Dear friends and colleagues

I hope this email finds you well and looking forward to a long and enjoyable summer and rewarding Christmas season – both personally and professionally.

We have news to share with you.

First, we are delighted to announce that our APAC director of sales Jen Sherrin and her partner Mitch Hancock have had their first child. Reggie Hancock was born on 19 October, weighing 3.75kg. After an arduous labour (to put it mildly – we think Jen deserves a bloody medal), mother and baby and dad are all doing well.

Jen and Reggie are now back at home and getting used to their new family life. We wish Jen well during her maternity leave – although, truth be told, she was responding to emails 24 hours after the birth, so at this point even us futurologists would be hard-pressed to predict how long it will be before she’s back at her desk. 

In the meantime, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Thomas Rees, a stalwart of The Future Laboratory team who has valiantly decided to up sticks and move to Melbourne to cover for Jen. Thomas, his fiancé Josh and cat Ben will be moving over the Christmas break and he'll be meeting as many of you as possible in the months to come.

And finally, after 15 years of Trend Briefings in Sydney and Melbourne, Martin and I have decided to have an events holiday in 2019 and will not be delivering our Trend Briefings or Futures Forums. We will, however, still be coming over in February and working with our private clients and delivering our presentations in-house. We do hope we get to see as many of you as possible while we’re down under and hope you won’t miss us too much. If it’s all too much to bear, do get in touch with Thomas about arranging for us to come and deliver a personal presentation to you in your board room, lecture theatre, canteen, kitchen, back garden or front porch – we’re very accommodating.

Once again, have an enjoyable and profitable few months, and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in the New Year.

Chris, Martin, Jen, Thomas and The Future Laboratory team