adam.stragnell.com

adam.strags@gmail.com messenger facebook whatsapp

about

I'm an Anglo-American born and raised in the UK. After completing my university degree I travelled and then settled in China for 16 years before returning to the UK in 2018.

Throughout my life, I have developed a love of designing and building beautiful things. Things that look nice, things function intuitively and things that provide a joyful experience. This holds true for the three dimensional architectural spaces and buildings I produce through to developing everything I build for the web.

Since 2019 I've been managing a small development team as well as working hands-on with developing our code base. In this role I've developed my management ethos and have enjoyed mentoring junior developers, hiring the correct people ang giving them the freedom and environment to thrive.

"God is in the details." - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

download CV

qualifications

A levels in History, Mathematics & Art
AS Level in Physics
BA Honors in Architecture

awards

Awarded the Xiaoxiang friendship award from Hunan provincial government for outstanding contributions to education in Hunan.

languages

English
Mandarin Chinese

web

I have over 25 years of development experience as a freelancer, team developer and development team leader.

I have worked on a huge range of projects using a wide number of technology stacks, frameworks and tools.

I'm proficient in everything from database and server side framework development to front end UI/UX design and coding.

Having managed a team of developers I've found my communication skills and deeper understanding of technical specifics allows me to bridge the gap between non-technical managers and developers in order to coordinate strategy.

My management style includes making sure I hire the correct people and give them the freedom to thrive. This means trusting rather than micro-managing, removing impediments and distractions, correctly setting realistic milestones and elevating quality over speed for long-term gain. Concise communication is key as well as implementation of feedback systems that empower people at all levels of the development team to contribute and improve the product.

portfolio

codepen

experience

Specification
Planning
Development
Management
Deployment
Support

projects

Educational
Brochure
E-commerce
Bespoke CMS & CRM

features

High Performance
Mobile Friendly
SEO
Accessible
Self Administered
Social Network Integration
Calendar Integration
Email Newsletters
Customisable Contact Forms
API Integrations

content management

Silverstripe
Drupal
Joomla
WordPress

frameworks

Laravel
Symfony

server side

PHP
MySQL
Node.js
Cloudflare
cPanel
Plesk

front end

HTML
CSS
SCSS & SASS
Javascript
jQuery
Vue
React

development tools

MAMP
git
docker
npm
gulp.js

architecture

From an early age I was fascinated with the built environment and the construction of objects.

Creating spaces and understanding structures filled my childhood and I progressed towards the field of architecture.

I learnt that the quality of anything comes from a balance of materials and composition.

After completing my architectural degree I branched out into web development but continued to work on building design from time to time.

I have completed a variety of renovation, interior design, ancillary building design and extension projects

portfolio

experience

Interior Renovations
Ancillary Buildings
Extensions

services

CAD Design
Planning Consultation & Drawings
Quantity & Cost forcasts
Scheduling

back

portfolio

A few freelance projects and some of the sites I've built.

Privately administered management systems do not have a public facing website, but you can read the information to find out more.

Click on the thumbnails to visit public sites.

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Chango Management System

A Shenzhen based adventure company needed a management system to organise every aspect of their tour planning, staff information, customer details, accounts, finances and communication. As a freelancer, I single handedly developed this bespoke, dual language system from scratch. It has allowed Chango to grow over the last few years into one of the leading childrens' adventure tour companies in China while employing the same number of office staff.

aios

A PoS system that deals with stock, separate kitchen and bar order fulfilment, regular and table tabs, daily reports and even runs a juke box allowing patrons to add to the playlist and management to set the available music according to time settings.

Young Pioneer Tours

Young Pioneer Tours required a system mainly for efficient customer management but also for staff to coordinate their marketing of their coming tours. The system also included staff management for admins with a layered permission matrix, customer search, filtering, automated email notifications and detailed customer tour requirements and histories.

Yangshuo Bar Crawl

The Yangshuo Bar Crawl website was a simple advertising and photo gallery site for a weekly bar crawl in Yangshuo, China. The client was able to edit the content and upload photographs to the site themselves. The site and bar crawls ran successfully for several years until the manager relocated back to the UK.

Yangshuo Guided Tours

A booking system quoting prices for hike and motorbike tours in Yangshuo China. Using a weather API and quoting algorythm accounting for number of people already on a specific hike, availability of tour leaders and length of tour.

Omeida

Omeida's management system is a huge, bespoke database driven project. The system is used by the school to run everything from accommodation and various reports to timetable and contract management and much much more. Students, teachers and staff all have a range of functionality available to them depending on their exact roles within the company. Chinese and English are used across the site, set dependent upon user preferences. A complex permissions matrix underlies the system providing many levels of access and therefore security of sensitive data. Every member of staff from every department of the business carries out their day to day work using this system.

Wire Play

A teaching tool for learning about simple electric circuits. One way and two way switches, lamps and fans are represented and can be connected in any way to create circuits. Parallel and series connections affect the glow of the bulbs or speed of the fans differently as with real-life circuits. This was written years ago using Flash Actionscript and so sadly is no longer supported.

Lounge

The website for our own restaurant/cafe/bar business in Yangshuo China that we ran for 4 years before relocating back to the UK. The site allowed customers to contact us, view our facilities and events and even allowed regular customers with tabs to pre-order their food online.

Zhuoyue English College

Zhuoyue English College's webite advertises their school to both foreigners in English and students in Chinese. This is a bespoke content management system with access for their IT staff to populate the site with exactly the content they want. Behind the scenes a staff and website management system allows the school to control permissions and access to edit their website depending on the various staff's roles within the school.

Taiji Kungfu School

The traditional Taiji and Kungfu school in Yangshuo required a small school management database with a simple permissions matrix for the day to day running of their school. The system (and school) is linked to the Omeida management system so that staff can access shared user data. Timetables, course lengths and fee information, staff access and embeddable application forms are provided for staff and students.

Directions Teraching Toy

Get students to enter place names and then give directions around a map of those places to practice whatever foreign language they may be learning. This was written in Flash Actionscript many years ago and so is no longer available.

Yangshuo Hub

Yangshuo hub is a map and website bringing together several businesses in Yangshuo, China. The map is distributed by the businesses involved and the website utilises openlayers and openstreetmaps providing an interactive map of yangshuo businesses and places of interest. The website also provides downloadable and embeddable maps and event calendars administered by the businesses using their own administrator logins. The website is designed to work smoothly across all platforms with specific styling for mobile devices.

3D Engine

An actionscript 3D rendering engine built many moons ago.

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portfolio

I enjoy designing small, multi-functional spaces. I find the challenge of balancing requirements and maximising the potential of limited volumns far more enjoyable than larger buildings.

Here are just some of my ideas that have made their way to CAD models.

Click on the thumbnails to see more.

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