One of the most successful entrants in the Australian Event Awards recently has been The Shift Corp with three Public Event Management Company of the year wins, along with Charity Event of the year and Brand Event of the year in 2023.

The promos for Wiingman started to appear in my inbox, so I sat down with Hailey Mason, CEO of The Shift Corp to find out what this is about – starting with The Shift Corp.

The Shift Corp is an award-winning event agency that’s spent the last 7 years producing campaigns for brands like Red Bull, Suzuki, Harley-Davidson, Vans, SailGP, and the Mito Foundation. We’ve delivered national series like the Bloody Long Walk, the Sydney Harbour Bridge Unity Celebration for FIFA WWC, and community-led programs like Play Manly, managing stakeholders, compliance, logistics, and creative delivery end to end.

But even with a strong team and proven systems, admin was still costing us hundreds of hours per project. We’d built up an incredible network of freelancers, but there was no scalable way to connect them efficiently across events. Documentation was slow, onboarding was clunky, and version control was a full-time job.

Why Wiingman?

Ask anyone in our industry and they’ll tell you: we don’t have a creativity problem, we have an admin one.

That’s the real reason we built Wiingman.

After two decades delivering public and major events across Australia we knew there had to be a better way to connect teams, manage delivery, and get back the time lost to planning documents, freelancer onboarding, and supplier spreadsheets.

We’d built our agency, The Shift Corp, around big ideas and seamless delivery. But behind every great event was a wall of emails, manual staff briefs, disconnected docs, and wasted hours that no one could afford.

So in 2021, my co-founder Chris Toward and I started building Wiingman, not to replace our agency, but to solve the operational pain points we’d faced for years.

So… Is Wiingman a Marketplace?

Not exactly.
Yes, Wiingman includes a network of 1,200+ vetted event specialists across Australia. But that’s just one piece of the platform. Wiingman is not a recruitment agency. It’s a purpose-built platform for planning, staffing, documentation, and delivery – all in one place.

Organisers can:

• Post roles and manage onboarding
• Auto-generate Event Plans, Staff Briefs, and signage
• Track crew check-ins and schedules
• Collaborate with freelancers and suppliers in shared project hubs
• Save 30–60 hours of admin per event

Think of it as the operating system for event operations combining the tools you need with the intelligence to make them work together.

So you turned to AI?

Let’s be clear: this isn’t AI for AI’s sake. We didn’t start with hype, we started with hard problems.

Right now, Wiingman’s built-in AI engine – Wiingman IQ Store is already being used to generate stakeholder-ready event plans and staff briefs in just minutes. These are not templated PDFs. They are responsive, dynamic documents built from logic designed for councils, producers, safety teams, and external stakeholders to review and approve with confidence.

Where is this heading?

Our future roadmap is powered by Agentic AI, not a single tool, but a network of AI agents, each responsible for different parts of the event lifecycle. One agent may read your site plan and create a build schedule. Another may generate signage based on zones and access points. A third might prepare your risk assessment, or flag inconsistencies across your supplier list.

This is AI not just automating tasks but collaborating with your team.

It will version-check, compliance-check, and adapt live to your event’s needs giving your producers and operations leads the freedom to do what they do best: lead, deliver, create.

We’re not building templates. We’re building smart, situationally aware documents that scale with you and work like your best team member but faster, and always ready.

So this is technology built by event practitioners?

Both Chris and I come from the world of delivery.
Before launching The Shift, Chris led campaigns at IMG and Red Bull. I’ve spent my career producing large-scale national events and public programs, with everything from councils and charities to global brands.

Together, we’ve got over 50 years of firsthand experience, not as tech founders, but as the people onsite at bump-in, rewriting site plans the night before gates open.

We know the pressure points.
We know where time is lost.
And we know that most tools aren’t built for how events actually run.

That’s why every feature in Wiingman has been built to reduce friction, automate admin, and return ownership to the teams doing the real work.

Where to from here?

We’re now rolling out Wiingman across the UK, Europe, and UAE, with pilot events and partnerships already in place.

What’s coming next:

• Smart event schedules generated from site plans
• Auto-generated risk assessments, signage packs, and compliance documentation
• Mobile-first tools for live event tracking
• Agentic AI workflows that can build, check, and submit documentation
• Enterprise packages for councils, agencies, and global brands

This isn’t just a tool. It’s the infrastructure for a smarter, more sustainable industry – one where creativity has room to lead again.

Wiingman was built to strengthen the entire event ecosystem, helping organisers, freelancers, and suppliers work together more efficiently, fairly, and creatively.

Where do freelancers fit into this?

Freelancers can join Wiingman on a free subscription to create a profile, apply for roles, and connect with organisers on real projects. It’s about access, visibility, and community.

For those wanting more, Wiingman Pro ($54.99/month AUD) includes:

• Public Liability and Professional Indemnity Insurance
• Early access to jobs
• AI-generated documents
• Visibility boosts and professional tools

We’re here to back the people who deliver events with tools that make freelance work more supported, efficient, and sustainable.

And suppliers?

Suppliers can now list once and get discovered by organisers across multiple projects. Whether you’re new or established, Wiingman makes it easier to stay visible and win repeat business.

Listings are free for the first 3 months, then $15.99/month AUD, making it affordable to stay top of mind and part of the conversation.

Do you have a free trial?

Wiingman is free to try until 31 August. Post jobs, build your project team, and generate full Event Plans using Wiingman IQ Store

👉 Start here: https://www.wiingman.io