Sperske
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S P E R S K E
/spər - skē/

Jason.Sperske.com

I write a lot of software

Projects I have started

XRAE

What Is It?

XRAE is the most advanced project I have ever created. Built on a custom taglib based framework, and utilizing 8 programming languages (including one custom language called Risk Meta Language for which I have submitted a patent application). XRAE is a risk assessment platform with a single questionnaire (with over 600 personal medical questions) and over 100,000 underwriting rules programmed in a web based authoring environment that assesses the health class for 13 leading insurance carriers. XRAE is used as a pre-screener for a growing list of insurance carriers as well as a customer manager for thousands of field agents.

I grew this company from the initial idea, to the ultimate delivered product which in now maintained by sales people, technical support and underwriting experts.

What Technologies Did I Use?

XRAE is both a Java Web Application as well as a .NET Web Service (I ported the core library from Java to C#). It is supported by a rich array of Bash scripts and Ant based build automation and unit testing. It contains a full XML API (with XSL to style output) and links to 3rd party back end systems for extending the functionality of XRAE. It also has a SOAP based Web Service layer and SAML based authentication, and has a rich reporting API and a suite of reporting utilities. For the "find similar" feature demonstrated in the screen cast above, I wrote Java code that interfaced our Quote XML standard with Apache Lucene to leverage the wisdom of the network in making better underwriting decisions. On this project I was the inventor, architect, programmer (Java, JavaScript, C#, Bash, Ant, WSDL, XSL), CSS/HTML designer, system administrator (from a load balanced array of Ubuntu Linux servers, to the current configuration of managed servers at RackSpace running Red Hat Linux). I also wrote and composed the screen casts and early sales PowerPoints.

Degree Designer

What Is It?

Building on FastSchedule.net the Degree Designer takes a dramatic leap forward in functionality. The Blue Jay Degree Designer is an automated advisement system that manages Student/Counselor communication, provides dynamic and interactive Ed Plan, Semester Plan and Schedule building as well as rich reporting of Student Trends, Success Analysis and Program Effectiveness.

The Blue Jay Degree Designer effectively interfaces with SIS, Degree Audit , and Transcript Articulation systems. The Blue Jay Degree Designer can take a student from the initial counselor meeting (or group counseling session) all the way to a fully approved Ed Plan and Semester Plan, and then track the student's progress, continually reporting their progress to all interested departments (including off campus departments) and with the Optimizer, provide perfect course schedules to keep the student on track. The system can even warn the student of limited availability of their classes before your catalogs are sent to the printer.

The Blue Jay Degree Designer can automatically process incoming transcript data when building an Ed Plan so a student is always aware of not only just what is required of them, but how much they have already completed.

The Degree Designer also allows students to be personally tracked by individual counselors, through its messaging system. Complex decisions can either require human approval before they become accepted or the decisions can be defined in a set of automated rules to increase your counseling department's capacity to provide assistance. All information is saved electronically and can be mined for useful statistics either by our own reporting engine or through industry standard tools such as Crystal Reports. We can even setup Sister/Feeder College relationships with districts so that students who have declared "Transfer" as one of their goals can have their Ed Plans and progress sent ahead of them to the school that they intend to transfer into.

What Technologies Did I Use?

Degree Designer was built entirely in Java. Using Tomcat as the app container, and MySQL and MSSQL for the back end (it used a custom ORM called libBlueJay, this was developed before Hibernate was a viable solution). It also comprised of a suite of command line utilities to merge data from legacy Student Information Systems. The interface was 100% valid XHTML with sparing use of JavaScript and no 3rd party plug-ins (Flash) or pop-ups. On this project I was the architect, developer, system administrator graphic designer and content author.

FastSchedule.net

What Is It?

FastSchedule.net is a powerful web application that acts like a search engine for student schedules. A student is free to add classes directly from your existing catalog (through our simple interface) and enter multiple personal restrictions (like no classes between 11:15 AM and 4:00 PM on Monday or Wednesday) and at each point FastSchedule.net will respond in real time with all available schedules found.

FastSchedule.net can take into account, full or canceled classes, awkward gaps between courses and even multiple campuses (by not suggesting a schedule that has two or more courses that would be impossible to commute between). It even attempts to find the best possible schedules by distributing hard classes as evenly as possible across the week so that no one day is too difficult.

Each decision made by the student causes the possible schedules to adjust instantly. It even warns the student when no possible combination can be found and offers specific advice on what to do. The application logs all access and usage and can provide detailed reports on not just what classes students looked for, but how many options were available at the time. Imagine seeing all the efforts of every potential student who tried to balance their life and school and was turned away.

What Technologies Did I Use?

FastSchedule.net was built entirely in Java. Using Tomcat as the app container, and MySQL and MSSQL for the back end (it used a custom ORM called libBlueJay, this was developed before Hibernate was a viable solution). It also comprised of a suite of command line utilities to merge data from legacy Student Information Systems. The interface was 100% valid XHTML with sparing use of JavaScript and no 3rd party plug-ins (Flash) or pop-ups. On this project I was the architect, developer, system administrator, CSS/HTML designer and content author.

Radio Mixtape

What Is It?

Radio Mixtape was a social music sharing service that enabled fans to express their musical identity with the songs that bands would host on their websites (A "Radio Mixtape" is a mixtape made up songs played on the radio). This was also a laboratory to experiment with more cutting edge code that my education software company had a need for. As Radio Mixtape grew to became a music promotion company representing a handful of local artists and a great way to go to introduce my self to artists that I respected.

I set out to build Radio Mixtape with the hope of meeting all members of Counting Crows. It led me to Australia, invited to hip exclusive concerts in Hollywood. Radio Mixtape stretched my JavaScript abilities, and gave me real experience running a system that scaled out to tens of thousands of users.

What Technologies Did I Use?

Radio Mixtape was a Java web application (built on the same code base as the Blue Jay Education projects). Using Tomcat as the app container, and MySQL for the back end (it used a custom ORM called libBlueJay, this was developed before Hibernate was a viable solution). It also comprised of a suite of command line utilities to manage the growing media library as well as a rich API and a few Windows utilities that sent alerts of new mixtapes or allowed a mixtape to be burned to a CD. The interface was 100% valid XHTML with advanced use of JavaScript and Flash. On this project I was the architect, developer, system administrator, CSS and HTML designer and content author, as well as the manager of artists and label relationships.

MixBox.mobi

What Is It?

MixBox.mobi took the sharing aspect of Radio Mixtape and made it available on mobile phones using a duel WML 1.0 (think the Nokia 7110 from 1999) and XHTML-MP (phones from 2002 to today), interface and email and SMS sharing.

What Technologies Did I Use?

MixBox.mobi was a Java web application (built on the same code base as the Blue Jay Education projects). Using Tomcat as the app container, and MySQL for the back end (it used a custom ORM called libBlueJay, this was developed before Hibernate was a viable solution). The interface was 100% valid XHTML-MP and WML 1.0 (with cleaver use of WML Cards). On this project I was the architect, developer, system administrator, XHTML-MP and WML designer and content author, as well as the manager of artists and label relationships.