A surgical workflow system for performing a surgical procedure. The surgical workflow system comprises one or more locators arrangeable to determine locations of a plurality of surgical objects. Information conveyor devices are coupled to the one or more locators and are assigned to different participants in the surgical procedure. A workflow controller accesses a pre-scripted workflow having a plurality of workflow steps associated with the surgical procedure, identifies a change event that indicates a deviation from the pre-scripted workflow, determines event information tailored to the different participants based on the change event, and transmits the event information to the participants through the plurality of information conveyor devices so that different event information can be conveyed to the different participants, wherein the event information is provided in the context of the surgical objects.