Georgia – Georgia is our resident Aussie and provides administrative support and works with Vivake on marketing and communications.

Andrew – our tenacious headhunter!! Andrew comes from an agency background but saw the light and joined us in November of last year.

Jay – Jay is yet another recruiter (I told you we were busy!). He joins us on Monday of next week, again, from an agency background.

I’d like to introduce you to my team (photos to follow); Alison, Harneet and Daniel sit with me here in Lab49′s back office to support the operations of the company. Whilst sitting at our desks, working like hounds, we try to find time to make a valuable contribution to the culinary world by combining very unlikely snacks to create new, interesting and often vile flavours. Wasabi Peas feature heavily in our experiments due to their strong flavour and texture. Itsu Wasabi Peas are highly recommended.

Current experiments include:

1) Pret chocolate drizzle popcorn with Mana wasabi peas (surely they should be called Wasapeas?)
2) Itsu wasapeas (there, so renamed) with Itsu honey fennel cashews
3) Wasapeas and Jaffa Cakes
4) Toffifee chocolates with wasapeas
5) Aero Bubbles with wasapeas

Verdicts are as follows:
1) Bland. Popcorn is not sufficiently flavoured to make impact and wasapeas are lacking in wasabi.
2) Delicious. Very strange flavour and texture combo but utterly delicious.
3) Alison trialled this. It was as vile as it sounds and apparently a “poor idea”.
4) Again, Alison was Chief Scientist and the verdict was “tasty and the hazelnut added a delicious crunch”.
5) Harneet joined Alison in this experiment; verdict was “good combination with the smoothness of the chocolate and crunch of the wasapeas”.

Alison is strangely experimental with her food but cannot eat anything that is in the shape of an animal; for example, Lindts Easter Bunnies.

Ideas for snack combinations are very welcome.

You can now find us at:

7 Birchin Lane
London EC3V 9BW.

I’ve taken a couple of photos of the new office. Enjoy.

Don't judge me!!

Our cool new reception area complete with Microsoft Surface

Despite the tough times, there are joys to be had. Enjoy your evenings and weekends with your friends and your families. Try to ensure that you take the time that you need to refocus on what is truly important and switch off from work (at the appropriate times of course!).

Talk to your friends and family, have the odd indulgent lie-in/cream cake/night out, make time for your hobbies and interests. Sure, it’s important to show your employer that you are committed to your job but don’t get committed because of it!

Twitter have just launched twitterjobsearch which aggregates the jobs postings on Twitter. I like the interactivity and immediacy of Twitter and so being able to tweet with those interested in your vacancies/company is pretty cool. We use gtalk for that too (Lab49Careers) but given that many work places block instant messaging tools, it might not work for all. Feel free to contact me on Twitter instead and I’ll do my best to respond to your message.

I must stress that your existing technical skills must be absolutely top rate; the Flex training will be intensive so you’ve got to have solidity in what you’ve already got rather than risk losing that skill.

So, if you’re looking to work with an emergent technology and want to be a technical pioneer, you’ve found the right company. Contact me at: marie.downes@lab49.com.