One line bio: Lifetime technophile and creative thinker. Half-lifetime theater geek and director. Quarter-lifetime adventurer and explorer. Eighth-lifetime blogger and purveyor of blogtech.

My name is Adam Simon. I’m a director, stage manager, web/graphic designer, and technologist living in Los Angeles. Though my formal educational is in directing and managing theater and television, I’ve been a computer and technology enthusiast my entire life, and almost all of my tech and design skills were self-taught. Recently, I’ve been extremely interested in the rise of exploded media: blogging, podcasting and their kin, and this site was redesigned at the very start of 2005 to allow me to experiment with these powerful emerging technologies.

My first computer was an Apple IIe, gifted to me at a young age by my very technologically-inclined parents, who had recently started a business programming computer chips. This was the mid 1980’s, shortly after we moved to southern California, and as my parent’s business grew rapidly, so did our use of technology. Along the way, I became an avid video gamer and an early adopter of the closed online services of the early 90’s, including AOL (2.0!), Prodigy, Compuserve, and Sierra Online’s ImagiNation Network. In 1994, I designed my first two websites: one for my parents’ business, and one for my high school drama department, of which I was an extremely active member. This launched a recurring theme in my life: how to effectively combine my passions for live performance and technology. Shortly thereafter, I attended the Cherubs program at Northwestern University, which locked in my decision to major in theater and pursue directing in college.

I spent four years studying at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television. and was fortunate enough to be accepted into both the stage directing program and the television production program. My time in college was hugely mind-expanding for me, and allowed my to participate in many other adventures while I was there: I studied performance at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London before galavanting around Europe with a band of friends; I raised $3600 and rode my bike 500 miles through the Alaskan wilderness as part of the 2001 AIDS Vaccine Ride; I wrote, directed, and produced a 22-minute multicamera short, shot in only three days; I served as the head of UCLA’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance, one of the oldest queer student groups in the country, while also earning a minor in LGBT Studies and writing a pioneering paper on the relationship between place, sexual identity, and the media; and I spent a year studying and developing interactive entertainment under top-tier Disney Imagineers. I graduated cum laude in 2002, and have every intention of one day returning to graduate school.

In the years between then and now, I’ve held numerous jobs, from working retail sales to developing video games. All the while, I’ve been designing websites and print graphics freelance, as well as directing and stage managing around the city. Since late 2003, I’ve been working regularly as a production assistant / assistant stage manager for Center Theater Group on productions at the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre, and the new Kirk Douglas Theatre. I’m also a member of Son of Semele Ensemble, whose site I manage, a nationally recognized theater company making waves in the Los Angeles theater scene.

I’ve been blogging since November 2001 on LiveJournal. For now, I’m keeping both this blog and my LiveJournal active to serve different purposes – LJ allows me to communicate with a specific group of people, while this site is more accessible to the general public, and extensible with new technologies. I started this site, based on MovableType, just at the time that SixApart acquired LiveJournal – check here, here, and here for my reactions to the merger.

• I developed, designed and manage the site for Son of Semele Ensemble.
• I’m a sometimes-contributer to Gay Fleshbot