ach thomas

contemporary app development

Hi, I'm Thomas — or "Ach Thomas" (pronounced with a deep sigh). I manage and build digital products.

I live in Southern Germany and this site is here to give you a brief glimpse of who I am and what I do.

What I do

I've been working as a digital product owner for the last 10+ years. Apart from that I build modern JavaScript web apps (see my stack), which is a true passion of mine.

  • I'm a product owner and I believe that UX is key
  • I'm a software developer with a love for great user interfaces
  • I design user experience striving to deliver enjoyable products that make peoples' lives easier
  • I love working in agile teams
  • I manage websites and apps, ensuring RoI
  • I translate technical jargon for people to understand
  • I screen the market and keep products competitive
  • I manage the development process and I'm always proud when a new baby is born - be it a whole product or one of its features
  • Content is king and I serve him: SEO and content management - yes, Ma'am!
  • Web performance optimization: ain't nobody got time for slow apps

Been there, done that

Here's a pick of projects I have worked on - as a product owner or as a developer.

Curriculum vitae

  • Jul '22 to present

    Product Owner Frontend

    @ Bosch Industrial Additive Manufacturing learn more

    In 2022 I joined yet another startup in yet another industry. When Bosch Industrial Additive Manufacturing (BIAM) approached me I first was a bit skeptical if my lack of knowledge in their industry would make me a good candidate. 3D printing? I had just heard of. But they were looking for someone to take care of UX/UI for their new device, and that's something I know how to do.

    So that's when I joined BIAM as a frontend product owner/developer taking care of our 3D printer's HCI and trying to deliver a great experience for our users.

  • Jul '20 to Jun '22

    Technical Product Owner & Scrum Master

    @ Adam Riese GmbH learn more

    I've spent most of my career in the media industry. After all those years I wanted to try something new and so I joined Adam Riese in mid 2020. So now: insurances. In a corporate startup with young talented people, a totally different way of working together and a pandemic raging outside. What a year! At Adam Riese I started out as a Scrum Master, taking care of two cross-functional product teams. After a year or so I transitioned into the role of a technical product owner.

    Adam Riese is an Insurtech company and part of the W&W Versicherungen family. They have a passion for their business, ambitious goals and a nice tech stack, ranging from a complex single page application on the frontend to AI/ML backed services on the backend.

  • Aug '17 to present

    Freelance Web Developer

    @ by myself learn more

    In 2017 I started working as a freelance fullstack web dev in my spare time. I do have a fulltime job, which pays all my bills, though. I don't do this for the money but for the fun of it. I only take on projects that I like or that challenge me. I love to learn new tech and to expand my stack.

    Projects I have built include metal.de, summer-breeze.de and tagesessen.com.

  • Oct '12 to June '20

    Product manager for digital products

    @ Motor Presse Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG learn more

    Motor Presse Stuttgart is a publisher with a long history and a strong reputation in the automotive industry. auto motor und sport is their most renowned brand, but you may also recognize Men's Health and Women's Health, Mountainbike or Runner's World. All these brands run editorial websites that I have worked for as a product manager.

    Basically, all I did in this position is listed above. Here is a list of all brands that I have worked for:

  • Jun '11 to Sep '12

    Product manager for digital products

    @ EuroTransportMedia Verlags- und Veranstaltungs-GmbH learn more

    Just before my time at Motor Presse Stuttgart I worked for ETM Verlag, a subsidiary of MPS. Their brands include Fernfahrer and lastauto omnibus which deal with utility vehicles.

    In my time at ETM I was responsible for running their websites eurotransport.de and firmenauto.de, two B2B websites for the logistics and car pool management industries.

  • Aug '09 to Jan '17

    Managing partner

    @ versus:media UG learn more

    versus:media UG is the company behind metal.de, one of Europe's most important magazines for Heavy Metal music. I joined metal.de as an editor in 2004 and have had different responsibilities since then. The magazine is one of Europe's oldest online zines and has been around since 1996 (learn more on Wikipedia, in German language only). It has always been run by fans for fans on a voluntary basis. Since it needs to cover its costs I soon began taking care of business. I found a digital media sales company to sell the site's ad space and also acquired clients myself.

    Together with a handful of good friends who were involved in the magazine as well, we founded versus:media in 2009 and acted as the company's managing partner until 2017 when I quit. Since I had built the latest iteration of the website I decided to fully focus on development. Since then I've been working as their sole developer for all technical aspects of the product.

    I had already done a previous relaunch of the site in 2010 - with my sweet young programming skills back then - and: it really sucked (please don't google archive.org). In 2013 we managed to get an agency who did another relaunch on top of a new content architecture and a new editorial concept that I had developed.

  • Jan '09 to May '11

    Portfolio manager

    @ MairDumont Media learn more

    MairDumont Media is an ad sales company and closely related with Marco Polo travel guides. I used to work there as a portfolio manager, which is kind of a key account manager for publishers whose inventory is sold by MairDumont Media. Those clients included tripwolf.com, tiscover.com and some websites of Motor Presse Stuttgart (see above).

    I did a lot of business figure juggling and reporting but also a good amount of technical stuff such as handling the adserver and talking about technical aspects that I had no clue about... but luckily nobody was harmed. ;)

    This was when I felt that I needed to do something about it. I started digging into web technologies and programming. After catching up on some HTML and CSS (which I hadn‘t touched since back in 1999) I soon turned towards JavaScript (hated it) and PHP/MySQL.

  • Sep '06 to Dec '08

    Project manager for Marketing and Internet

    @ Baden-Württemberg International learn more

    Baden-Württemberg International is the state's agency for trade and industry promotion and it was brave enough to offer me my first job after graduating. I used to work there as a content and marketing manager dealing with online and offline communication.

Projects I've worked on

  • May '20 to present

    tagesessen.com

    development learn more

    When Corona hit the entertainment industry hard in 2020, no concerts and festivals could take place that summer. That's when SiLVERDUST (the people behind Summer Breeze Open Air) decided to start a new business besides their flagship and they asked me to build it.

    tagesessen.com is a service for local restaurants, bars, cafeterias and the likes, that offers them to promote their daily specials and menus. The service consists of a server-rendered single page application (for SEO benefits) with geolocalisation feature, a node.js powered REST API and a multi-tenant admin backend for the restaurants to manage their offers, written in React.

    Have a look

    Visit tagesessen.com

    Stack

    • React
    • Next.js
    • Node.js
    • TypeScript
    • MongoDB

    Screenshots

    • tagesessen.com home page
      tagesessen.com features automatic localisation of the user's current geo position
    • tagesessen.com search result page on mobile
      It is a fully responsive server-rendered single page app
    • tagesessen.de restaurant detail page
      Detail pages for restaurants allow the display of detailed menus and business info
    • tagesessen.de restaurant detail page
      Restaurants provide their info and offers via a dedicated admin backend
  • Jan '04 to present

    metal.de

    CEO, concept, development, editorial learn more

    I've been working for metal.de since 2004. Firstly as an editor, then as the business guy and managing partner/CEO, then as a developer. metal.de is run by music enthusiasts on a voluntary basis (learn more on Wikipedia, German language only). I helped building a business and worked as a CEO. I quit in 2017 to fully concentrate on developing the platform technically.

    I have done the latest relaunch (back in 2016) which has taken quite some time. It included a good amount of reverse engineering and migrating a complex data structure of 20 years worth of content unto a new CMS with an improved content structure. The tech stack is based on a highly customized WordPress instance, enhanced by a feature microservice backed by a MongoDB. The backend features multiple custom plugins written in PHP and React. There's also a tight backup strategy in place. Better safe than sorry. I chose WordPress since its ease of use is unmatched (imho) and its developer support is outstanding thanks to its popularity.

    Today I'm the sole developer and product consultant for metal.de.

    Have a look

    Visit metal.de

    Stack

    • WordPress
    • React
    • MongoDB

    Screenshots

    • metal.de home page
      One of Europe's largest Metal magazines
    • metal.de review
      Fully responsive design
    • metal.de gallery
      Awesome images that come to life in epic galleries
    • metal.de soundcheck
      Soundchecks feature a fully responsive design for complex tables that work on every screen size
  • Aug '17

    Paperboy

    development learn more

    Paperboy was a little project I did for Motor Presse Stuttgart in my free time. The company publishes their magazines as ePapers (PDF) on 3rd party platforms such as amazon, Readly or Axel Springer's iKiosk. The publishing process included renaming the files individually for each target platform following complicated naming conventions, then manually uploading them via FTP. This whole process took a lot of time, was error-prone and just a pain in the ass for everyone involved.

    So I wrote a little helper consisting of a Node.js backend and a React client with a custom build setup (I didn't know about the CLI back then). Since it took over the job of accepting a randomly named PDF, bringing its filename into the right form and distributing it to all connected platforms, I called it "Paperboy" (remember the arcade game?). The frontend was lean and communicated with the backend via websockets to allow for real-time feedback (i.e. upload success or failure) from all platforms in an asynchronous, independent way. And everyone lived happily ever after with an estimated time saving of 95%.

    Stack

    • React
    • Node.js
    • Express
    • socket.io

    Screenshots

    • Paperboy home page
      One tool to rule them all
    • Paperboy upload interface
      A simple to use interface...
    • Paperboy date picker
      ... to handle all necessary data
    • Paperboy upload status
      Realtime feedback from all connected platforms
  • May '19

    MOUNTAINBIKE garage web app

    development learn more

    Web apps have come a long way lately and I wanted to prove that it's possible to provide a near-native user experience on the web platform without needing to sacrifice any benefits of the web, such as navigation via URLs or SEO. Still we can have smooth page transitions and a seamless UI when navigating the app.

    Motor Presse Stuttgart runs a successful native tutorial app for MOUNTAINBIKE (iOS/Android), teaching users how to take care of their biking equipment. I decided to take this app as a showcase for my point and rebuilt it as a web app. Since SEO always is a critical factor for a publisher, I opted for Next.js (an SSR framework on top of React) and built a small proof of concept for a server-rendered, SEO-friendly single page application.

    Content is served via Next.js' API feature (added in version 8) which connects to a headless WordPress' JSON API. User authentication and authorization is handled via Firebase. Users can sign up and log in, and may then purchase access to the content.

    Try out the demo

    (Since I don't own any of the original content you will see some adorable stand-ins instead)

    Stack

    • Next.js
    • Node.js
    • WordPress
    • Firebase
  • Aug '16 to present

    Summer Breeze Open Air

    concept & development learn more

    Summer Breeze Open Air is one of Europe's largest Metal festivals with an annual visitor count of about 40.000 metalheads.

    I took over the project in 2016 when they needed a website relaunch. This included a migration from a legacy system to WordPress. Again, I chose WordPress because of its ease of use and self-explanatory features. Summer Breeze requires many custom features. So I set up a new structure which makes content more accessible in an architectural sense.

    The festival has reports about its annual installments which used to be plain articles in the old CMS. With the relaunch I introduced entity relations, so that these reports can now be written in a modular fashion. To make sense of the old articles this required a custom parser which chopped those monolithic articles into their constituing parts. Each of these parts could then be associated with a band entity.

    Each band instance now "knows" when it has played at Summer Breeze festival, can link to its individual mentions and assets such as galleries, that are closely related to it. The whole site is now structured in a band-centric way, which allows for content that is enriched in many ways. References and links to other content entities are easy and do not require manual action.

    Besides all that, the new server and backup setup allowed to bring down hosting costs by 75%.

    Have a look

    Visit summer-breeze.de

    Stack

    • WordPress

    Screenshots

    • Summer Breeze home page
      One of Europe's largest Metal festivals
    • Summer Breeze band detail page
      Bands are the core entity...
    • Summer Breeze festival review post
      ... all content is built around it.
  • Mar '20

    This very site

    concept & development learn more

    This little site you're looking at is a zero-dependency web app and all done by hand in plain old HTML, some sassy CSS and a bit of JavaScript (ES6, bundled and transpiled with Parcel).

    No backend, no CMS, no fancy-pants framework, no Bootstrap, no boilerplate, no caching. Just honest HTML and CSS like in the olden days, delivered by a shared host. Custom written lazyloading and animations bring the initial goodness to you in 340 kB.

    Stack

    • HTML
    • CSS
    • Sass
    • JavaScript

    Screenshots

    • This site's light house scores
      Just sayin'... ;)

Likes & dislikes

Heyyy!

  • Old school metal && contemporary app development
  • My family: my wife and three wonderful kids you wouldn't believe I made
  • I enjoy being with friends and people from different countries and cultures
  • I love working with pros who know their shit - and I‘ve always been lucky enough to have such people around me
  • I love new knowlegde, new people and new experiences
  • Technology
  • Coffee (milk, no sugar)
  • Long road trips and bike rides
  • Celebrating concerts
  • and not to forget a myriad of different music

Naaaa.

  • Intolerance and narrow-mindedness
  • Soccer
  • Medium sparkling water
  • Gummy bears

Tools of the trade

This is my stack. I love great user interfaces and I have the right tools at hand to deliver state-of-the-art experiences. I consider myself fullstack as I cover the whole product: UX/UI, frontend and backend development.

What others say

I asked people to say something nice about me. Here's the best I could get.

  • COO Framily GmbH

    I have worked with Thomas on different projects over the years and I appreciate him as a great colleague and someone to exchange ideas with. His combination of technical expertise, know-how in SEO and product management is impressive and our collaboration has always been very productive.

  • CEO versus:media

    There are enough people out there who think they're an expert. Thomas is one of the few people who don't need to say how invaluable they are - privately and certainly not in his technical skills. A wonderful friend and companion!

  • Former Publisher for Sports magazines at Motor Presse Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG

    Thomas is one of the seldom examples of being excellent in his technical expertise and at the same time being a good business developer. He is always driven by reaching discussed goals and very rational. And not to forget: he is a kind person you‘d love to work with.

  • CEO SiLVERDUST GmbH

    Thomas provides excellent know-how and expertise. He knows how to translate complex technical knowledge into clear and understandable information for his clients, back-end and front-end. While being at least two steps ahead in the whole process, he is demonstrating endurance and is a swift solution provider. Constant hiqh-quality combined with smart and friendly communication all the way, on the professional and the human level.

About me

Thomas portrait
This is me, I was launched in 1980. And here's my Instagram feed (since an image says more than 1,000 words).

Life is better with music

A random pick of stuff I dig:

The bottom line: add me!

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