WordCamp Santa Clarita Origin Story
Tomorrow kicks off the first annual WordCamp Santa Clarita, the fifth annual Southern California WordPress conference; but who is putting this event on? Meet your local community organizing team — they’ll be here to make your weekend a fun and rewarding experience in a welcoming environment.
Driving home from another Meetup somewhere in Southern California – downtown Los Angeles, Pasadena, Whittier, Hollywood, Long Beach, Orange County, and even Riverside, Lead Organizer Joe A Simpson Jr figured there had to be a better way. Instead of spilling coffee on his lap while driving home at 10:50 pm from a WordPress Meetup, why not start one in Santa Clarita?
At the first meetup almost two years ago, he presented a topic to the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup and closed with a slide with a crazy idea — host a WordCamp in Santa Clarita.
Tomorrow is that day thanks to the following team of talented and hard-working organizers.
Ron Amick, A/V Wrangler
Ron Amick is a creature with two heads – he can write code and content, edit film and ad copy, and speak both digital and analogue. With an engineer father and painter mother, Ron Amick always had an affinity for both technology and art. His misspent youth was dedicated to making short films which, through no fault of his own, landed him at USC film school. After stints working as a producer and editor at several studios and post-production houses, he landed at Disney New Technology and New Media, which ignited a love for web development. Moving from entertainment to tech was less of a pivot than a way to combine his interest in computers with his passion for storytelling. Since then Ron has learned (and forgotten) more software than is reasonable (Flash, anyone?) and worked with many creative agencies, tech companies, and entertainment clients to create websites, mobile apps, games, books, ecommerce stores and more. “It’s hard being both a geek and a nerd,” says Ron, “but who are you if you don’t even try?”
Pronunciation Guide: ā – mick — with a long “a” as in “acorn”
Sean Conklin, Sponsor Wrangler
Sean has been a full-stack PHP web developer since 2002. His current specialties have been in WordPress powered sites since 2011 and WooCommerce powered shops since early 2017. Sean co-organizes and speaks at the West Valley WordPress Meetup as well as the WooCommerce Los Angeles Meetup. At his day job Sean is Founder at Coded Commerce, LLC, where he helps his clients with WordPress and WooCommerce-powered online stores.
Rebeca Godin, Speaker Wrangler
Rebeca has been a WordPress developer for a little over 3 years. In that time, she realized that just creating websites for her clients was not good enough to help them with their business goals. She recently founded Geeky Chick Labs, which is a digital marketing agency that uses WordPress websites as digital hubs. Then connecting social media and other digital marketing resources to create powerful online presences for her clients. The main goal of these hubs is to get business owners back too doing their thing — running their business.
When not helping clients grow their businesses, Rebeca loves to cook, read, play games — video and tabletop, hang out with her family and animals and most importantly cheering for her son and his hockey team.
Tange Brown Simpson, Special Events Wrangler
Tange is an Instructional Aide to the Speech Pathologist at Castaic Elementary school in the Santa Carita Valley. She works with special needs children to improve their speech intelligibility. She is currently completing coursework at Pasadena City College in pursuit of a Speech and Language Pathologist Assistant degree.
Prior to this career, Tange work in entertainment as a Stage Manager at NBC Television and Warner Bros Television, working on Family Matters and NBC at Sunrise. When she’s not helping her husband with WordCamp Santa Clarita, she is be found playing Candy Crush.
Tange is an Instructional Aide to the Speech Pathologist at Castaic Elementary, a distinguished school in the Santa Carita Valley. She works with special needs children to improve their speech intelligibility. She is currently completing coursework at Pasadena City College in pursuit of a Speech and Language Pathologist Assistant degree.
Joe A Simpson Jr, Lead Organizer
A veteran of more than a dozen WordCamps around the country as an attendee and after serving as a volunteer locally and as an emcee at last December’s WordCamp US, Joe wanted to do more with WordPress. Joe has also presented topics at WordCamp Chicago, WordCamp Los Angeles, WordCamp Orange County, and WordCamp Phoenix and hosts the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup.
Joe is a Front-End Web Developer and Graphic Designer specializing in WordPress solutions. During days he works at one of the nation’s top-five transit agencies, fighting the good fight to ease the commute around Los Angeles County. When their lead developer and CSS specialist both left to pursue other opportunities, Joe inherited a Headway-themed design (sans child theme) and the rest is history over ten years later with a WordPress blog network consisting of over a dozen project-specific or transit news sites.