Case Study
FWD>>>FEST 26: a networking platform with an immovable deadline
The official companion app for the Sunshine Coast Entrepreneur Festival. Authentication, a member directory and private messaging between strangers, shipped 25 days before doors opened and iterated while the event ran.
What I Built
- Multi-day program, filterable by stream, sortable by time
- Searchable attendee directory with profiles
- Connection requests and private one-to-one messaging
- Inbox with unread indicators
- Passwordless magic-link authentication
- In-event survey facility, added mid-festival
The Constraint
- A festival date cannot move
- 25 days from first release to doors open
- Three days, five venues, multiple streams
- Attendee contact data and user-generated content
- Shipping fixes while real attendees were using it
Screens
Not a schedule viewer
FWD>>>FEST runs across three days and five Sunshine Coast venues, with a multi-stream program and speakers including Luke Anear of SafetyCulture and Craig Scroggie of NEXTDC. Silicon Coast have been running it since 2022.
The obvious build is a program in an app. That would have been the wrong product. People go to a festival like this to meet other people; the sessions are the excuse. So the app had to carry the program and the attendees, which turns a content app into something considerably more involved: identity, a member directory, and private messaging between people who have just met and have no prior relationship.
That brought real decisions with it. Authentication without making attendees invent another password at a conference, which is why sign-in runs on emailed magic links. Profiles where each person controls what the room can see, down to headline, organisation, bio and social links. Connection requests before messaging unlocks, so the directory does not become a channel for unsolicited pitches, which at a festival full of founders is not a hypothetical risk.
Twenty-five days
Version 1.0 reached the stores on 24 April 2026. The festival opened on 19 May. Four more releases went out in between and during:
- 24 April · initial release
- 26 April · magic-link and email confirmation messaging
- 29 April · survey facility added
- 6 May · profile update fixes
- 8 May · final pre-event build
The last two shipped with registration already live and attendees in the directory. Most software deadlines are negotiable, whatever anyone says at the kick-off. A festival date is not: five venues are booked, speakers have flights, and several hundred people have the dates in their calendars. The work was scoped, built, released and then fixed under real use against a date that was never going to move.
Handling other people’s data
An app with a member directory and private messaging collects contact details and user-generated content, and both stores require you to declare exactly that. Attendee names, email addresses and message content are held for app functionality under a published privacy policy, encrypted in transit, with deletion available on request.
This is unglamorous and it is the part that gets organisations in trouble. A networking app is a small pile of personal data about several hundred identifiable people, assembled quickly under deadline. It is worth being deliberate about even when, especially when, the timeline is tight.
Related reading:
See it live
Built and published by Humanising Technologies (Haecceity Pty Ltd) for Silicon Coast. For registered FWD Fest attendees.
Stack
React Native · iOS · Android · passwordless authentication · real-time messaging · member directory · push and email notification
Got a date that cannot move?
Fixed scope, quoted up front, delivered end to end. Tell me what you need and when you need it by.