Hello! I’m Matt Killeen and I’m the latest recruit to the 2269 project. You’ll see me wrangling social media and newsletters and whatnot, as well as general cheerleading.
I’m also an author of YA historical fiction, including the Orphan Monster Spy duology, a writer of children’s books chapter books and a videogame journalist, but I’ve had a lot of different careers down the years, some of which might be termed interesting. 
Like many people I’ve found myself ground down a bit by the news of the last five years and the global pandemic kind of finished me off – I couldn’t work and it turns out I’m a terrible home school Reception teacher. Worse still, like a lot of idealists, I’d started to despair. That yoghurt pot that needed cleaning before it went in the recycling? It went in the bin, because hundreds of thousands were dying and CO2 was already through the roof, what was the point?
It’s a huge exaggeration to say that finding 2269 saved me – my five-year-old going back to school definitely helped – but spending some time thinking about the future, the deep future that is, not the probably disastrous next few years, shifted my perspective. Suddenly, the yoghurt pot recycling wasn’t hopeless, because it was an issue for the unborn. Having written about empire as I have, the idea that we’re colonising the future made my blood run cold. That, I understood, with painful clarity.
Besides, I like a good party, and the more ambitious and quirky, the better. The kind of people organising something in 250 years’ time? My kind of people. In a previous life, I organised hundreds of events that I wasn’t really a guest at, so why should this be different? I also loved the idea of legacy involved, and the poster changing hands ten times down the centuries. I’m a little hopeful that humanity will have come through its painful adolescence by then, and that my (great)7 grand kids can enjoy something fermented and sparkling.