Work · Project 02
eventOz.
Events that become communities.
01 · Overview
eventOz is a platform designed to transform conferences and professional events into connected digital experiences. Most event tools treat an event as a single weekend: tickets out, visitors in, relationship over. eventOz starts from a different premise: an event is a community that forms before, during and after a date.
02 · The Challenge
Organisers juggle ticketing, programmes, attendee communication and follow-up across a stack of disconnected tools. Attendees get a PDF schedule and, at best, an app they open twice. The value created at an event (the conversations, the contacts, the community) mostly evaporates when it ends.
03 · Product Vision
One platform where organisers run the event and attendees experience it, with the community as a first-class part of the product, not an afterthought. Events that become communities: the event is the beginning of a relationship, not its endpoint.
04 · My Role
As founder I own the product completely: strategy, UX/UI design, SaaS architecture and development. Years of running and operating events directly inform what gets built: the product is designed from operational reality, not from a feature checklist.
05 · Design Approach
The design has to survive stress: a conference morning with 500 people checking their schedule at once is not the moment for complexity. The interface prioritises speed and clarity under pressure, with the community features layered on calmly rather than competing for attention.
06 · The App
The attendee app is where the event actually happens. This is the interactive prototype of the complete flow: onboarding and ticket purchase, programme and livestreams, badge scanning for networking and the staff check-in tools. Tab bar, cards and back arrows are wired, so you can tap through all 27 screens the same way an attendee would.
Interactive prototype · tab bar, cards and back arrows are clickable
07 · Technical Architecture
eventOz is built on Next.js, React and TypeScript with Appwrite as the backend platform and Redis for the parts of the product that need to stay fast under load: live programme updates and high-frequency reads during events. The architecture is designed as a multi-tenant SaaS from day one.
08 · Key Decisions
- Build as multi-tenant SaaS from the start, even before the first customer: retrofitted tenancy is expensive.
- Redis for event-day read paths: the product has predictable traffic spikes, so it is designed for them explicitly.
- Community features scoped as part of the event lifecycle (before, during, after) instead of a standalone social network.
09 · Current Status
eventOz is in active development. This case study will grow with the product: real progress, no fabricated milestones.
10 · Lessons Learned
Building a second product after an active first one is a lesson in focus. The hardest decisions are about what not to build yet. And the operational experience from years of event work is an asset, but only when it is translated into product decisions, not feature wishlists.
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