John Ackerman Email & Phone Number

Phoenix, Arizona, Us

BackslashDev is a creative software studio where software craftsmen, and UI artisans, unite to bring digital solutions to life with precision and flair. Our passion lies in solving problems with web, mobile, and tablet solutions that stand out for their seamless blend of artful design and sophisticated engineering. Every project is an opportunity to deliver an exceptional user experience—pleasant, intuitive, fast, and maintainable.At the heart of our ethos is a commitment to delivering on time, every time. Whether it's a complex web application or a sleek mobile platform, we integrate elegance in engineering with creativity in design to exceed expectations.Key Focus Areas:Business Intelligence: We thrive on unveiling the stories hidden within data. Our expertise spans from dynamic reporting and data warehousing to crafting custom dashboards for web and mobile. We're passionate about turning data into actionable insights that drive informed business decisions.Mobile-Friendly Websites: Recognizing the shift towards mobile-first browsing, we specialize in responsive web design. We aim to optimize your digital presence for every device, delivering a consistent and delightful user experience.Client-Side Web Applications: Leveraging the latest browser technologies, we create rich, interactive applications that rival native desktop experiences. Our work empowers users with responsive and engaging web interactions.BackslashDev isn't just about building software but crafting experiences that resonate and drive success. Let's embark on this journey together and turn your next project into another success story.

Voice was an innovative conversational AI company ahead of its time. Our patented technology enabled subject matter experts to craft detailed conversational user interfaces that dramatically improved engagement and service between public safety entities and the communities they serve.Voice's flagship application, Case Service, frees up the limited resources of patrol officers in responding to non-emergency situations while enhancing service to citizens. Case Service enables anyone to create a police report using their telephone, mobile device, or desktop computer by answering a series of questions based on the investigative process of a human police officer.The underlying Voice technology platform, Dialogue Framework, has been extended to support many other business needs, including pre-dispatcher triage in the city of Portland, OR, and anonymous access to free resources for victims of sexual assault. As CTO of Voice, I was responsible for the planning, design, and implementation of the full Voice product suite. We focused on high product quality and successfully executing the company's mission through code reviews, instruction, and mentorship. Voice was acquired by one of the top North American companies in public safety, and together, we continue to raise the bar for the quality of service that citizens expect of their local government.

Boston, Ma, Us

• Mobile Application Development - As the Senior Software Engineer I took the lead on bringing the convenience and portability of mobile applications to the legal vertical. Law firms in general are under-represented on the mobile market, while the opportunities for mobile technologies are endless. I created solutions in HTML5, JS, and PhoneGap as well as more native solutions using MonoTouch and Apple's objective C. These solutions communicated with well-secured WCF based web-service back ends to expose potentially sensitive client and case data to mobile devices on uncontrolled networks.• Custom Web Development - In addition to my responsibilities in the mobile space, I also created several custom web solutions using modern, client-side technologies. These applications made extensive use of JavaScript including jQuery and KnockoutJs. Rather than being stuck in the old world of server-side ASP.net webforms, these applications were built to be extremely responsive by taking advantage of the powerful javascript engines present in modern browsers, as well as the HTML5 and CSS3 specs.• Team Member Development - Probably the most important thing that separates a Senior Engineer from others is their ability to provide mentorship and technical direction to more junior members of the team. I frequently paired with others on the team to introduce them to new technologies and help them to further their skills as engineers. Mentorship and the development of people is something that I am very passionate about.

San Diego, Ca, Us

• Web Standards Migration - My biggest task at NCU was taking an existing, 10-year-old legacy codebase written in VB.net and ASP.net web forms (with some classic ASP mixed in for good measure) and modernize it with C#, ASP.net MVC and EntityFramework. There are unique challenges involved in migrating an existing, active site with thousands of users to new technologies with functional improvements while leaving all the legacy systems in tact. It was my job as the technical team leader to meet those challenges head on, and we did so, with great success.• Agile Practices and TDD - As part of our modernization effort, we not only changed the kinds of applications the team was writing, we changed the way in which we wrote them. We moved from a delicate, long-running, siloed development methodology to an extremely fast and flexible, agile methodology. This led to us releasing working software in weeks rather than months and created great credibility for the development team as user problems were quickly addressed and resolved in production as never before. • Desktop Application Development - If migrating the legacy web-based solution to modern web standards wasn't hard enough, we also undertook migrating a portion of it to the desktop. While now, 4 years later this seems an odd decision given the great power of today's web, back then it made perfect sense. Our customers wanted to integrate with systems that didn't play well with the web and wanted some to have interactions with the application, which, at that time, were not part of the web paradigm. Using WPF and C#, with EntityFramework we developed a custom desktop solution for the admissions team. Our initial migration of the admissions team process led to a dramatic increase in outgoing call volume and streamlined their work in huge ways.

Pasadena, Ca, Us

JPL was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. As a child I wanted nothing more than to work for NASA and thought that would be the pinnacle of my career. Instead, it turned out to be just the beginning. JPL is in charge of the the robotic exploration of space. During my time on the lab, they just happened to be working on the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) project. It was a fortuitous time to be a young engineer at the lab as I was able to contribute to the MSL project itself with data transformation logic for various sensors as part of their communication with JPL's overall deep space network. This was a fascinating look at what it takes to do software engineering at the most extreme level....software on another planet.In addition to the development work, I also did a lot of work on the development of the ground data team's Service Oriented Architecture registry. The lab wanted to purchase an off the shelf solution for the SOA registry so my job was to develop an evaluation plan and associated testing tools for those off the shelf solutions as well as do an initial analysis of the capabilities of each. In the end, I love what NASA does, but when it came time to take the next step in my career I took it elsewhere. When you send technology millions of miles away you can't afford to be particularly innovative or creative, you aren't working on the latest and greatest platforms but rather tried and tested means and methodologies. This is great for them, and fulfills their needs perfectly. But for me, I needed to be on the bleeding edge...