Sampada Nagavkar is a self-professed enemy of eMail. She believes that the future of relationship management is in comty hubs and not in inboxes. Sampada is the first employee of metalayer. She joined the company as a consultant in April 2000. Sampada started as a Software Engineer, has executed several roles, led many teams and managed many projects in the growing company. Today, she is a Key Account Manager, responsible for metalayer's largest customer - 'Eli Lilly'. Sampada is also a part of the global management team and a member of the board of metalayer AG and metalayer Software Pvt. Ltd. India. Interview

eMail, though very powerful, will not be the system we will use in the future to manage our relationships and some years from now we will understand, that eMail was just an intermediate step in the virtual revolution. metalayer can see a second revolution in virtual communication happening, a revolution that moves relationship management out of the inboxes into contextualized private and public places on the web. A revolution that will create virtual identities and communities in cyberspace.

eMail - THE KILLER APP

Electronic Mail was the first and maybe the only REAL killer application of the Internet. eMail revolutionized the way we communicate and interact, the way we work together, exchange information and keep in touch. eMail entered quickly in almost all areas of professional and private life and fundamentally changed the basic rules of the global village. eMail communication works like the 'good old' letter or newspaper, and that is one of the reasons why it spread so quickly. As we are unable to travel in physical space to all relevant events and to meet all relevant people, we get the information about these events to travel to us. A journalist from a newspaper, or a friend of ours writes the information on paper and a system of messengers (postal service) throughout the world delivers the information to us. It is just not possible to be everywhere at the same time. So, reading letters and newspapers comfortably, you get updated and have a quick overview of public and private live events.

WE WILL TRAVEL TO THE CONTENT, NOT VICE VERSA

The problem with mail (electronic and physical) is, that information gets fragmented. Information is not anymore within the context it happened. There are many ways within Letters, Newspapers etc. to "re-contextualize" the information: "As I wrote in my last letter..." or "As reported in the paper of last Saturday...". As the amount of Information we receive and process increases, it becomes a major task for a knowledge worker to "re-contextualize" the information received. There are tools available today for "re-contextualizing" eMail - but will an automated process ever be able to do this work for us? In future, it will be us who travel within cyberspace, and not the information. Open a web browser and within fractions of seconds you are where things are happening. Distance is no longer a limitation for our communication. Instead of sending the information to other people and communities of people, we create content places on the web, and all relevant information stays together within the context.

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THE POWER OF RE-COGNITION - SHOW CONTEXT!

Didn't you have many situations like the following? - Your working colleague is telling you: "Hey, about four years ago, we had written a paper for this waste management company in the UK ...". You may answer in confusion: "What? What paper?" - the discussion and confusion goes on for some time and finally you say: "Why don't you just show it to me?" - As you have a short look at it you recognize and remember the context. We often try with words to bring a person in a different context, but it often doesn't work and is a difficult job - Instead of talking, it is often better to just SHOW the old context, and the other person RE-COGNIZES - Recognition is one of the main abilities of the human brain: "matching patterns", and retrieving contextual information. Comties are context places. Going to a comty is going within a context. Communication within comties is context driven communication and much more efficient, as you spend no time in bringing the other members back in context; As you are on the comty, and everybody sees the content within the context, people joining the comty "re-cognize" and re-contextualize quickly.

ENGAGE YOUR SHUTTLE AND DATA-TRAVEL...

In cyberspace, we can be anywhere at anytime and with no time lag, and this fundamentally changes the way we communicate and interact. Wouldn't it be great to sit comfortably in your living room chair, but instead of just passively reading about past events, you would travel quickly throughout the world, interacting and participating in events? This difference in the ability to travel will fundamentally change the way we communicate: not anymore by sending information, but by traveling to the different content hubs.

CONTEXTUAL COMMUNICATION

By building interactive content hubs for micro-communities (or in metalayer - "comty hubs"), we are able to communicate, work and collaborate in a transparent and fast manner. You are not just 'talking' about it because you can't go there, or because you don't have it here - but you are in the middle of it. You are participating. You are a part of the context and the events happening. The hubs are becoming the offices, the group workplaces, the lounges and bars of the cyberspace and communication there is becoming more accurate, because everybody will be with you there - real time or asynchronously, but within the same context. You spend no time bringing someone back to the right context - if you are there, the other person is there. And instead of writing lengthy "re-contextualizations" in the beginning of your message, you simply go to the context, find the right spot and add your piece of content. Messages become shorter, communication faster, more efficient and accurate.

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