Get to know Adam Bell in today’s speaker interview.
For the past two decades, Adam has run an independent web design / development and branding studio in the San Fernando Valley called dataTV (http://datatv.com/). Adam has worked with a wide variety of clients in the Entertainment, Hospitality and E-Commerce space including Ovation TV, Estrella TV, Ford Motor Company and Tender Greens. Adam has worked with WordPress since 2005 when he saw the potential for it to become more than just blogging software and a true Content Management System. In addition to running his own shop, Adam also manages the Los Angeles Adobe User Group (http://laadug.org/), which runs free monthly meetings across Southern California for people in the Creative Tech scene. This includes WordPress topics, on occasion.
What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?
Probably that I’m the only presenter ever in the history of WordCamp LA who ever migrated to Los Angeles from a natural disaster. In my case, Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In fact, the day I present, September 11, just so happens to be the 11th Anniversary of when I signed my first lease to officially live in LA-the city from migrating from LA-the state. Somehow I’m still here!
Your firm, dataTV, has been around for a little while, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the industry in the last 20 years?
Mobile. Limited CMS’ we’re already starting to occur 20 years ago, but who was thinking about designing for a phone? Almost nobody.
What did dataTV do in the face of this change that younger firms can learn from?
Always learn to adapt and stay ahead of the curve as much as you can. I started designing for mobile in 2003. On a Palm Treo. And I was doing a ton of Flash at the time. Sure I missed it, but other things took their place, so I simply worked at excelling at those.
What’s your ideal Tender Greens meal look like and why?
Hmmmm…. the pics of their ribs looked really good on Instagram lately but honestly, anything at TG works with a great local craft beer on one of their taps. Well, unless it’s a super hoppy IPA. Not a fan of those.
What’s one or two things about the development of the CulturePop that made it worthy of a WordCamp presentation?
The fact I was able to add features into the site without adding free or cheap plugins (not that there weren’t plugins) and having a client willing to allow me and my developers to incorporate custom code to make sure things work exactly the way they want. Also, the ability to try out newer ideas and concepts I hadn’t done on a WP site until that point.
Catch Adam’s presentation Anatomy of a Website: CulturePop at WordCamp Los Angeles at 10am in The Dunbar on Sunday, September 11, 2016.