Paul Sheldrake is the Director of Support Engineering at Kanopi Studios, where he specializes in building digital solutions for nonprofit and Higher Ed organizations. With nearly 20 years in the web space, Paul has led teams delivering high-impact WordPress projects with a focus on long-term maintainability, smart automation, and developer experience. He’s passionate about creating workflows that help teams move faster, ship more resilient code, and actually enjoy the process of getting there.

At WCEH, Paul will present “Automating Quality: Inside an Agency’s DevOps Pipeline for WordPress.” Inspired by feedback from colleagues who appreciate Kanopi’s streamlined setup, this session offers a behind-the-scenes look at how automation can transform your development workflow. From Composer and CircleCI to automated testing, Paul will share practical strategies and open-source tools that help teams deploy faster and more confidently—without sacrificing quality.

And now for something a little Canadian 🇨🇦

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Canada?
The mountains of BC

Favourite Canadian band or artist?
The Beaches

A Canadian food you love (or want to try in Ottawa)?
Poutine

A sport / athlete (or other celebrity) you associate with Canada? (Yes, hockey counts, but we award bonus points for curling or Shania Twain. Bonus points = high fives.)
Simon Whitfield. Watching him medal in triathlon in the 2008 olympics in Beijing was amazing