Grüessech!

My name is Timo Grossenbacher and, so far, my whole professional career has revolved around the intersection of technology and journalism.

I have 10+ years of experience working in the media industry, from starting as an interactive news developer to working five years as a data journalist at the Swiss public broadcast SRF. Since 2020, I specialize in the field of journalistic automation. At Swiss publisher Tamedia I created and fulfilled the role of Head of Newsroom Automation, where I led a team of engineers and journalists. Since early 2024 I am a self-employed consultant & software engineer.

Contact me through timo(at)timogrossenbacher.ch, check out my GitHub account and follow me on Twitter.

Education & skills

I’m a geographer by training. I hold a MSc degree in Geographic Information Science from the University of Zurich. I also completed a minor in environmental science and computer science. Some years into working as a media professional, I underwent a two year training in data science (including design thinking, information engineering, and machine learning).

It's fair to call me a generalist with a strong specialization in technology, from data analysis to software engineering: I can build a full-stack application in Python and React and deploy it to the cloud with CI/CD. At the same time, I'm a strong communicator and know how to bring a story to paper, having a track record of multiple award-winning journalistic publications.

Teaching & speaking

I teach data journalism, automation, and applied AI at various higher education institutions like MAZ and ZHAW. During the last years I have spoken at countless conferences & events: here some examples.

Over at DataCamp I'm an instructor for «Communicating with Data in the Tidyverse», «Introduction to Relational Databases», and«Web Scraping in R» .

Side projects & duties

For three years in a row (2021-24), I was the Jury president of the Swiss Press Award's «Online» category. Also, I was a long-time board member of investigativ.ch, the Swiss association of investigative journalists. With my step into self-employment I gave up these duties.

Currently, I put most of my spare time into my beloved side project for researching night train tickets across Europe: nightride.com. Together with two friends I recently founded a company to boost the project.

Last but not least, I'm a proud ski tour guide for the Swiss Alpine Club.

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