From the Margins of the Manual

Manuals are written to capture what we know, but the margins are where we scribble notes, underline what matters, and add reminders from experience.

The margins are personal. They’re where the official meets the practical.

Standards, Stories, and the Space in Between

Join me as I share insights, experiences, and reflections from the evolving world of first responder training – where standards meet stories and preparation meets purpose.

Check out the latest posts

Five Questions Every Maritime Operational Leader Should Ask Their Port Partners

Maritime operations generally won’t fail because nobody responds. But they can fail when the people who respond arrive with different assumptions…assumptions about who’s in charge, what “ready” actually means, and how tasks are expected to be executed when time is short and the operating picture is incomplete. Anyone who has worked a real multi-agency maritime…

One Standard, One Team: Maritime Interoperability Isn’t Optional

The maritime domain is unforgiving in one particular way: when something goes wrong, it rarely stays contained. A vessel casualty becomes a search.A search becomes a multi-agency operation.A localized incident becomes a regional (or even national) problem. And when that escalation happens, success depends less on who arrived first and more on whether everyone who…

About the Author

Courtney Livingston, PhD, is a nationally recognized leader in first responder training and standards . Read full bio.