Ben Erwin is a full-stack engineer with 10 years of experience specializing in bespoke WordPress themes and plugins for clients. In his 23rd year as an independent web developer for his company Powersimple, he builds dynamic front and backend CMS applications. 2019 will be his 4th Wordcamp NYC, having previously attended 2012, 2015 and 2018. Ben most enjoys using WordPress to build sites with bespoke themes that leverage the JSON API and optimizing them by publishing minimalist static data packets to reduce load times and server overhead. Spoiled by Node JS task automation, he bakes the goodness of SASS, JS Minification and BrowserSync and into all his themes.
With the hindsight of having been a developer since the 90s, Ben brings foresight to the changes coming in the next two decades. Witnessing how off-the-shelf template themes as well as turnkey, subscription services like Wix and Squarespace have impacted Web Development; for the past several years, Ben has been preparing for “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” by developing expertise in how XR, AI, DLT, IoT and 5G will be transforming the technology economy. Undaunted, he combines his depth of knowledge and love of building CMS apps and bleeding edge tech to help forward-thinking companies looking to get in front of these changing times and curates 4IR news daily to his Facebook Group OmniScience. Presently, Ben is doing Quality Assurance and UX/UI Testing for Eolian VR’s Augmented Reality 3D Data Visualization Application for the Mayo Clinic and has built an admin to query their Machine Learning API which forecasts heart patient risk. He is currently writing a White Paper on Volumetric Content and Volumetric Displays.
Ben is a Data Scientist with extensive agency experience, having done subcontracts building data-driven interactives for many major brands including Charles Schwab, Dell, Norton, SoFi, Voya, NBC Universal, SodaStream, Medtronic, Century21 and Verizon for The New York Times’ T-Brand Studio, Likeable Media, VaynerMedia and Ember Media. Ben also served the United Nations for 14 years as webmaster for the Offices of the Special Representatives of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict and Sexual Violence in Conflict where he was the first to launch WordPress sites in all six official languages and built research tools and libraries of official documents.
As an accomplished and passionate photographer, videographer and editor since the 80s, Ben has brought these skills to integrate multimedia into his sites. He lives in Chelsea, Manhattan NYC with his wife of 25 years and two dogs.
For more information:
C.V. at https://powersimple.com/Ben-Erwin-CV.pdf
and connect on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/powersimple/
Twitter, Gmail, Github, Skype, Facebook: @powersimple
Join OmniScience: Future Technologies and Society Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/OmniScience.FutureTech