a hoot. Got it. But I think it also gauges on the kind of offense. So while I think in my head, I was reflecting on things like PPE usage. I think if I saw a forklift racing across the floor and doing donuts on the floor, that person's going home immediately. Gone, right away, yeah. So there are cardinal sins. If you do this, you are leaving. Oh yeah, well, yeah. It's just plain stupid and then it's just gone. Because those people you cannot teach. If you don't understand that you should not be doing that, you should not be here right now. Sure. Ken, your thoughts. What do you do with someone that is breaking the rules? I want to echo both of those sentiments. Some folks should not be there, all right? But the nature of our industry is we have cattle calls. I need this many warm bodies, right? And you don't know who's coming in the door, right? Or when they last slept because people work for two or three companies. I've done that. I've talked to people and said, you okay? No, man, I haven't slept in a day and a half. Well, you also get that local crew who's not on the touring crew that everyone's familiar with. And these are like fresh bodies that you just don't know their work history or their work ethic. Right. So either fatigue is there. You hope. You hope that they're fresh bodies. Because God knows where they come from. And we have those issues. Like actually Jim and I were just in Asia on the Lincoln Park show. We did the local production there. Those people stay on site. They sleep on site. Because if they sleep on site, they stay on site. Because if not, they're going to work elsewhere and come to the site completely done. So they bring a sleeping bag. Yeah. It's basically cardboard and a little blanket. And that's about it. Seriously, they sleep on the ground. Ken, you were in the middle of a thought. Do you want to finish your thought? So, well, this idea of you... Okay. So I'm going to go back to one of the old, old, old concepts of safety is we used to talk about the threes of safety. Engineering, education, and enforcement. Okay. Engineering. Yeah, we've got a front end on a lot of that. And that's like about system engineering, environment, et cetera. Education is huge. And this goes to everybody's point. You don't know who knows what when they come onto your job site, right? Somebody goes out for a cattle call or you go to a labor company. They can't fill the call. They go to a secondary, third level, whatever. They show up, the chances are real good that employee has not been trained, right? So then we go back to the enforcement mechanism and exactly what Jim said. There are some things that are unforgivable, right? Because those are things that are likely to kill somebody. And there are things that, you know, need gentle reminding, right? So that's level, but that's up to your supervisors to make that call. That's where that concept of enforcement comes in. It's not always negative enforcement. It's positive enforcement, right? You showed up. Is there anything I can do to help you out? I'm here for you. Let's get this squared away. Do you need a hand? Or more importantly, do you know how to do this? And finding out that that employee was never actually trained to do that job. So they just showed up. I got a question, Ken. Do you expect one crew member to look and say, another crew member is doing something unsafely and to report him, or does he approach him directly and say, that's not safe what you're doing? What would your response be? My response is always a question of, can I help you out? Check it for a minute. Can I give you a hand? Right? Because safety cops, that's not a thing in our world. Right? We're here to support the mission. We're here. You know, you want the show to go on? Great. I'm gonna help you get the show on because my people are not gonna get hurt. You wanna slow down a build? Put an ambulance in the middle of it. Right? But if we're all on the same page, we're continually reminding each other, continually teaching each other, continually building a great... So you have a stronger crew at the end of the day, even though you had to make all these safety reminders, those were actually teachable moments. So not only are they going home at the end of the day, they're smarter at the end of the day. Right? So yeah, I don't expect them by to rat each other out, but I do expect them to take responsibility for themselves and to be able to speak up when somebody is gonna get hurt. Exactly. Yeah. They need to talk to their co-workers and do it amongst each other. Yeah. So it's kind of a self-policing. If you and I are both rigging motors and I see you have the whatever, the clip with the shackle backwards and you're on the pin and you're not on the hook, and I see it upside down, I should say, hey dude, you got that wrong. You need to fix that. Yeah. And then here's the thing, if you go to my boss, that hasn't solved a problem. Right? But if you remind me, you don't know why I made that mistake. Was I not taught? Was I, have I been up for 36 hours? Am I thinking about something that happened at home as I was on the way out the door? Cause we're all human beings in this thing. And that's what we forget. We don't operate automatically 100% all the time. We deal with external factors. And sometimes that general reminder, I caught you, I got you. So that's kind of my approach because that idea of sending people home, that doesn't do anything for your workforce. That doesn't do anything for the individual. It took food off his table and it didn't make him a better person. Got it. So my question is back to Jim. And obviously this is a very inspirational panel of people that have gone out and done it and lived it and experienced it. And ultimately the work that y'all are doing with the Event Safety Alliance and other sources that you're working on is ultimately making our industry better. Okay. So kudos to all of you. But my question to Jim is how do you get people excited about safety? You know, if I brought you a million dollar check like you won the lottery, you'd be pretty excited. But I want to be that excited about safety because I don't want to have to deal with these horror stories and I don't want to have to deal with the accidents, the potential. And I find it one of those things that, you know how do you get people really excited about what Cam was talking about going home and having, you know, the rest of their the ability to go back to work the next day. You know, this seems to be something that's difficult but if under the right approach, it's possible. I think maybe I'm stuck on the word excited. I think I, what I see is people some folks have a hard time being excited about waking up in the morning, you know? So I think it's important that people are switched on about safety. I think it's important that people understand that what their perceptions to the barriers for safety don't exist. You know, there aren't barriers to safety. I think it's important for people to feel invested in and looked after, looked out for. So I think in that way, if you're demonstrating as a leader, your investment in your team and their overall health and their perpetual growth that it has to be one. I think that's one package. And I think safety, if safety is bolted onto, hey, Carpenter Tech I'm gonna give you an opportunity to learn video walls today so that you might have another job type that you can go do. And the trade-off is their growth professionally as they're being exposed to safety as well. I'm kind of tying myself in a knot over it. I don't know that excited about safety as much as feeling safety, feeling valued for safety. What I also find is that if you make stuff a little sexy it typically works. Like my staff, my in-house staff gets really nice vests really nice helmets, really nice. They wanna be proud of what they wear where the company they work or the event that they do. And if you give them the right gear, they'll do it. Like if you give them shitty shoes if you give them a shitty helmet, they don't wanna wear it. They'll throw it off whenever they get a chance. Don't buy crap PPE. I think you said it Ken, don't buy crap PPE, simple. Yeah, I think what gets people excited is what is it as Ken started with, what's in it for me? So if I know that I'm excited every time I learn something new, even at my ripe old age. And I think that I can see in others, the industry used to treat stagehands as throwaway labor. And we've tried to in our camp anytime we go into a territory that doesn't exercise the muscle as much as we do in the US meaning they don't have as many shows like in Jakarta as we do. So they're not as well-trained. They don't get as many repetitions. Do you wanna learn how to tie a bowline? Do you wanna learn how to put the brakes on the case as it's coming down the ramp on the truck? Let me teach you that. And every time you teach a new skill even if it may seem so insignificant you've just uplifted somebody's spirit and somebody's desire to work more. So I think in order to get to excited those who are looked at as veterans if they invest in teaching and they invest in being mentors and they invest in being so professional that they're not afraid to pass on their skills and all there's personal IP that gets people excited because it gives them new opportunities. I agree with you, by the way. I think Jakarta is a really good example. Art, your rigor really wants to share. And if local people that kind of look up to the band look up to the rigor that they're working with if he's teaching them, I'm going back to the word sexy. It is kind of sexy that a guy from Lincoln Park teaches you how to tie a knot. I know I'm just saying something but they were listening. They were eating his words. Rutger, I stepped on your first comment and this just occurred Les when we were in Jakarta together. Our rigor, who's a phenomenal veteran, he's just amazing, sat because he had extra time with the entire team and taught them what he knew. He didn't make them rigors but he gave them opportunities to know what that job was about and how they could be safe, yeah. Sharing the knowledge. Ken, you have a thought. The mind's racing because I get to hang with you people. So the cool thing that everybody's talking about is yes, and let's talk about knowledge and I agree with Jim. Let's take the word excited, let's take the word and let's use the word empowered. How do we make them feel to empower themselves not only in being aware of their own control for their safety, but when you give someone a skill and go, please share this, right? You pass it on. Because visibly there is no difference between something done safely or safer and something not, right? If I see a cart coming down the road with a ratchet strap on it, right? The net result's the same. I see a secured cart. I don't know if it was done with thought as far as process. Did somebody throw the ratchet strap over without considering what's on the other side? Did they over-crank that ratchet strap so that someone, the next one who touches it is gonna get clobbered by all the expansive energy, right? Because it's cranked down too low. But building that idea that we're all gonna do things a little bit better, right? And let them know that it's okay because it doesn't take any more time. We just have to build that awareness. Actually, a lot of times it takes less time if you do it right. Exactly. So I'm gonna share with you something that I think is, I came up with the middle of the night and we took it to NAMM. The music show a couple of weeks ago. So do you know you can get stickers made up in like the middle of the night? And it's really hard to see because of the glare, but it says, I got you. It's conflicting with your skull. I know, I'm sorry. They don't make Bondo for this color. I just want you to know, bald guys have to appreciate each other and we are in the club, Ken. So even though this is an audio only podcast, it's tough to be bald and sexy. I know, it's really, it's a little hard to see it, but the word is, I got you going sideways and I owe you going up and down, right? And I'll show you these stickers. And what that means is that's a dual responsibility for safety, right? And it doesn't have to be a full-time safety person. It can be your audio person who has collateral duty to watch out for people. It can be your supervisor who just acts with that way of taking care of people. And that idea of, I got you, yeah. If something goes wrong, I'm here for you. But the other idea is I owe you. I owe you the best version of who I am to show up today. I'm gonna be squared away. I'm gonna be clear of mind. I'm gonna be skilled and prepared. I'm gonna have my tools squared away. So we have two responsibilities we're taking to the job every day. And I'm not gonna build excitement with that, but I'm gonna build a sense of, I don't know, wellbeing, empowerment. A camaraderie. Yeah. That idea, and this comes up. When we talk to safety people, my world is I deal with a lot of safety people, professionals, a lot of them are perceived in a very negative way, right? But in our world, if you're doing your job well, the perception of a safety person, you're paid in handshakes, high fives, and hugs. Well, you know what, it's really like about being part of the problem or part of the solution. Exactly. And if you're operating in a certain method and practice, you're really part of the solution. And if you don't accept the best practices and you're a rogue, then you're part of the problem. Exactly so, as well said. Okay, let me keep moving on. This question's to Rudker. Okay, Rudker, the worst thing that's happened, we have an accident. And does that accident, I don't know if it's a little one or a big one, does that ultimately create learning moments? Is that a thing where if we don't learn from every accident, then kind of like when an airplane goes down, they always do an investigation. Is that a standard practice? 100%, 100%. I think it's the worst example of the best example. You need, yeah, you're gonna 100%. And it's kind of what we said earlier is how do you teach people is by showing them what happens when you don't, or when you act weird or irradical or do stupid stuff on a forklift or whatnot. It's really the best example. If you don't use that, that's, yeah, that's the slow hanging fruit almost. So my follow-up question to Jim is, and you just came back from an international gig. When you travel around the world, and we'll say it to places that they don't do shows and scale and maybe in Africa or maybe in Indonesia, do the rules of the game seem different to when you get there? Obviously the rules and the US might be at one standard, but are the different rules apply when you're there or do they not enforce what I would call best practices, their best knowledge? You just experienced it. My first response to that is my rules don't change, right? No, so that's an important thing to remember. However, the truth is, and this was born out in the Olympics in China, that there are different values for human life, right? And that here in the US, if you accidentally kill one person on a work site, you're gonna get OSHA and you're gonna get everybody else investigating. In other regions, in other countries, it may not be one person, it may be 12. So you may be eliminating human life for quite some period before anybody comes and checks. And that's unfortunate, but that's a problem bigger than all of us. So I think what's important is my rules don't change, right? So if a country has either, you know, a perceived less value for human life or whatever it is that's caused the rules to be what they are in a different territory, if I care about the people who are showing up and their government may not, I think that's what matters. It's not what the country rules are, I think. But yes, to your point, hell yeah, there's a big difference from some territories to others on the value of human life. Okay, this next question is directly to Ken. And as the Director of Education for the Event Safety Alliance, this one should be right up your alley. In your opinion, is the best way to teach safety and ensure it sticks? What's the best teaching methodology? When we say teaching safety, what aspect of it? I think let's get away from that idea of safety as a monolithic practice. Well, I'm referring to safety for the event production business, whether it's a concert or a live event. Event production business is by leadership like Jim, saying, okay, the rules don't change just because I'm in a different country, right? Gravity is gravity, whether it's 32 feet per second per second or 9.8 meters per second squared, right? Something's still gonna hit the ground. If you're a human being, you're a water balloon and you're gonna hit the ground and you will explode. That's immutable, regardless of territory. So the idea of there's leadership that's buy-in. If you try and educate someone where there's no belief system from leadership or the individual, you're not gonna have any lasting educational experience because we know that people matter, people we care about. So the best way to do it is find their buy-in, teach by example, repetition is necessary, find the best teaching method for that particular skillset. And it ain't a PowerPoint. Oh no, it's hands-on. Possibly, but you still have to teach the background of that, right? So it's making your teaching relevant to the individual, relevant to the topic and making yourself as an educator, being able to tell the same story 10 different ways, depending on who's standing in front of you. Good answer, that's a great answer. All right, so my next question is to Rutger and I want everyone to opine on this. How did the topic of safety become an integral part of your working career? As a subject matter expert and the kind of work that we do, live events, concerts of size and scale, when did safety become a component of your career? Because I know a lot of people that are in the business where maybe it's not a component of their career as much and they don't have the leadership component. I hear you, I think it's in everybody's career. It should be in everybody's career. It's just how much you are involved when you show it out to people that work around you. You have a safety officer or whatnot and you're not. But to me, I think as an executive producer of an event, and again, I'll take, because those are big numbers, an event as EDC, 185,000 people a day, 30,000 people on a campground day and night for five days, 15,000 people working. I typically sleep really well, but during that festival, I don't because I feel responsible. And the more responsible you feel, the more you are aware of everything that can go wrong and the more you wanna be on top of that. So I think it grows with responsibility and I don't wanna be one of those examples. I really, and that's why I wanna learn. I wanna learn, I'm eager to learn every day. I, and Jim and I, when we meet, when we're in a bar, we talk freaking safety because it's a thing and experiences, yeah. And experiences are the best way to learn. Again, eager to learn, eager to hear, eager to hear, like sometimes, and Ken just said something about that, it can be, it doesn't have to cost anything or more if you just do it the right way in a safe way rather than it takes just as much effort to do it wrong, but there's a lot of stuff that do cost money. So you need to make people aware within the management, upper management, that there needs to be a budget. There needs to be money put into this because explain it to everyone. Again, Jakarta, again, is very much on top of mind because there are no rules and regulations in Jakarta, like we have in Europe, like we have in the US. We had an issue with a show in November that got canceled based on a safety issue, which was not a big safety issue, but it was good enough to cancel the show, but they do stuff because they do it this way already for 30 years. Well, that needs to stop. They need to understand why they do stuff. They need to understand, but everybody, top to bottom, the promoter needs to understand and needs to invest money in it. The producers need to do that, but also the vendors need to do that. And there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that we're now grabbing and just check your stuff, maintain it, put it in a log book so we can check it and tell you if you're not doing it right, do it right. Like, again, this is all stuff that we all went through in Europe and in the US. We think we're close to, we have a safety book, which I think is a great example of where we can find stuff. If you have a question, you can find stuff and it's not there yet. So Jim and I are jumping on that because it needs to be there. Got it. And it just makes it exciting. I like exciting safety things. You know, it's interesting, Jim, obviously safety has been a big component of your career other than being the production manager and the bands you handle and stuff. But, you know, when did that happen along the way, you know, in your career? Obviously you've been doing this for quite some time. Calling me old, aren't you? I'm just calling you a man who's got a lot of experience that people look up to. Seasoned. Les, you'll need another podcast because it starts back in 1983. But at 19 in my first professional job in 1983, on the grand opening of a nightclub outside of Philadelphia, a massive nightclub, a special effects lighting fixture fell from the ceiling and went through the skull of a girl eight feet from where I was standing. And I was controlling that lighting fixture. Now the contractors who had rushed to completion had not put the safety mechanisms in yet to stop that fixture from doing that thing. There's much more detail to that story. And I know we have limited time, but that was the first most impactful inflection point. Like an eye-opener? Yeah, I mean, it shocked you. It shocked me quite a bit, obviously. I mean, it was, it hurt me as a human, obviously it killed her, but it was, you know, it's like being handed a rental car. No one told you the brakes were bad and you accidentally run somebody down in that car. It's not necessarily your fault. You didn't know the brakes were bad, but you were still driving the car. So, I mean, that was kind of what happened in that moment for me. But then there were several others. I went to work at Disney doing lasers in pyro and I had some great exposure to great safety practices. And then I was standing on stage in 1992 when James Hetfield accidentally set himself on fire at the Guns N' Roses Metallica concert in Montreal and 50,000 people rioted. And then I was standing on stage at Woodstock 99 when 200,000 people rioted as one of the four stage managers at Woodstock 99. You think people like to riot around you, Jim? Is that what you're trying to say? I think it's me. Yeah. You might create a, you might be the cause. I think it's me. So, I mean, these are the things that have affected my DNA that have brought me a different level of awareness or just perception around safety. That's not to say I've behaved safely all these years. I certainly haven't. But I have had these massive inflection points that resonate inside of every fiber of my being. And then when the Indiana State Fair stage collapse happened in 2011, which I was not a part of, it shocked me in a way that made me say exactly what we've been saying on this call. That could have happened to me. How the heck did that happen? What can I do to make sure that doesn't happen to me? And that is what caused the beginning of the journey of the creation of the Event Safety Alliance was this discovery that our industry, in sixth grade, I had to have training before I could operate the lights or pull the hemp ropes in the fly system in the junior high school. But here I am in this business, as a leader in this business, I've had to have no training whatsoever. I carry no certificate whatsoever. I've got nothing to prove that I know anything. And our business accepts that. And in 2011, we took a look across the business. There's no written guidance for us. There's no education for us in the roles that we're in. There's tradecraft safety, how do you be a safe rigger? But there isn't a culture of safety training. There isn't a comprehensive. And that was what the advent of the Event Safety Alliance was. And now there is, I'm happy to say. And now, collectively, those of us on this call and many, many others like us have been able to help change policy across our industry and grow our industry and grow safety in our industry. So it goes back to the idea that if you're affected by something awful, hopefully you're turning that into something good. And the near-miss idea has to be conscious. We have to do that consciously every day, all day. We just had one in Indonesia, right? So we're going to learn from that. We're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. That's my story. Well, that was very insightful. And thank you for sharing. Ken, how did you end up being an educator on safety? Because it didn't happen overnight. There had to be something that got to you this point. I don't want to say an anomaly, but my career was not started by a tragedy, right? I did not come from entertainment. I came from building things, particularly large structures for big events. And my projects, for whatever reason, I just kind of looked at folks, didn't get them hurt, did things a little more methodically. And the company I was with one day called me in the office and said, you're our safety manager. I said, well, that's kind of ridiculous. I have no training in this. And then I found out the next day they were being hit by an OSHA fine. So that was literally the afternoon that I became a safety person. But what I didn't realize, and in retrospect, I've always taken care of people. I've always been, as Rutger said, curious, right? This is the best, my job is the best possible job if you're curious and compassionate and you care about people. And not judgmental. Yeah, thank you. I'd that idea of just taking care of folks. So I became an educator simply because I've always been teaching adults. This just morphed into it. And about two years after they made me the safety director, I was waiting to get a cheeseburger and Jim Digby called me, right? And to this day, Jim, someday you'll actually tell me how you got my number. He Googled you. He said, who would make a really good safety educator? And you came up like on the top five. No, no, no. He said, we're going to Indianapolis. I said, right. And then I said, sure, we're going to Indianapolis. I didn't, you know, and so the journey and that's what 12, 13 years ago, it didn't, you're right. None of this happens overnight. None of this follows a playbook. As Jim said, there's no path to doing this. But what we've tried to do through the ESA and through a lot of other ways is to make it easier for the people behind us, to make it easier for them to understand our values, whether they share our values culturally, or as Jim said, there's my rules, but more importantly, there's my way. And then let's replace the word rules with my way of caring, equipping, educating, training. And when he and Rutger come together, they share a value system that extends beyond the cultural norms of where they happen to be because a show in its final analysis becomes its own culture. And those cultures are impacted every single day by leadership, by circumstance, by the people that walk in the door and the environment in which they're asked to perform in. So leaders create culture. Leaders create that value of compromise or no compromise. Leadership, like again, Rutger and Jim, create that awareness of what are we going to do today for each other? Well, that was a very thoughtful answer. I really, really appreciate it. And now you know why I dialed his number. Yes, I totally know. So this is my last question. I'm going to start with Rutger. What's the one thing that keeps you excited about doing live events, working in the event industry, doing concerts, music, corporate, all the different things? What's that one thing that is ticking inside you that keeps you excited about the next show and the next show? Well, I think it's the non-nine-to-five thing. Your day is different every day. Your every week is different. You're on a continent, a different planet. You're having calls through time zones. You have a lot of different cultures you're dealing with, especially when you tour. Advancing a show in South America is so much different than advancing a show in Asia, where they always want to please you and say yes to everything. And then you come to site and there's nothing. The challenges that go with that. South America, advancing is horrible. And you get there and they fix it. You're kind of sure that they'll fix it. But it's like, it's all those different things. US, I'm a European. Coming to the US was a freaking, like, I just didn't know what was going on over there. And I still don't. Didn't you say you used to live in Las Vegas? I did. I did. No one ever has to sleep in Las Vegas. No. And then the other interesting part is that if you see what happens in Europe, and I've been part of that for 20 plus years before I went to the States, a lot of stuff is invented in different continents, but somehow doesn't make it across the ocean. So introducing those things to make events better, to make them more affordable, to make them safer, is also great. It's exciting. It's all together. I don't think I can ever stop. Cool. Ken, your same question. What keeps you excited about working in the entertainment industry and talking about the things that you teach? And what keeps you doing this every day? I'm not out there every single day anymore because there's simply not enough time to do it. My mission has changed in the industry. My job is to make people more effective at their jobs, to give them the tools to do that. Basically, to make myself irrelevant and replaceable and invisible and forgettable. Right? That is a very unique answer. I've never heard anything like it. So you win for, this is podcast 83, and no one has ever given me even a remote answer close to that, but it's really insightful. But did you think about it, right? It's like, you know, you've all heard the cliche, those that can do, those that can't teach, right? So I teach teachers now, right? I want the next generation to pass this on. So that's why I do what I do. That's what keeps me excited. It sounds very self-fulfilling. And, you know, and I realize if you were on one show site, you could only impact one show. And by you teaching a whole bunch of people, you're actually, your impact is passing through many people at many different shows. And you're actually making the most amount of impact by training those people around the world. So I realized the impact for your efforts. Jim, your thoughts, what keeps you going out on the road, talking safety, doing what you do? What is that thing that keeps you excited about it? We get to participate in something that creates happiness. And boy, does that feel good. And it's the arts and boy, does that feel good. And in the live music space, we get instant gratification for that. When the lights go off and the audience goes nuts, we get to help make happiness. I love your answer. And we all work in the space of the shared live experience, which will never go away in my lifetime. And you all are amazing. I want to thank Jim, Ken and Rutger. You guys are consummate professionals. I look forward to seeing you working with you in some type of environment. Jim, could you give us one more kind of quick update on the Event Safety Alliance, if somebody wanted to go to a website or just give us a little commercial on that, just as a kicker at the end of this? Sure. The Event Safety Alliance, all of our information is available for free at eventsafetyalliance.org. We're a non-profit organization that is working to continue to evolve the culture of safety and live events and grab subject matter experts wherever we can to learn from and make their learnings available to everyone in the industry, should they so desire to increase their own knowledge. eventsafetyalliance.org. We've now got six American National Standards in publication. I think there's a seventh on the way. And we're doing that in collaboration with ESTA. We're the change makers. That's awesome. Guys, thank you again. Everyone, you all are amazing. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Everybody, great job.