My One Rule: NEVER Bore The Room.
I’m Mitch Canter – Director of Engineering at WebDevStudios, and someone who has been getting on stages since 2008 to talk about building software and, increasingly, about leading the people who build it.
Whether it’s a keynote to a few thousand or a workshop for a dozen, I can make it educational and entertaining.
A good speaker should be both.
Fast Facts ABOUT MITCH
- 60+ events since 2008
- Keynotes, sessions, workshops, panels
- In person & virtual
- Based in Nashville, TN (but have laptop, will travel!)
WHAT I TALK About
Signature Talks
Effective 1:1s (Or: How to Stop Wasting Thirty Minutes a Week)
Most 1:1s are status meetings wearing a disguise. This session covers what a 1:1 is actually for, how to run one when you have nothing to say, what to do when your report has nothing to say, and how to tell the difference between someone who needs help and someone who needs you to get out of the way. Practical and immediately usable – attendees leave with a structure they can run the next morning.
Format: 30-45 min session, or 90 min workshop. Audience: new and mid-level engineering managers, team leads, anyone who inherited reports without asking for them.
Leading Through a Crisis
Servers go down. Clients escalate. Someone quits mid-sprint. The technical parts of a crisis are usually the easy parts – the hard part is the twelve people watching how you handle it. What to say in the first hour, what not to say at all, how to protect the team without hiding reality from them, and how to run the retro so the same thing doesn’t happen twice.
Format: 30–45 min session. Audience: engineering leaders, delivery leads, agency owners.
???? Nobody Trains Agency Engineering Leaders
Big-tech management advice assumes you have one product, one roadmap, and no clients. Agency engineering is a different sport: billable pressure, five stakeholders per project, and a team that context-switches constantly. This is the talk about leading engineers inside a services business – what transfers from the big-tech playbook, what actively breaks, and what nobody writes about because the audience is smaller.
Format: 30-45 min session or keynote. Audience: agency owners, agency engineering leads, anyone managing client-services delivery.
???? Your Best Engineer Is Not Your Best Manager
The most expensive mistake in our industry is promoting the strongest technical person and hoping management is a skill that comes free with seniority. This is an honest talk about that transition – from someone who made it… but eventually figured it out. What actually changes, what you have to grieve, and how to support someone going through it.
Format: 30-45 min session. Audience: Engineers considering the jump, and the leaders promoting them.
WordPress & Web Development / Engineering
Mastering the Query Loop Block
A deep, practical tour of one of WordPress’s most powerful and least understood blocks. Delivered as a WordPress Learn online workshop; adapts well to WordCamp session or hands-on format.
Format: 45 min session or 90 min hands-on workshop.
Revamping a Site Without Disruption
How we rebuilt the Jim Joseph Foundation’s site with no downtime, no broken URLs, and no panicked stakeholders — the technical migration plan and, more importantly, the communication plan that made it survivable. Co-presented at WordCamp US 2025 with Jen Miller.
Format: 30-45 min session. Audience: agency teams, in-house teams facing a replatform.
Automating and Scaling Your Agency
Where the repeatable parts of agency development actually are, what’s worth automating, and what people automate that they shouldn’t. Originally delivered as a WP Engine webinar.
Format: 45 min session or webinar.
???? Block Architecture for Teams That Have to Maintain It
Custom blocks are easy to build and miserable to inherit. How to make block-based decisions your team will still be able to work with in three years, when you’ve forgotten why you did any of it.
Format: 45 min technical session.
Also Happy To Talk About:
Content strategy · working with creators and livestreamers as a brand · design principles · mentoring and career growth for engineers · building an engineering culture at agency scale.
Got something adjacent in mind? Ask: I’d rather build the right talk for your room than sell you one off the shelf.
See Me Work.
Grab A BIO
Need something for your program or event description? Take whichever length fits.
Short:
Mitch Canter is a Director of Engineering at WebDevStudios, where he leads the teams building WordPress at enterprise scale. He’s been speaking at conferences since 2008.
Medium:
Mitch Canter is a Director of Engineering at WebDevStudios, leading a team engineers building WordPress at enterprise scale. Over two decades he’s gone from shipping the code to growing the people who ship it – and he speaks about both. A conference regular since 2008 with more than 60 events behind him, he’s known for sessions that are practical, jargon-free, and honest about the parts that didn’t work.
Long:
Mitch Canter is a Director of Engineering at WebDevStudios, where he leads a team of engineers across cross-functional teams delivering WordPress at enterprise scale. He’s spent over twenty years in the WordPress ecosystem – as a developer, a digital strategist, and now as the person responsible for the engineers doing the work. He’s a WordPress.org Core Contributor and writes lessons for WordPress Learn.
Mitch has been speaking since 2008 – PodCamps, WordCamps, BarCamps, BlogWorldExpo, Digital Summit, HighEdWeb, WPCampus, and more. He talks about engineering leadership, agency delivery, and the craft of WordPress. Mitch holds that a good session should be educational and entertaining. He lives in Nashville, TN.
Let’s Talk.
Tell me about your event: the audience, the format, the date, and roughly what you’re hoping the room walks out with. I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right person for it.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
2025
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| Gaming Community Expo | July 25-26, 2025 | Orlando, FL |
| WordCamp US | Aug 26-29, 2025 | Portland, OR |
2024
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| St. Jude Creator Summit | April 24-25, 2024 | Memphis, TN |
| [WPEngine Webinar] Mastering Web Development Efficiency: Automate and Scale your Agency | Sept 10, 2024 | Online |
2021
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| Midwest Digital Marketing | April 26-29, 2021 | Online / Virtual |
2020
Speaking Hiatus Due to Pandemic / COVID-19
2018
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| Midwest Digital Marketing | March 27-28, 2018 | St. Louis, MO |
| Digital Summit – Kansas City | May 15-17, 2018 | Kansas City, MO |
| MARCOM.CA | June 6-7, 2018 | Ottawa, Ontario, CA |
| Digital Summit – Chicago | September 26-27, 2018 | Chicago, IL |
| Type-A Parent | September 27-29, 2018 | Chicago, IL |
| Digital Summit – Charlotte | October 3-4, 2018 | Charlotte, NC |
| HighEdWeb 2018 | October 21-23, 2018 | Sacramento, CA |
2017
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| WPCampus | July 14-16, 2017 | Buffalo, NY |
| HighEdWeb 2017 | October 8-10, 2017 | Hartford, CT |
2016
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| WordCamp Atlanta | March 18 – 20, 2016 | Nashville, TN |
| @Midwest Conference | April 7, 2016 | Normal, IL |
| Craft Content Nashville | April 9, 2016 | Nashville, TN |
| WordCamp Nashville | September 17, 2016 | Nashville, TN |
| WordCamp Louisville | November 12, 2016 | Louisville, KY |
2015
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| New Media Expo | April 13-16, 2015 | Las Vegas, NV |
| TBEX Europe | April 30 – May 3, 2015 | Costa Brava, Spain |
| Type-A Con – East | Oct 10, 2015 | Atlanta, GA |
| TBEX Asia | Oct 14 – 17, 2015 | Bangkok, Thailand |
2014
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| New Media Expo | January 04-06, 2014 | Las Vegas, NV |
| WordCamp Nashville | May 02, 2014 | Nashville, TN |
| PodCamp Nashville | May 17, 2014 | Nashville, TN |
| WordCamp Columbus | August 1-2, 2014 | Columbus, OH |
| TBEX Europe | October 20-24 | Athens, Greece |
2013
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| New Media Expo (Formerly BlogWorldExpo) | January 06-08, 2013 | Las Vegas, NV |
| Travel Blogger’s Expo | May 31 – June 02, 2013 | Toronto, ON, Canada |
| Y’all Connect | July 23, 2013 | Birmingham, AL |
| Travel Blogger’s Expo | October 03-04, 2013 | Dublin, Ireland |
| BarCamp Nashville | November 02, 2013 | Nashville, TN |
2012
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| PodCamp Nashville | April 14, 2012 | Nashville, TN |
| WordCamp Nashville | April 21, 2012 | Nashville, TN |
| BlogWorldExpo NY | June 05-07, 2012 | New York, NY |
| WordCamp NYC | June 09-10, 2012 | New York, NY |
| NCDevCon | Sept 29-30, 2012 | Raleigh, NC |
2011
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| WordPress Meetup | January 2011 | Atlanta, GA |
| FirstCamp Nashville | March 04, 2011 | Nashville, TN |
| PodCamp Nashville | March 26, 2011 | Nashville, TN |
| ScoreCon | April 09, 2011 | Birmingham, AL |
| BlogWorldExpo NY | May 24-26, 2011 | New York, NY |
| WordCamp Columbus | June 17-19, 2011 | Columbus, OH |
| WordCamp Fayetteville | July 30-31, 2011 | Fayetteville, AR |
| WordCamp Birmingham | September 17, 2011 | Birmingham, AL |
| Barcamp Nashville | October 15, 2011 | Nashville, TN |
| BlogWorldExpo LA | November 03-05, 2011 | Los Angeles, CA |
2010
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| WordCamp Atlanta | January 08-09, 2010 | Atlanta, GA |
| WordCamp Ohio / PodCamp Ohio | June 19, 2010 | Columbus, OH |
| WordCamp Birmingham | September 18-19, 2010 | Birmingham, AL |
| BarCamp Nashville | October 16, 2010 | Nashville, TN |
| Career Day Discussion | 2010 | Murfreesboro, TN |
2009
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| PodCamp Nashville | March 07, 2009 | Nashville, TN |
| BarCamp Birmingham | May 02, 2009 | Birmingham, AL |
| BarCamp Chattanooga | August 01, 2009 | Chattanooga, TN |
| Social South Conference | August 21, 2009 | Birmingham, AL |
| WordCamp Birmingham | September 26-27, 2009 | Birmingham, AL |
| BlogWorldExpo | October 15-17, 2009 | Las Vegas, NV |
| Fellowship CEO Group | 2009 | Brentwood, TN |
| Middle Tennessee State University – Panel Discussion | 2009 | Murfreesboro, TN |
| Career Day Discussion | 2009 | Murfreesboro, TN |
2008
| Event Name | Date | Event Location |
| PodCamp Nashville | February 09, 2008 | Nashville, TN |
| Voices that Matter Web Design Conference | June 10-13, 2008 | Nashville, TN |
| PodCamp Ohio | June 28, 2008 | Columbus, OH |
| WordCamp Birmingham | September 27-28, 2008 | Birmingham, AL |
| BarCamp Memphis | October 16, 2008 | Memphis, TN |
| BarCamp Nashville | October 18, 2008 | Nashville, TN |