My name is Maria, I boarded Vast Forward in 2016 as a project manager and event coordinator. Back then I was still based in Paris and Barcelona but moved back home since, now working and living in Dresden, Germany.

What I can say after several years of working at Vast Forward is the versatility of each day, not one being like the other which sometimes makes it difficult to plan ahead. We are working in a fast-paced environment and timings are often short-noticed, forcing us to be reactionary.

I usually start my day with a run or walk along the Elbe river, followed by taking care of my daughter and dropping her off at daycare. Around 9 AM I start planning my day (as much as possible) and communicate the daily tasks with our developers via Slack.

Today on the agenda are two client calls: a WordPress training session for a client whose website went live recently and a kick-off call for a new maintenance project for an existing website. As I’m going to be on maternity leave soon, my colleague Jenny will join the call to meet the clients. In addition, we will deliver a larger mailing campaign today consisting of eight newsletters.
Next week, another website is going live so I will do a comprehensive testing round on various devices and browsers, providing feedback to the developers for the last bits.

For lunch, I have a date planned with a friend at the soup kitchen around the corner. Usually, I’m trying to have at least one lunch date per week. It feels great, since working-from-home means not seeing anyone otherwise.

After lunch I start to practice my presentation for our Vast Class on banner display campaigns with my dear colleague Simone, who is working from Denmark. The recording is planned in the next few days aiming to create a helpful video-tutorial for our clients.

Just now detailed feedback arrived for a recent mailing campaign that was processed by a new delivery service provider. Time is short because we have to send the mailing today, so I immediately go through it with our developer.

A new banner campaign for a sunny holiday destination just came in. I’ll prepare the cost estimate straight away and notify one of our developers about it. The holiday feelings are already setting in 🙂

For now I am done with client calls. A new cost estimate was requested so I am quickly going to discuss it with the developer.

Now an inquiry for an interactive PDF in German and French has come up – needed this week! The assigned developer is available, wonderful!

The mailing campaign is now finished and tested which I’m immediately going to deliver to our client in Düsseldorf.

The technical feedback from the delivery service provider, however, raises some questions – we quickly set up a call for it. This helps in moments where time is of essence. And actually we managed to retrieve all the information necessary so the developer is starting the last tweaks and we can deliver in the evening.

An error message from a cookie banner on a website just reached me. We quickly fixed it!

It’s almost 4 PM – time to pick my daughter up from daycare connected with a nice walk.

Since we have all necessary tools on the phone, I can react and work on the go. This is essential for urgent projects and requests, especially because my daughter never gets ruffled on the way home.

Once at home we have a small snack and I’m continuing working on the urgent tasks that can’t wait til tomorrow. My partner also arrived home and takes care of our daughter.

As always, the day has flown by and all clients are happy – it’s time to call it in. And tomorrow? We will see what the day has to offer for me. At 10 AM we have our team-yoga session via Zoom, a wonderful highlight every week.