Today was quite an ordinary day, and that is what’s amazing.

Just a few short years ago, we never could have connected with as many people in as many organizations so easily.  As you can guess, we spend our days working in the software industry, which is a highly integrated ecosystem.  Many services depend on many other services, and much of the code belongs to “the commons” and is open source.  This creates a collaborative ethos which is excellent for solving problems.

Our goal with QiqoChat is to help grow this collaborative ethos in other industries where people help solve each other’s problems, because they know that even though they aren’t in need of help today, they will be in need of help from others in the community on another day.

In the software world, people share ideas and code in an open and transparent way.  Sometimes money is exchanged and sometimes reputation is “exchanged” by people writing recommendations or rating each other’s expertise or support.

Of course, professionals in other industries collaborate across organizations, but it’s almost always when there is a formal relationship set up between the two organizations.  It’s rare that people will gather, meet each other for the first time and start to solve each other’s problems unless they are all working on the same project.

For some reason, this is quite common in software.  Also, the tools that are mainstream in other industries (forums, blogs, LinkedIn groups, and email discussion lists) feel stale compared to getting live help on-demand.  These collaborative experiences are powerful and they will spread to more fields.

Today, for example, when we were writing software, we collaborated with some great people in the US, UK, and Brazil.  Using tools like StackOverflow, HackHands, and GitHub we worked with some people we had never met before.

Because the code is open source,  when we need help, we can see the individual lines of code that people suggest we use are safe, and we can immediately see if the solution they propose because the computer will compile it very quickly.  Once there’s a solution, it’s documented for others to see when they face the same problem.

With QiqoChat, we’re building one of those platforms that can help bring this type of collaboration to other industries.  Helping people help each other is the best part about this job.