Trying to find good task dispatch/inventory/location software for EMF is tricky; we fall somewhere in between "trade contractor" and "emergency response" in terms of what we need, and pricing never works out well for "we have 100 users but only for a week every two years".

If you know of anything relatively cheap or free that might fit the bill, feel free to let me know; I really, really want to avoid writing something custom.

GitHub - burningmantech/ranger-ims-server: Ranger Incident Management System—Server

Ranger Incident Management System—Server. Contribute to burningmantech/ranger-ims-server development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
@andrew (I have never used it, but if you look at the stack, you may be able to infer why I happen to know it exists)
@glyph I'll take a look, but I've not had a lot of luck with software from other events so far (tends to be very specific)!
@andrew In my experience the maintainer is very amenable to collaboration, but then, I don't run a different event :)
@andrew Maybe @ampledata has some ideas?

@coderanger @andrew I'm not sure what EMF is, but I'm guessing it's a planned event/festival. I'm usually on the EMS field response side of the house, but in the instances where we've had to stand up dispatch ourselves, and I've had say in the matter, I've used Resgrid. They have extremely reasonable monthly plans, and an API! They're also VFD's so give them all the support you can.

Otherwise, I've been forced into many of the same systems you've probably also experienced, from home grown to "Click here to contact sales" level pricing. They're never exactly what you want, or too much of what you don't want, and ultimately whatever works for you is what's best. I've handled 1M+ events with Apple Notes (https://ampledata.org/san_francisco_pride_2013.html ) , Post-Its, White Boards, and paper & pen.

Of course, there's always the tried and true shared Google Sheets!

San Francisco Pride 2013

Greg Albrecht's ampledata.org