KBYG (Know Before You Go): what it is, why it matters, and why PDFs aren't enough
KBYG stands for Know Before You Go. It's the packet of information every stakeholder needs before they arrive at a show: where to park, when to load in, what to bring, who to contact, what the weather call is. Done right, it prevents 80% of the show-day questions that otherwise hit the production radio.
The origin of KBYG
KBYG is borrowed from aviation ('know before you fly') and adapted to live events. Early festival KBYGs were single-page PDFs with the schedule, map, and a few FAQs.
Modern KBYG expects more. Six or more distinct personas need tailored information: guests, VIPs, artists, crew, vendors, sponsors, press. A single PDF either bloats (information overload) or under-serves (missing key details for a specific persona).
What belongs in a KBYG
The canonical KBYG sections are well-established. Every big festival has them. A good digital KBYG supports the full taxonomy and scopes which ones appear per persona.
- Overview: show summary, dates, venue, key contacts
- Schedule (doors, set times, load-in/out windows)
- Set times, detailed per stage and by day
- Timeline, minute by minute for the day of
- Credentials: who gets what type of pass, and where to pick it up
- Contacts for production, security, medical, transportation leads
- FAQ, the common questions per persona
- SOPs (standard operating procedures for crew)
- PPE, the personal protective equipment required
- Radio channel allocations for comms
- Resources: links, documents, maps
- Evacuation (emergency exits, muster points)
- Fire safety: extinguisher locations, no-flame zones
- Accessibility, from ADA parking to viewing areas and services
- Sustainability (waste, water stations, environmental initiatives)
- Code of conduct, meaning behavior expectations and how to report
Why role-scoping matters
A guest doesn't need radio channels. A crew member doesn't need ADA parking information. A sponsor needs to know where the activation tent is, not where the artist dressing rooms are.
If you send one KBYG to everyone, you overwhelm most and under-serve some. If you send three KBYGs, you spend the morning of show day explaining which one is current.
Role-scoped digital KBYG solves this: one canonical source, one CMS entry per project × persona, rendered appropriately for each viewer.
The Boarding Pass pattern
Black Coffee's 2025 tour KBYG (github.com/ghxstship/boardingpass) popularized the Boarding Pass pattern, which treats the KBYG as an interactive, role-scoped, mobile-first website rather than a PDF.
Key innovations: tier 1–5 classification banners for venue zones, role-specific timelines, embedded radio channel allocations, offline-accessible on the crew phone.
The ATLVS Technologies suite adopts this pattern as the event guides module. One authoring flow in Atlas CMS; six persona renders on portal + mobile, shared by <GuideView>. See /atlvs.
Publish once, update anywhere
A PDF KBYG is frozen at the moment you export it. If the weather changes the load-in, you generate a new PDF, re-upload it, and hope everyone refreshes. They won't.
A database-backed KBYG updates in place. The version published at /p/[slug]/guide is always current. Service-worker caching ensures the crew phone has the latest version next time it reconnects.