Showmachine: One App for Every Seat in the Event
- Client
- Create Engage
- Industry
- Live Events & Virtual Production
- Timeline
- 14 Weeks
- Year
- 2024
- Service
- Custom SaaS Platform
About the Client
Create Engage is Australia's original live event streaming company — a Sydney-based production house with over 30 years of live event experience and a client list that spans Salesforce, Canva, Optus, Adobe, and the NSW Government. Running virtual, hybrid, and in- person events for audiences from intimate corporate sessions to national broadcasts reaching 680,000 concurrent online viewers, Create Engage needed a platform that could match their production standards — handling the full event lifecycle from branded registration through to live control and post-event replay — without stitching together third-party tools.
The Friction of Growth
As AWC scaled, the cracks in their tooling became impossible to ignore. Course delivery was split across platforms, student data lived in spreadsheets, and instructors had no unified view of class performance. The team needed a single digital workspace — built around the way writers actually learn.
Build a single platform that keeps every stakeholder in a live event — audience, speaker, production team, and host — connected and in sync in real time, without the complexity of stitching together separate tools.
Before Working With Us
Before Working with us
Before Working With us
Before Working With Us
Building Showmachine: One Room for the Whole Event
Every person in a live event — the audience, the speaker, the producer, the host — now lives in the same app. That's what Showmachine is.
What makes Showmachine distinct is that every stakeholder role is connected within one app. Audiences register and watch on branded viewer pages. Speakers join through a dedicated presenter view. The production team operates the control room. The event host or client company has visibility across the whole show. The platform was built on the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js) using clean architecture — separating business logic from infrastructure to keep the codebase scalable as Create Engage's event complexity grows.
After working with us
What Was Built: The User App
The user-facing app gives anyone who downloads it immediate access to four core modules from the home screen. No registration required to explore — but users who create an account unlock the full experience, including direct contact with facilitators.
Chat
One-on-one messaging with a trained 1166 facilitator, available 24/7. Users can chat anonymously — or simply vent without seeking a formal response. No pressure to escalate.
In-App Voice Call
Connect directly to a 1166 facilitator via in-app voice — no phone number required. Works for users in Nepal and for the Nepali diaspora abroad who can't dial a local line.
Learn
A library of mental health resources and articles — how to recognise symptoms, how to support someone you know, practical guides accessible anonymously at any time.
Self-Assessment
Five to six questions on a sliding scale (never to always) designed to help users identify how they're feeling right now. The app recommends next steps based on responses — not a diagnosis, a direction.
Choose Your Facilitator
Users can connect to a preferred facilitator — building continuity of care rather than a cold handoff to whoever is available.
Separate User & Responder Logins
Distinct login flows for people seeking support and facilitators providing it — different interfaces, different permissions, same underlying platform.
