MY STORY
From PEI computers to software engineering.
I'm Mark Shaw. I grew up in Crapaud, Prince Edward Island, building websites, taking computers apart, and looking for any excuse to spend more time around technology. Eventually people started paying me to do it. Today, I'm based in Calgary, Alberta.
00 / WHERE IT STARTED
Before I had a career, I just kept finding things to build.
I grew up in Crapaud, Prince Edward Island, and some of my earliest memories of figuring out what I wanted to do revolve around computers.
By 2011 I was running a little gaming site called Game Central. It started on WordPress, grew to more than 100 games, had people contributing to it, and later got rebuilt on Webs.com. It was not exactly a startup, but I was learning how websites worked by actually running one: content, users, comments, search, hosting, domains, and all the little things that break once other people start using something you made.
South Shore Computing was a local computer shop in Crapaud run by Robert Todd. I knew Rob, went into the shop, asked him computer questions, and by late 2011 I was even emailing him when I noticed problems on the local Community Access Program website. When Grade 9 Take Your Kid to Work came around, South Shore Computing was where I wanted to go. I wanted to work with computers that badly.
Another person who mattered a lot in those years was Neila Auld. I had known Neila since I was a baby; her family was part of my life growing up. She was involved with the Community Access Program, and she was the person who got me my first real technology job there.
-13First tech job
Crapaud · TechPEI · Community Access Program
Then somebody trusted me with the computers.
From October 2012 through November 2013 I worked through the Community Access Program / Keeping Connected and the Government of PEI. I was still in school, but it was a real paid job with scheduled hours and real responsibility.
I kept the computers and network running, fixed whatever stopped working, helped people get online, and spent a lot of time teaching people how to use computers. Some were seniors who had barely used one before. I also got to do website and development work alongside the day-to-day computer stuff.
Sarah Bulman and James Muhato were on the Government of PEI side and supervised my work. I still have an old timesheet email from James where I tell him I will send the missing one after school, which is a pretty good snapshot of that period of my life.
I did not know it at the time, but that job set the pattern for a lot of what came later: learn the system, fix the thing that is broken, explain it to somebody else, and then build something better if the existing tools are not good enough.
-14Build everything
Websites · DJing · experiments · a lot of bad ideas
I had a lot of little projects.
Game Central was only one of them. I built sites for local organizations and people, experimented with hosting and domains, and generally had more ideas than I had any business trying to maintain.
My friend Tyler Matheson and I had an early DJ company called TM DJing. Tyler and I were already the kind of friends who would talk about computers and software, and he later ended up competing in Skills as well.
I also built or worked on things for the Crapaud Community Hall, Kelly's Cross, my dad's plumbing business, Press Start PEI, and a pile of projects that ranged from useful to very obviously made by teenagers learning as they went.
In early 2014 I met Boo Muirhead from QuickFixPEI. I had already been making websites and teaching myself code, but Boo is the person I remember making programming feel serious. Within weeks we were talking about code, networking, variables, proof-of-concepts and how things actually worked under the hood. We went on to mess around with projects like YouTools, WreckTheTech and plenty of other experiments.
That was the point where programming stopped feeling like one part of building websites and started becoming something I wanted to get genuinely good at.
-16Competitor years
Electronics · Mechatronics · Mobile Robotics
Skills Canada gave me somewhere to put all of that energy.
I competed through Skills Canada PEI in Electronics, Mechatronics and Mobile Robotics, and medaled across those areas. Robotics became the one that really stuck.
My three high-school trips to Nationals actually went Robotics, Electronics, Robotics. I went to Toronto in 2014 for Mobile Robotics. In 2015 I won Robotics provincially, but I had also taken silver in Electronics. When the Electronics gold medalist couldn't make Nationals, that spot came to me. I chose Electronics for Saskatoon and another friend joined our Robotics team — back when the Robotics teams were four people. Then I went back to Mobile Robotics for Nationals in Moncton in 2016.
Competition suited me. There was a problem, a pile of parts, a rulebook, a deadline, and usually something going wrong at the worst possible time. By 2016 I was emailing the national technical committee to ask whether we could write software for a fully autonomous robot instead of only driving it manually.
I was always trying to figure out how far the rules would let us push the robot.
That curiosity ended up mattering later, because I eventually went from asking the technical committee questions to sitting on it.
Skills Canada PEI still has my old testimonial live on its Provincial Competition page: “Participating in skills showed me what I had a passion for and why I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.” They list me under Electronics, Mechatronics, Robotics and Business Applications. I had been away from the competitor side for years by the time I rediscovered it, which makes the fact that it is still there pretty special.
-24Making it the job
Servers · Linux · software · infrastructure
The side projects turned into my career.
In October 2016 I joined Server Sitters in Charlottetown doing Tier 1 technical support. A couple of months later I moved into a Developer / Tier 3 role. That job threw me into production servers, Linux and Windows administration, networking, monitoring, websites, VoIP, internal tools, and the wonderful experience of fixing things while somebody is waiting for them to work again.
In December 2017 I moved to IPGeeks as a Senior Developer, where I spent the next several years building software around networks, monitoring, support operations and internal systems.
In 2022 I joined ProServeIT as a Senior Software Engineer. My work there included systems integration, networking and secure connectivity, internal and customer-facing tools, architecture, monitoring, mentoring, reviews, testing and documentation.
The technologies got bigger and the systems got more important, but the part I enjoyed never changed much: understanding how all the pieces fit together and making something useful out of the mess.
Skills Canada · Mobile Robotics
I went from competing to helping run the thing.
In 2017, not long after my competitor years ended, I moved onto the technical side of Skills. I was a PEI Robotics co-chair and began serving at the national level on the Mobile Robotics National Technical Committee.
I liked being on that side because I remembered exactly what it was like to be the competitor staring at a rule and wondering what it actually meant. I could help write questions, work through technical problems, support competitors and instructors, and help make the competition better.
That year I also helped with the Repair Café during Holland College's Campus Tour Day, part of a series of hands-on trade experiences organized by Skills Canada P.E.I.
I was there supporting the Repair Café during Campus Tour Day.
Even after I left PEI, I kept helping with the provincial side when technical questions came up. The national work continued too, eventually moving with me from representing PEI to representing Alberta.
IT Software Solutions · Holland College
I went back and competed one more time.
While I was at Holland College, I entered Skills PEI again in IT Software Solutions. By then I was already helping on the organizing and technical side, but competing was still fun and I wanted one more shot at it.
I finished second provincially. It was a nice little bookend to the competitor side of Skills before I settled fully into helping run competitions instead.
Problematic · “Lie” official music video
Some projects needed more than code.
I worked as the fire safety supervisor and stunt coordinator on “Lie,” an official music video by PEI hip-hop artist Problematic. My role combined on-set fire-safety oversight with planning and coordinating stunt work for the production.
Watch “Problematic – Lie” on YouTube →
A Small Fortune · PEI feature film
In 2019, I provided ATV stunt coordination, instruction and safety support for A Small Fortune, the Prince Edward Island feature film written and directed by Adam Perry and produced by Jason Arsenault. The work put me alongside an Island production crew that included Nathan Carter and Jeremy Larter, coordinating the ATV action required for the film.
Wrong Horse Productions · “Alone” music video
One project involved a car rollover.
I served as stunt co-ordinator on the music video for “Alone” by PEI hip-hop artist Greg MacDonald, known as Problematic. The production included coordinating a staged car rollover, with the car stunts performed in collaboration with Island Auto Supply.
It was a very different kind of technical problem: plan the effect, coordinate the people and equipment, and make a dramatic moment work safely on camera.
-26Technical leadership
PEI · Alberta · National Technical Committee
Somehow, I am still spending a lot of time around robots.
Over the years my role in Mobile Robotics grew from competitor, to provincial organizer, to national technical committee member and chair. When I moved west, I became involved with Skills Alberta as well while continuing the national work.
In 2026 I also built a custom scoring and event-management system for a robotics competition. It handles the stuff competitors rarely see: schedules, judging, live displays, standings, timers, playoffs and the constant stream of little event-day changes that normally live in spreadsheets and people's heads.
That same year, Skills/Compétences Canada gave me a Certificate of Recognition for my contribution to the success of the national Mobile Robotics competition in Toronto. That meant a lot to me. I had first gone to Nationals as a kid from PEI with a robot; more than a decade later I was still there, just on the other side of the field.
August 2026 · Canadian web hosting
I launched a Canadian hosting provider.
In August 2026 I launched DotMoose.com, a Canadian-operated hosting provider built to keep hosting straightforward, affordably priced, and easy to get support for. Customer hosting and storage stay on Canadian servers, plans are billed in Canadian dollars, and monthly options avoid requiring a multi-year commitment.
DotMoose launched with shared web hosting from C$5.99 per month and Canadian backup storage from C$29 per month, alongside domains, VPS, dedicated servers, migration help, and one account for hosting, billing, and support.
STILL BUILDING
I never really grew out of it.
I still like the same things I liked when I was a kid in Crapaud: figuring out how something works, fixing it when it doesn't, and building the thing I wish already existed. These days that can mean software, infrastructure, automation, AI, running a Canadian hosting provider, a weird hardware project, or apparently another robotics competition.
I am still piecing together some of the old stories, projects and photos from the early years. There was a lot more than fits on one page. But the basic thread is pretty simple: I wanted to work with computers, people gave me chances to do that, and I kept going.