From Echo Park Intern To Immersive Dining Creator
I did not plan any of this. There was no five-year roadmap that started with unplugging cables in a Los Angeles music venue and ended with projecting interactive art onto dinner tables on the Florida Gulf Coast. The path that led me from Echo Park to The Table 30A was built one decision at a time, and most of those decisions were driven by curiosity rather than strategy.
I want to tell this story because people ask me how I ended up doing what I do, and the honest answer is long and winding. But every part of it matters. The skills I use to produce The Table 30A did not come from a single discipline. They came from a career that crossed live music, software development, theme park design, and digital art, and each phase taught me something I use every time I sit down to design a new show.
The Echo Park Music Venue
It started with an internship at a music venue in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. I was young and had no formal training in anything related to event production. But I would show up early before anyone else, turn on all of the equipment, and try to teach myself how to use it.
After a few months of that, I got proficient. I understood the gear. I understood the signal chain. I understood how a show was put together from the technical side. But I also started understanding the business side, how deals are made in live music, how a venue books acts, how the money works. That dual understanding, technical and business, became a pattern that repeated through every phase of my career.
The music venue was where I learned that putting on a great event is not just about the technology or the performance. It is about the entire experience. The room. The lighting. The pacing. The feeling the audience walks away with. That lesson has stayed with me and it is the foundation of everything I do at The Table 30A.
Going On the Road
The venue work led to touring. I went on the road with bands to do lighting, stage design, and eventually tour managing. This was a completely different perspective. At the venue, I saw the production from the house side. On the road, I was working with the artists to put on great shows night after night in different cities.
Tour managing in particular taught me something I use constantly. When you are responsible for getting a group of people from city to city and making sure the show happens, you learn how to solve problems under pressure, how to keep a team focused, and how to deliver a consistent experience even when the conditions change every night. The Table 30A is a pop-up. Every event is in a different outdoor partner space along 30A. The ability to produce a consistent, high-quality experience in a new environment every time is a skill I built on tour. I wrote more about that specific connection in What Tour Managing Taught Me About Running A Pop Up Dinner.
Learning to Code in Coffee Shops
Here is the part of the story that surprises people. While I was on the road, I had downtime between waking up and getting to the venue. I would find a coffee shop in whatever city we were in and teach myself how to code.
The motivation was practical. I wanted to make the computers that were on stage talk to each other. If I could write software that connected the lighting console to the video system to the audio triggers, I could make effects that were more elaborate and more responsive than what any single system could do on its own. That was my introduction to software development, and it happened in coffee shops across the country while I was on tour.
That self-taught coding background is directly relevant to what I build today. The interactive projection system at The Table 30A is a custom piece of software that I designed and built. The tracking, the visual engine, the way the system responds to hands and glasses and plates on the table, all of that comes from the same impulse that started in those coffee shops: make the computers talk to each other to create something more elaborate. The full story of how I learned to code on the road is in How I Taught Myself To Code In Coffee Shops On Tour.
The Creative Studio
When I turned 26, I had to get off my mother's health insurance and get a real job. I landed at a creative studio as an Interactive Designer. The studio made location-based experiences for museums, theme parks, and pop-up experiences.
This was the phase where my work got structure. On tour, I was self-taught and improvisational. At the studio, I learned the design process. I learned how to take a creative idea through concept development, prototyping, testing, and delivery. I learned how to present work to clients and how to translate an abstract vision into a concrete experience that people could walk through and interact with.
The location-based experience work was also where I first understood the power of designing for a specific place. A museum installation is not the same as a theme park attraction is not the same as a pop-up. Each one has its own constraints and opportunities, and the best work responds to the specific context it exists in. The Table 30A is a location-based experience. Every event is designed for a specific outdoor space on 30A, and the skills I developed at that studio are what allow me to adapt the show to each new venue. I explore that connection more in What Location Based Experience Design Taught Me About Immersive Dining.
Montreal, Tokyo, and the World
The studio work led to an opportunity that changed the scale of everything I did. I became a Creative Director for a media company that produced nighttime spectaculars for theme parks around the world. I was based in Montreal and Tokyo at different points, and the projects took me everywhere.
I have worked on projects at multiple Disney parks, Universal Studios, Dollywood, and Presidential Libraries. I have done projects in Europe, the Middle East, and across the United States. These were large-scale, technically complex productions that had to deliver emotional impact to massive audiences every single night.
Working at that scale taught me discipline. When you are designing a spectacle that will run thousands of times for millions of people, every detail matters. The timing. The transitions. The way the audience moves through the experience. The reliability of the technology. I brought that discipline to The Table 30A, and it is why the experience feels polished and intentional even though it is produced by a two-person team.
Coming Home to 30A
After years of working around the world, I came back to 30A. This is where I grew up. This is home. And when I looked at what I wanted to build next, I realized I wanted to take everything I had learned, live music production, software development, location-based experience design, large-scale spectaculars, and apply it to something intimate and personal.
The Table 30A is the answer to that question. It takes the scale of thinking I developed at Disney and Universal and compresses it to twelve people around a communal table. It takes the technical skills I built on tour and in coffee shops and uses them to make a dinner table interactive. It takes the design process I learned at the creative studio and applies it to a five-course meal paired with an original story.
Every phase of my career is in this work. And every event I produce draws on skills that I started building when I was an intern turning on equipment before anyone else arrived at a music venue in Echo Park.
FAQ
Did you study digital art or experience design formally?
No. My background is largely self-taught, starting with equipment at the Echo Park venue and continuing with coding in coffee shops on tour. My formal design education came on the job at the creative studio where I worked as an Interactive Designer, and later through leading large-scale projects as a Creative Director.
How does your theme park background influence The Table 30A?
Theme parks taught me how to design experiences that deliver emotional impact reliably, night after night. That discipline in timing, transitions, technology, and audience flow directly influences how I design each Table 30A event. The scale is different but the rigor is the same.
Is The Table 30A a solo project?
The Table 30A is a two-person operation. I handle everything related to the show: the story, the projected visuals, the sound, the interactive technology, and the production. Jose Castro handles the food. We collaborate on the theme and the creative direction together. Learn more about how we work in How A Two Person Team Produces An Immersive Dining Show.
Can I attend a Table 30A event?
Yes. Pop-up events sell individual tickets through the website, and private events for groups of up to twelve can be booked by reaching out directly.
