Who is John Deubert?John Deubert has been teaching all his life. In high school, while his classmates were working at MacDonald's or its equivalent, John was teaching guitar to adults, something he continued to do through his college years. His professional career has always involved teaching one way or another: A Foundation in Education; Moved to AdobeJohn was a teacher for many years at the prestigious Castilleja School for Girls, where he taught science and math and developed their first computer curriculum. John left Castilleja in 1984 to become employee number 19 at a tiny, obscure startup company named Adobe Systems. As a customer support engineer (before the company had proper customers), John wrote the PostScript Language Tutorial, the front half of Adobe’s standard “Blue Book.” He also put together Adobe’s first classes in PostScript, teaching small groups from Adobe OEMs as they signed up for their first PostScript printers. John left Adobe Systems in 1985 to start a software company in San Diego, California. During this time, he continued working for Adobe as a consultant, doing programming, course development, and teaching. Acquired Knowledge, Inc.
An important reason for the quality of Acquired Knowledge’s training was John’s strong control over the instructors and their training. AKI’s instructors were programmers whom John taught to become excellent teachers.
Finally, in 1997, Acquired Knowledge started teaching popular classes in Acrobat and Enfocus’ PitStop. These classes introduced the use of Acrobat for printed and interactive documents to many hundreds of people, all of whom praised them for their clarity, quality, and value. By the end of its eleven-year run, Acquired Knowledge was Adobe’s only authorized PostScript trainer in North America and western Europe. They had taught classes to countless engineers in every major printer, software, and printing company, including Hewlett Packard, Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, R.R. Donnelley, Toshiba, Samsung, and Adobe Systems, itself. During this time, John was the controlling force in Acquired Knowledge’s classes and curriculum. He designed and wrote every class that they taught and controlled the training of all of their instructors. Acumen Training
All Acumen Training courses use specialized editors (TextPDF, TextPS, and TextPDF) that allow students to examine and hand-modify their classroom exercises. And now, Acumen Educational Services
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What’s he doing now?Another First Steps Books
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In 1990, John was co-founder of Acquired Knowledge, Inc. (AKI), a training and software company
specializing in PostScript. Under his direction, Acquired Knowledge quickly became known as
one of the very best technical training companies. Students routinely described AKI classes as being
the best technical classes they had ever taken. John, himself, received a Xerox Excellence in Teaching
award.
John was also a programmer at Acquired Knowledge. He co-wrote the Macintosh version of AKI’s
award-nominated Download Mechanic software; he later did the Windows port of the same software.
In February 2001, the principals of Acquired Knowledge dissolved the company and went their separate
ways. John continues to teach PostScript and Acrobat classes as Acumen Training. Based in Dana Point, California,
John teaches classes in PostScript and PDF throughout North America, Europe,
and Asia. (Fortunately, he enjoys travel.)
In 2013, in an effort to stay a little closer to home, John decided to return to his professional roots
and first love: teaching math and science to middle and high school students.
He launched a new company: Acumen Educational Services. Under this umbrella, John offers two
services:
John conducts his tutoring and home-school sessions in the Acumen office in San Juan Capistrano. He
also teaches home-schooled students in their homes.
John has written three books for Peachpit Press; two of these were for the co-branded Adobe Press:
John recently expanded Acumen Training's activities to include consulting and a series of e-books
collectively referred to as QEDGuides.
The first QEDGuide has recently been released: 
John has just released a new book in his First Steps series. These books are intended to provide a very short introductions to a technical topic.