wx is very cross-platform friendly, but I agree that it has a steeper learning curve. Not sure you can do much on any Win < 2K.

If the server is acting as a clearinghouse, i.e., the events are reported to it first, the GUI should not have any problems reporting them. If you are in a hurry, that's the first change I'd make: route the messages through a port on the server. Then the GUI becomes much simpler.

As far as elegance, either way you need to have a resident daemon/process queue with a known address to gather messages. Whether that's an adjunct to your existing server or another process, the function needs to be provided.