We celebrate all things WordPress and the local communities here in the North Valleys of Los Angeles County and around the virtual world. Our Organizers welcome everyone to create open experiences through learning and sharing during WordCamp Santa Clarita and beyond.
Buckle Up and Enjoy the Ride
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Tiffany Wong
Organizer
Tiffany is a Content Curator at Simmer Industries, which shares WebGL content on the web. Her focus is on helping game developers share content created with the Unity game engine. Whether it is about playability or other game-related topics, she gives game developers feedback on their content to improve on their creative work.
For as long as she can remember, Tiffany has always been in awe of the creative and entrepreneurial aspect that web development and content writing bring into people’s lives. She decided to take her first step into the tech world with WordPress and was a WordCamp LAX Swag Table Volunteer in 2018.
Last year, she was a WordCamp LAX Organizer!! She is super thrilled to be back again, this time as a WordCamp Organizer for Santa Clarita!
When unplugged from the computer, she finds time to do saunters around the neighborhood, weather permitting. If not outside, she loves to read books and take notes.
Tiffany’s favorite rides are Merry Go Rounds, including the Grand American Carousel and even the Merrie Melodies Carousel!
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Sumner M Davenport
Lead Organizer
Sumner Davenport had been designing websites for over 12 years using Microsoft and Adobe products before she was introduced to WordPress in 2008. WordPress quickly became her go-to website platform.
She is a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) and an active supporter of various disability organizations. Her passion is to educate web designers using WordPress on the value and ease of inclusive design. Through her long-standing organization, she and her team have built, maintained, evaluated and remediated dozens of WordPress websites to WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion.
She is active in accessibility and legal conferences and educational venues, regularly speaking on topics related to compliance issues for WordPress websites. She has been invited to present at TechAccessOK and John Slatin AccessU, WordPress Accessibility Day, local WordPress MeetUp groups, and WordCamps. As Founder of wA11yWP, she and her team conduct ongoing educational events. Recently, with two colleagues they started a local MeetUp group to discuss WordPress and Accessibility and have invited renowned speakers on Accessibility topics to be the guest presenters. Sumner was the Speaker Wrangler for WordCamp SantaClarita 2020 and for WordCamp LAX 2020. She is the lead organizer for WordCamp SantaClarita 2021. In 2020, she recruited an exciting team and participated in the Knowbility Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) 2020.
She is known for her engaging presentations: “Compliance, Traps & Trolls”, “The Ease of Accessibility and WordPress”, “Remediating a WordPress Site” and “Building a Remediation Team”.
She is owned by a rescue dog named Tigger, his rescue cat, Merlin and their new yet-to-be-named kitty rescued from a busy highway.
When Sumner was younger, she loved the Full Throttle ride, but now is content with the slower ride, Gold Rusher. Her all time favorite “ride” is Harley Davidson!
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Scott Dayman
Organizer
Organizer Scott has been using WordPress since the 1.0 days and enjoys bleeding-edge technology. He hosts several WordPress sites for local organizations, a client, and some friends & family members. His passion is optimization, and he is always looking for ways to improve processes.
After a long gap in WordCamp attendance, he attended several pre-COVID camps: Santa Clarita, Orange County, Long Beach, and Riverside.
Scott recently retired from teaching and spent over a decade at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in engineering groups for the Galileo and Cassini missions and a two-year dot-com stint with Petsmart. He’s looking forward to a summer outdoors with the family after a year, mostly indoors.
Scott’s favorite ride is the Twisted Colossus!
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Sally Thoun
Organizer
Sally is new to WordPress and is in the process of building her website Savvy Gurl Digital Marketing, with Alicia St. Rose of the South Central WordPress Adventure Group. She loves being part of the warm, gracious, and welcoming WordPress Community.
She launched the Promotion Department for Warner Bros. Television Canada. After winning the Top National Marketing award for the launch of Batman: The Animated Series and placing third in the TV World Marketing Awards for Babylon 5, she became the first field employee promoted to Burbank, CA, where she oversaw international publicity and eight field offices. A long and successful career followed in broadcast sales.
Sally moved into digital marketing several years ago and is currently studying Accessibility, which has been on her heart for a few years. She feels privileged to help make the web more inclusive and is grateful to all the Accessibility advocates leading the way. She looks forward to adding Accessible services to her regular services.
She wrote the sponsor blogs for the first WordPress Accessibility Day, and her small but mighty team Digital Diversity Divas, won 3rd place in Knowbility’s AIR RALLY2020. Part of her team responsibilities included Team Lead, Content Creator, Project Manager, and QA tester.
Sally presented at “Building With Purpose Conference 2020,” where she discussed strategies business owners could implement at the start of Covid. She was invited back this year for “Overcomers: Victory Amid Overwhelming and Unprecedented Circumstances,” where she introduced Accessibility to a new audience.
Originally from Montréal, Québec, Canada, Sally loves to cook, volunteer, do puzzles, and spoil her dog, Cleo (& Patra RIP), when not being a digital and Accessibility sponge. She is a certified California Disaster Services Worker, a board member on her local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), a community team leader, handles CERT’s marketing and social media, and deployed to the Ridgecrest earthquake in July 2019. Her weekly joy is leading her Awana Sparkys, age 5-7 years old, at her church. Entrepreneurship runs in her blood, as Sally’s grandfather opened the first movie cinema in Montréal in 1905 and later Cleopatra Chocolates.
Sally loves Tilt N’ Whirl, the Scrambler, and rollercoasters, especially Batman The Ride (which she won her National Award for), but now is content holding family and friends’ belongings while they ride.
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Nico Gauthier-Pin
Organizer
Nico is active in the SoCal WordPress community as one of the organizers of the Long Beach chapter of the WordPress Los Angeles meetup and a co-organizer of the first-ever WordCamp Long Beach in 2019.
With an education in Engineering, Nico was one of those kids who liked to disassemble things to see how they work. He chose to merge his passion for building things and creating graphics on the web.
He started his career as a web designer and developer, focusing on WordPress, way back in the days of version 2.0. Nico’s first client paid him $100 to do minor customization on a theme. He thought it was bonkers that someone was paying him so much to play with a website; the client later told him, “next time, charge me more.” It’s been quite a ride since, with WordPress not only being his source of income for most of his career but also providing an opportunity to meet amazing people and make some good friends.
Born and raised in Argentina, Nico has lived in London, Montréal, San Francisco, spent significant time in New York and Toronto, and now resides in LA. 100% bilingual in English and Spanish, he can also speak beginner Italian and un petit peu (a tiny little bit) of French.
When he’s not working as the new Technical Project Manager at Sparks, who builds live and digital brand experiences, he’s out riding his bike or reading a book.
Nico likes the twists and spins of X2, though these days he needs some time to recover after such a ride.
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Michael Pilley
Organizer
Mike is the leader and organizer of the vibrant Bakersfield WordPress Meetup and has been a volunteer for each of our past WordCamp Santa Clarita events. This year he joins us in a leadership role bringing his 10+ years of experience and expertise in a wide variety of technologies.
Raised in the East Bay and transplanted to proud, hard-working Central California, Mike enjoys leveling up people’s technology skills and building WordPress websites through his company Bakersfield Computer, when not working for the county of Kern during his day job.
He is known as someone who can be trusted and follow through with commitments and is masterful at spotting trends and providing recommendations.
Mike also enjoys working on community-benefit-based projects and important local subjects, such as responsible pet ownership and increasing local business, or anything to move Kern County forward with technology.
Mike’s favorite ride is the original wooden Colossus roller coaster.
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Joe A Simpson Jr
Organizer
Responsible for wrangling a number of roles, WordCamp Santa Clarita is a labor of love for Joe. Tired of spending late nights driving 45 minutes into and out of Los Angeles to attend WordPress Meetups, he founded the WordPress and Elementor Santa Clarita Valley Meetups. Shortly thereafter, WordCamp Santa Clarita ushered in the spring of 2019.
During endless, sun-soaked days he works at Metro LA, one of the largest transit agencies in the World, fighting the good fight to ease gridlock around Los Angeles County. Faced with a life-altering heart event in 2017, Joe pivoted, focusing FIRST on rediscovering the things he truly loved — WordPress, creative passions, teaching tech, and truly giving back.
Joe actively contributes to the WordPress Community — founding two WordPress-based Meetups (WordPress and Elementor), speaking or volunteering at WordCamps, is currently on the Organizing team for WordCamp Santa Clarita 2021, is part of a WordPress initiative at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), and is a SiteGround Ambassador.
Due to Joe’s awesome contributions, lead organizer Sumner Davenport nominated Joe in late 2020 for Yoast Care as a person who works extremely hard to make WordPress even better. We are proud to say that Joe is now one of only 57 worldwide recipients of the Yoast Community Appreciation Rewards! Humble as he is, Joe left this out of his bio, so we secretly added it. Shhh, don’t tell him but please take the time to congratulate Joe on this well-deserved award and read his winning interview here!
A fan of heights, Joe enjoys each roller coaster that comes to Magic Mountain that is taller, faster, and scarier than the original metal monster, Gold Rusher!
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Ahmed Chaion
Organizer
Ahmed works as the Community Relations Manager at ForgetWP. He loves contributing to WordCamps and is one of the Official Team Reps for Making WordPress Design. When we were still an in-person event in 2020, Ahmed volunteered early and as we abruptly shifted (on 19 days lead time) he stayed on and has been involved in almost every virtual WordCamp since.
He has learned more about the WordPress Community and the people through this experience; especially acquiring valuable lessons and tricks of the trade through different volunteering roles at similar events.
We’re so thankful to have him with us.
Good Deeds
Know someone in the WordPress Community that deserves recognition for doing something noteworthy during WordCamp Santa Clarita.
If you see someone who is making an extra effort to ensure our community is welcoming, friendly, and encourages all participants to contribute to the fullest extent, we want to know.