Frances Manwaring, Commercial Director

Frances’ mana in the event technology industry was recognised by her selection as a panellist for the Virtual Edge Summit held in the US in February 2010, which brings together influential virtual event exponents. Frances is a highly experienced business manager with an international career spanning the public and private sectors and a wide range of industries, notably international media, communications, retail and ICT.

London based for thirteen years, early career highlights included senior roles in international media and venture capital. She moved to New Zealand in the mid-nineties and, for the last decade, has run her own communications consultancy, with event production and management a core part of the offer. Last year she became co-owner and Managing Director of Moxie Communications, one of Wellington’s leading design strategy consultancies.

Marie-Claire Andrews, CEO

Marie-Claire is a high–energy (she gets that from her red hair) leader, organiser and excellent liaison between our business and our geeks. She is a business development, sales and capital-raising specialist, having run her own and other people’s businesses.

Career highlights include:

• Assisting over 200 companies in New Zealand to  access funding, make commercial connections and plan more effectively

• Generating sales worth over $600,000 during a year with a software company

• Establishing a programme management office for Statistics New Zealand

• Panellist in discussion forum on event technology at International Confex 2011

Marie-Claire was the establishment General Manager of the Wellington Angel Investment Network and her ‘girl geek’ status was confirmed through her appointment as chair of Unlimited Potential – New Zealand’s leading technology business network, a position she held for two years.

Josh Dry, Marketing Executive

Studying Marketing, Management and Psychology at Otago University, Josh quickly moved into an entrepreneurial space by starting a Student Tax Return company and 1-night.co.nz (New Zealand’s premier festival ticketing agency).

He now leads the marketing activities for SmartShow – taking ShowGizmo to the world, on- and off-line including managing Event Camp Down Under 2012.

Josh strongly believes in sustainable practices and prides himself in being green. He is very interested in high tech, innovation, marketing, social media and New Zealand.

Simon Matthews, Production Manager

Simon comes to us from a music and video production background – he has produced music for over 200 online videos, games and short films, as well as producing for some of New Zealand’s top recording artists.

A natural multi instrumentalist, Simon has also composed commercial music for iconic brands such as BMW, Telecom and Kiwibank.

His attention to detail and love for systematic process is what separates him from the rest. Simon is already changing the game at SmartShow with an amazingly streamlined and systematic approach to production and spearheading a Setup Wizard for our clients. Simon has taken over client management and is analysing event feedback to keep designing the best approach for our clients to ensure their events with ShowGizmo will be what they expected – an overwhelming success.

Gabriel Engel, CTO

Gabriel is ShowGizmo’s CTO, future thinker and app inspirer. He doesn’t look old enough to have clocked up the long and illustrious history he has in the technology sector – his experience includes raising substantial investment capital for start-ups both locally and internationally from public and private institutions, and he is one of the co-founders of a US public company.

Gabriel is a strong market driven innovator and carefully manages early stage rapid prototyping and product development. Amazingly he is also the inventor of over 30 granted patents.

James Stradling, Lead Developer

James is a top notch, world class Ruby and Cocoa developer from Dunedin, New Zealand. A software engineer and founder of his own companies,

James relaxes from leading our development by studying genetics. Go figure.

Roz Paterson, Brand Manager

Roz is responsible for keeping us all ‘on brand’ (not the easiest job!) And of course for creating the beautiful graphics, design elements and concepts that we use across our product range.

Roz has worked in a range of design disciplines that encompasses; set, event and exhibition design, magazine layouts, web front end skins, sandblasted and stained glass, children’s book illustration as well as corporate identity and brand development.

Key skills include a vivid imagination, idea development, project direction, and making vibrant images to achieve business outcomes.