Kiran Khambete is deeply engaged in harnessing the matchmaking capabilities of the Internet. He believes that the greatest benefit of the Internet lies in its power to connect people. Kiran joined metalayer in the first round, in May, 2000. Since then, he has gone through all types of software engineering activities and jobs. Maybe he is the only engineer, who has worked on and knows the product in all the areas, from MCH core, to different features, to MPP and many jobs for different customers. He is a core team developer responsible for the MOB of metalayer 1.0. Interview

Imagine the following situation: You arrive in the office on Monday morning and you get a difficult problem on your table. You don't know how to solve it. You go to the web and search for a solution, but it is difficult to find the right content, as the problem is very specific and you don't find much information about it. So, you start to talk to other people, call your friends and discuss with them - no one seems really to be able to help you. At Friday evening you go to a bar, frustrated. You meet accidentally a person there, and you tell him the story of the week: "How is it possible that I search the whole week for a solution of this problem, and I still do not have an answer?" - After talking half an hour with this person, you suddenly realize what is the solution of your problem. This is a typical scenario which is often encountered by workers around the world.

COMPLEXITY CAN ONLY BE HANDLED COLLECTIVELY

In today's knowledge intensive world, problems are specific, and so complex, that you are not able to find the solution anywhere. Nor are you or anyone else able to solve the problem alone. It is only through sharing of the problems that you can CREATE the solution. Sometimes you may be able to solve the problem in time by yourself, but when speed is the factor you have to rely on a collective brain. 'Us' can produce smarter and faster solutions than 'Me' alone. The key is to find an environment which allows you this speed of access and a collective brain-power and experience. Human beings learn best when they learn from each other. It is only natural that a person looks at fellow beings for inspiration and learning. If this fact is appreciated and applied to business we find that you can use the power of a connected network for not only speeding up your problem solving abilities but also to become more efficient and learn from each other.

THE PRESERVATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is never lost if shared, rather throughout ages the only real way knowledge has been preserved is by sharing. With constant initiatives of people this shared knowledge has become the vast pool of wisdom that we human beings have at our disposal today. Organizations need to understand this phenomenon and implement a Knowledge Strategy which enables the employees to refine their own knowledge by sharing, learn more from knowledge of other employees, customers and partners, and finally to create, manage and sustain organizational knowledge which is nothing but the sum total of knowledge with the company people from today and the past.

YOU ARE ONLINE - AND YOU ARE NOT ALONE

Some time ago, being online meant, browsing static content and maybe checking an eMail account. Today, the web is turning more and more into a social place, where you meet people real time as well as non real time. Whenever you are online, millions of people are online with you and whenever you have a problem to solve, there may be thousands of people currently online who could help you to co-build the solution.

Today, the web is not only a place to get matched with content, but also with people. We see this "Matchmaking" as one of the key opportunities of the web and of a web workplace today, and we see smart matchmaking solutions generating immense value for knowledge companies. How much more efficient could you be, if you have access at any time to the right person - how much more efficient a company can be, if the right employees connect at the right time and exchange their knowledge. "Problem solving" in future will be a collective action, or I would say work would be a collective endeavour.

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