Novatech Creative Event Technology turns 25
Proud of the Past and Focused on the Future
It’s been 25 years since Leko and Menk Novakovic, two brothers from Adelaide’s northern suburbs, took their venue and event experience and founded production company Novatech Creative Event Technology.
That two-man show is now a team of 70, and swells to well over a hundred in the busy season. It’s retained some of the finest and most immaculately cared-for technical equipment in the industry, and a warehouse where Novatech regularly invites and shares with colleagues and competitors.
The company constantly innovates in every area, including staff retention, people and culture, learning and development, client management and sales. And of course, they’re technical innovators as well, often creating solutions for unique applications that no-one else has built before. This advanced problem-solving has seen them develop market-leading capabilities in conferencing, streaming and broadcast, interactive technology and immersive experiences.
True to form, as Novatech set out to talk with us about their 25 years in business, they are focused almost totally on the future. Their past is well documented, particularly in this publication: their long relationships with events like LIV Golf Adelaide, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concerts, production work at iconic Adelaide venues like Thebarton Theatre and Adelaide Entertainment Centre, and ground-breaking work on large-scale art installations and multimedia exhibitions. The business is happily staffed by many long-term employees, a sign of a great culture. To give an insight into the business in their 25th year, we were introduced to three employees who have been with them for two years or less: Operations Manager Shauna Reynolds, People and Culture Advisor Pippa Sicolo, and Principal Designer and Innovator Christopher Bolton.
Ashley Gabriel, Director of Sales and Marketing, with almost nine and a half years at Novatech, is the exception, and I asked him what drew him to the company after 19 years with a largely venue-based competitor. “Honestly, it was having access to all the big boys’ toys!” admits Ashley. “I just love having the best audio systems, the best vision systems, and, being in sales, being able to sell the dream without being limited by the inventory or the capability.”
With such a passionate team, everyone I interview at some point says a similar thing, which is pretty much the company’s unofficial slogan: “We love doing cool, innovative things with creative clients,” says Ashley, echoing the same sentiment I will encounter multiple times. “Leko and Menk are the owners, and because they work in the business, living and breathing it, they are passionate about it. We can make really quick, informed decisions about budgets, purchases, or custom works. We’ve got a really good structure and staff who are leaders in their fields. That leads to great departments across sales and marketing, operations, production, business services and tech services.”
Operations Manager Shauna Reynolds has been with Novatech for just over a year. With a strong background in events, she returned from almost two decades in London working in senior leadership roles in massive international event companies including George P. Johnson (GPJ), Jack Morton, and Imagination. She first worked with Novatech in her capacity at the South Australian state government’s Department of Premier and Cabinet, delivering their events.
“I was very impressed by the way Novatech works,” says Shauna. “I wanted to work with people that were passionate about what they did, passionate about the events industry, and the quality of their delivery. And I wanted to step into a role where I could affect change. Being part of the management team, I can make suggestions and changes, and we can turn that into action very quickly.”
Working closely with Leko on people and events, and with Menk on equipment and logistics, Shauna works to organise the entire business. “We spend a lot of time at the strategic planning stage,” she explains. “At the moment, we’re mapping out the spring season, and all the way through to April 2027. Adelaide has definitely expanded in the scale and delivery of events. The busy season has grown in length, starting now in September and heading all the way into May.”
It’s way more than making sure there are enough bodies and the right gear on the job. “We think about who is the best fit for that client, who is the best fit for that style of gig, and then who are the best team that will work together to deliver the event,” continues Shauna. “Then there’s identifying opportunities for upskilling. We’re launching a new learning and development plan which will make sure that all of our crew are aware of where their skills are at, and gives them opportunities for training that offers a clear pathway for progression. We deliver high quality, and we have a Novatech way of doing things. That’s why our clients and customers come back: the approach of our project managers and our technicians, and the quality of our equipment.”
Novatech’s People and Culture Advisor Pippa Sicolo joined the company in January this year, coming from an HR and admin background outside of the production industry. Like Shauna, her day-to-day involves “making sure we’ve got the right people in the right place at the right time”, and beyond that, building and maintaining a ‘people and culture pipeline’ that will keep the company staffed, and those staff trained and functioning well.
“I’m doing things like managing the employee life cycle, and also a lot of future planning to keep us adaptable,” outlines Pippa. “Our culture starts with trust. We build relationships with each individual. We seek to understand how everyone works individually, because no two people are the same. When you have the right relationships, things run a lot more smoothly because of mutual understanding. We’re putting together frameworks for five and ten years into the future, building our capability with the people that we have. We’re asking how do we make everyone as highly skilled as they can be. Is it going to be training? Is it going to be mentoring? Is it going to be just giving them more stretch opportunities on bigger gigs? We’re doing anything that we can do to upskill people as much as we can.”
Having come from outside the industry, Novatech has immersed Pippa in the work that they do on the front line. “I’ve done a bump-in with the crew at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre,” relates Pippa. “I like a physical challenge, bring it on! I was absolutely pumped to push road cases and I learnt so much. It was amazing as an Adelaide native who’s seen so many gigs at the Entertainment Centre, to come in through the back entrance and see how a show actually gets put together. It was fun to chuck on the hard hat and the steel caps, and I’ll go do it again. I love the production industry.
Everyone is a little bit quirky, but everyone’s very real. People aren’t afraid to be themselves, which is great. I’ve not come across people that are too precious. Everyone’s upfront and honest, just real humans.”
Novatech’s forward thinking and planning have led to the creation of a completely new department in the business, Design and Innovation, headed up by Christopher Bolton. Originally a lighting designer working around the world on global events including Eurovision, Christopher became a trainer for MA Lighting, delivering top-end instruction on grandMA2 and MA3. He relocated to Adelaide from Belgium with his family, and Novatech sought him out.
“I’m now the principal designer for Novatech,” reports Christopher. “I do all the creative designs and renders for our pitches, as well as innovating and finding new ways for us to use technology to create better events. I work with a lot of different software products, but mainly in Unreal Engine. That enables us to do virtual walkthroughs and flythroughs of events and plans. Starting with that as a base, I recently started a new part of our business internally called Digital Twin.”
Christopher ran CX Magazine through Digital Twin remotely, and it’s incredibly impressive. It starts with a LiDAR scan of the event site. “Every time a laser hits a wall, a seat, or a structural beam, it records a single point in space,” explains Christopher. “Visually, that’s just data and it lacks the realism needed for true pre-visualisation. We then use 3D Gaussian to paint the dots. This technology replaces those millions of tiny dots with 3D splats: soft, overlapping bursts of colour and light. The algorithm learns how light bounces around the real room and blends these splats together. The result is an ultra-realistic environment that renders incredibly fast, capturing reflections, textures, and depth exactly as they look in the real world. For the events and entertainment industry, this is a game-changer.”
It is. Chris walked me through a virtual event site at a heritage property I’m a little familiar with. The building and grounds were 3D rendered in photorealistic detail. You can zoom in anywhere and measure things: will our gear fit through this door? Exactly how uneven is this bit of grass? Then you can build anything on top of it, simulate light shows, anything. It’s an incredibly powerful design and selling tool.
Christopher then pulled up an example of a big sports event design, which looked like a real, live video. “In this example, I can show you exactly what the lasers are doing, what the people are doing on the field,” said Christopher as I gasped quietly. “It really helps show the client exactly what it is that we are going to create for them. That mitigates risk, explains what they’re getting for their money, and helps deliver exceptional outcomes for our clients.”
Once the scans are imported, processing is done, and designs are created, clients can collaborate remotely through a custom web-host portal hosted by Novatech, which enables extremely fast, high-resolution 3D rendering in-browser. “We already have about 30 venues in Adelaide scanned, and we are working with people across Australia to scan their venues as well,” concludes Christopher. “All our designs will eventually be hosted on this platform and available to our clients.”
Having seen the most futuristic thing in event technology I’ve seen for years, Shauna Reynolds reminds me how this all started. “From humble beginnings, big things come. It’s incredible what Leko and Menk have built,” she acknowledges. “Their passion and attention to detail are impressive. They are so hands-on and so invested in this business from a personal perspective. It is really inspiring to know nothing is too small for them to do. They will muck in wherever needed. They’ll be at a 4 am bump-out if required. They’re the passionate leaders who show everyone how it’s done and what is expected.”
