How to run a pageant smoothly

Everything that goes wrong is an information problem

Make a list of what actually went wrong at your last pageant. Almost all of it will be one of these: someone was in the wrong place, someone missed their call, the schedule slipped and nobody was told, or a parent was waiting somewhere with no idea what was happening.

None of those are pageant problems. They are all the same problem — a piece of information did not reach a phone in time.

Under a hundred girls, the dressing room is your broadcast channel

Be honest about your size. At twenty contestants in one room, shouting works and always has. Do not buy a solution to a problem you do not have.

It stops working at a predictable point: more than one room, parents waiting elsewhere, or roughly a hundred contestants. Then the announcement reaches whoever happened to be standing near you.

Write the schedule down where they can see it

A paper schedule in a packet is out of date the first time anything slips, and it is in a bag in a car.

The schedule needs to live somewhere that updates. When you move interview by an hour, the version in her hand should move too — and she should be told, not left to check.

Tell each girl about her own moment, not just the schedule

The most useful message of the whole day is not the schedule. It is "you are next."

Assign your interview order once, at the start, and let each girl get her own alert a few minutes before her turn. This is the difference between forty girls sitting in a hallway watching a door and forty girls who show up when they are needed.

Pageant Alert does this from the timetable — you type the order once and each contestant gets her own alert at the right moment.

Know who got the message

Sending is not the same as reaching. On pageant day the useful question is not "did I announce it" but "which two girls still have not seen it."

With read receipts you work a short list by phone instead of worrying about the whole room. Two calls is manageable; sixty unknowns is not.

Check the phones at check-in

If you are using an app of any kind, the strongest moment to verify it is the check-in table. She is standing in front of a person, with her phone in her hand.

The check takes one glance — the app tells her whether alerts are working, in plain language. Ask to see it, and move on. Nobody gets denied a packet over it; there is a queue behind her.

At a large event, do not do this at the table — do it at rehearsal or the contestant meeting, where everyone is already seated and someone is already talking at them.

Have a fallback, always

Some girl will not have a working phone. Some parent will refuse notifications. Both are legitimate and neither should break your day.

Keep the paper schedule, keep the announcement, keep a staffer who walks the room. The app is the channel that reaches everyone at once; it is not the only channel.