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SneakerWeek

SneakerWeek. Running a festival from one platform.

#iOS#macOS#Web#Payments

SneakerWeek is a Portland footwear and creative culture festival. As CTO, I built the platform that runs it: an operations app for the crew, a web console for organizers and an iOS app for attendees.

RoleCTO
Worked withFestival organizers, gate crew, vendors and brand partners
Timeline2024–now
PlatformiOS · macOS · Web

Problem

When the doors open, everyone arrives at once.

A festival has to sell tickets, merch and drinks, check people in, run a program and market itself, and on the day, every second at the gate shows.

Research

Built alongside the people running it.

I built the platform alongside organizers, sponsors and brand partners, including Nike, Adidas and Under Armour.

Constraints

The gate can’t stall

Check-in shows a live or offline status, so staff always know where the list stands.

No card reader to carry

Staff charge with Tap to Pay on iPhone through Stripe, and cash works too.

One source of truth

Web, app and POS orders land in a single ledger.

Solution

Three products, one platform.

01 · For the crew · iOS + macOS

The whole festival in one app

A live revenue dashboard by day and by hour; merch, bar and ticket checkout with Tap to Pay; and QR check-in with a searchable guest list.

02 · For organizers · React + Next.js

Mission control for everything else

Analytics, programming, an event map editor, one sales ledger, affiliate tracking, a CRM with consent and source, newsletters, a website CMS and an AI studio that drafts posts and newsletters.

03 · For attendees · iOS

The festival in your pocket

Browse the schedule by day and track, meet the vendors, find your way on the map, buy passes with promo codes and carry them in a wallet with a scannable QR code and a PDF copy.

Impact

3

Connected products shipped on one platform.

0

Card readers to carry. Tap to Pay on iPhone covers tickets, bar and merch.

1

Sales ledger across every surface, so organizers see one number.

Lessons

01

The gate cannot wait for a network.

Festival day is a live usability test with thousands of people in line. Check-in had to scan, search and confirm with a visible live/offline state, so the crew never stalls when the venue’s connectivity drops.

02

One backend, three native surfaces.

Sharing one data model across iOS staff tools, the organizer console and the attendee app kept tickets, payments and attendance consistent. The tradeoff is discipline: every schema change has to work for a crew member, an organizer and a guest.

03

Build for the operator, then the attendee.

Staff feedback from the gate and the bar drove the next release before any attendee feature did. When the people running the event trust the tools, the attendee experience follows.

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