Customer story written by Feli and Marcus, founders of DNX Global
We never really planned to become digital nomads and build a business around it. It all came together when Feli wanted to escape her 9-5 job again and planned to travel through Southeast Asia. At the same time, after quitting his job in a start-up company, her boyfriend Marcus was about to start his own business as a freelancer. So, they started traveling together and working on the go.
While being on the road and living the Digital Nomad lifestyle for the very first time, they got to know a few other Digital Nomads and organized a meetup with them. Over time, more and more people got interested in that lifestyle. The community has grown enormously! Today, the DNX Community connects over 18.000 DNXies. Also, the DNX Festival 2018 in Berlin is going to attract more than 1000 Digital Nomads. The interest and demand in the Digital Nomad lifestyle are growing very fast and we’re happy to witness it flourish.
DNX founders working at the beach in Taganga, Columbia
Managing a remote team with ActiveCollab
So, we at DNX are the epitome of remote work. We are doing projects that help and connect Digital Nomads, like our DNX Festival, DNX Camps, DNX Backpack, DNX Tools and DNX Podcast, to mention a few. Our whole team is traveling and working from all over the world and it’s not uncommon that we only know each other through Skype. *So what could be better than a perfectly structured place where we can organize and distribute our tasks efficiently - online!?
DNX founders working in a Co-working space in Bali, Indonesia
Here at DNX, we organize all of our projects with ActiveCollab and we couldn’t be happier about it! It gives us a nice and clean overview of the tasks that need to be done, who is working on them, and their current status. Since we are a fast moving team and everyone works in a different time zone, ActiveCollab helps us not to lose track. We love how ActiveCollab is easy to learn and use, which saves us time during the introductory training.
Organizing our projects with ActiveCollab
Depending on the type of project, we divide them into smaller parts that help us establish a better overview and structure. An event, such as our global “DNX Festival in Lisbon”, is structured into time milestones like “pre-event”, “shortly before & during the event”, and “after event”. The tasks of a large project such as “Customer Happiness & Administration” are structured into several departments like “Administration”, “Customer Support”, “Business Development”, etc.
What I find especially helpful is the “My Work” board, since it gives a really clean and helpful overview about new comments on tasks that I have subscribed to as well as my upcoming to-do’s. Also, being able to subscribe colleagues to tasks makes the whole team stay in the loop and making reports help us keep track of everything.
ActiveCollab and our DNX Podcast
In addition to our German DNX podcast, we recently launched a new podcast edition for our English speaking audience - which is all about lifestyle, success, and health topics. Such a launch needed a lot of pre-organization! We required a podcast host, interview guests, an editorial plan, design, landing page, and so on. So ActiveCollab was the perfect tool to help us with this! Particularly because it is so easy to add new team members, update them on a regular basis, and communicate via comments.
Here we are planning our next to-dos for the DNX podcasts, such as new episodes, content, and new designs. There are a lot of comments per tasks. We love the space for discussions and can easily keep everyone on track.
In the tasks pertaining to a new DNX podcast episode, we add the description about the topic as well as important links to the interview guest. So from this task, we create new tasks - such as social media posts, editing the podcast episode, and publishing it on the desired platforms.
Further, smarter, better
Since the DNX team started using ActiveCollab, our productivity and efficiency have increased immensely. Especially for our remote team, as it’s easier than ever to work together, be very agile, and keep everyone on track. ActiveCollab is also the perfect tool for our Operations Manager to stay on top of things, assign tasks, and to help wherever necessary.
We feel privileged that we’re able to live the Digital Nomad lifestyle and love the freedom and independence that comes with it. Traveling around the world and meeting new people and cultures inspires us so much. And thus, we want to support everyone who dreams about this and wants to break free from ordinary life. We are thrilled that we chose ActiveCollab as our sidekick!
So far the biggest DNX Festival in 2017