How the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association is riding the AI bronco to shed legacy past

When you’re an organization with almost 100 years of history, you’re bound to pick up entrenched ways of working. For the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), deep-seated processes are a part of the sport it oversees, and that tradition extends to legacy technology systems.

The PRCA is a governing body for the sport that sanctions rodeo events in the United States, Canada, and Mexico which oversees key elements of the sport, such as standings and payouts.

A large portion of his non-profit organization’s back-end systems run on AS/400 code that’s 40 years old. The business logic associated with its core work processes covers rules and regulations that have been added over the years.

While tradition plays a crucial role in rodeo events, CTO Jeff Love is eager to ensure that the PRCA can break its connection to legacy systems. In the past, his small internal ...