CommonPlaces, Inc. is extremely pleased to announce that Chris Johnson has joined the company as Director of Development. Mr. Johnson's extraordinary background as a developer using different frameworks, and a broad knowledge of the core languages that those frameworks were built upon, makes him ideally suited to lead the CommonPlaces' team of gifted developers who work on multiple platforms.
School
Mr. Johnson's life as a professional programmer began at the age of 12. While in high school he wrote embedded software for a solar house controller, even developing a language to simplify the house controller.
He attended the highly regarded Computer Science and Engineering School at Michigan State University, where he learned good programming methods as well as procedures for safely administrating large scale systems.
Early career
After leaving college he joined Cray Research as an on-site analyst, where he provided support for two Cray Supercomputers located at a DoD site. While there, Mr. Johnson started contributing to theBRLCAD package and was one of the primary developers. He moved on to become the Director of Software for a DoD contracting firm, as well as the head of an Internet Service Provider. Johnson later bought the ISP from the parent company, running it for a number of years before selling the company.
He was a development lead for a number of projects for the US Army; notably one which featured large scale modelling of terrain at high resolution rendering in real time. Mr. Johnson was part of the team that proposed a Linux-based Supercomputer cluster, and also served as the lead software developer for radar and millimeter wave simulation software based on BRLCAD.
He then put his skills as a technician and customer support specialist to use as a member of the Tier III support team for Sun Microsystems. Mr. Johnson became the technical leader for multiple teams supporting Sun Microsystems products in both hardware and software.
Expertise
Along the way he has written multiple websites using different frameworks, and is considered an expert in whole stack development. Most recently, Chris Johnson was the lead developer/Technical Operations Manager for a large scale e-commerce website which included database design, functional definitions, user interface, and user experience.
'"My primary weakness is that I am more interested in making it work right than in having it look pretty," Mr. Johnson says. "Fortunately, I have other people who will make it look pretty."
CommonPlaces is a nationally recognized digital agency specializing in web development, inbound marketing, and online strategy. In recognizing that every business is unique, CommonPlaces proudly offers customizable, open-source solutions for its clients.