Message from the Managing Director at the occasion of our 25th Anniversary
We love what we do!
How lucky am I to come to work every day and love what I’m doing! I enjoy the banter with the team and revel in helping our clients with whatever problems they send our way. The coffee’s pretty good too! OK, sure, there may be some mundane moments – filling out tender documents and reviewing contracts aren’t high on my ‘enjoyment’ scale – but most of the time it’s a pleasure to be at work.
Mostly it’s a quiet office with lots of reading, thinking, typing and mouse-clicking, but start a discussion on the latest dispersion models, or some complicated analytics algorithm, and you’re sure to hear some passionate debate!
The Katestone team is a highly-skilled group whose important contributions to our business success are evidenced by the great work environment we’ve created here and reflected in high staff retention, with an average tenure of over seven years.
Where do we see ourselves in 10 years?
At a recent lunchtime staff meeting we took time to gaze into the crystal ball and imagine what Katestone might look like in the future. Our inspiration was taken from the CSIRO’s ‘Our Future World’ report by Stefan Hajkowicz (you may remember him from our 25th Birthday celebrations). We looked at how three of these six future ‘global megatrends’ might impact on our business.
The ‘Going, going… gone?’ megatrend examines the perilous situation of the world’s ecological habitats and biodiversity, including greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. For us, we could see a larger focus on renewables and less on resources. A need to expand on our current climate risk services and greenhouse gas assessments, and the development of new eco-system services.
The ‘Virtually here’ megatrend explores what might happen in a world of increased connectivity where individuals, communities, governments and businesses are immersed into the virtual world to a much greater extent than ever before. Social media is already empowering communities in facilitating real-time responses to environmental issues. For us, the importance of broadening our communications on social platforms will rise (and yes, Nat, you will have to tweet while at your next conference!).
The third megatrend discussed was ‘Great Expectations’. This megatrend looks at a change in expectations for services, the rising demand for experiences over products and the importance of social relationships. This exciting move also highlights a growing demand for what can be done with personal data. The rise of personal monitoring devices is sure to impact on how air quality is monitored in the future. The delivery of tailored information via devices will transform the way we, and many others, do business in our future world. So if you think we are generating big data now, just wait and see what’s around the corner!
The bottom line is, we all love what we do and we are here to stay! We really enjoy getting into the detail and working out the best way to solve your problems. We are actively engaged in advancing technology so we can help you and your business rise to the many challenges of our future world.