First and foremost, Rebecca Kirstein Resch said Calgary-based inqli is an inclusive knowledge-sharing platform.
Now it’s being used to connect the province’s innovation community through the organization Rainforest Alberta.
The platform is a portal where people in an organization or professional community can ask questions, get answers and stay informed on what’s happening. Kirstein Resch, founder and CEO of the company, said the nearest comparison would be something like Reddit or Quora.
“It’s all knowledge sharing for the purpose of helping people advance in their own acquisition of knowledge and in their own careers,” she told LiveWire Calgary.
What separates inqli from the prior mentioned platforms is the curated communities.
“We very much strive to create a space of psychological safety where people can ask any types of questions. They are who they say they are, they’re connected to their identities,” Kirstein Resch said.
“There’s no bots or trolls or those kinds of things.”
Opening up this opportunity in organizations or different professional communities creates a connection, Kirstein-Resch said. It could give a junior employee a chance to connect with more experienced members of the organization. That helps close knowledge gaps in a company.
The platform gives people in a professional community a chance to exchange experiences and connect one another to resources.
“We very much designed the platform a little differently from Quora or Reddit,” Kirstein Resch said.
“It’s designed for those much more, what we call, well-resourced conversations and people are sharing resources back and forth with each other.”
Connections in the Rainforest
Rainforest Alberta, an organization dedicated to improving Alberta’s innovation ecosystem, launched a pilot project with inqli in the latter half of January. The goal is to create a centralized conversation platform.
“Rainforest has always promoted the importance that diversity plays in accelerating innovation in our province,” said Brad Zumwalt, Rainforest Alberta co-founder. “
inqli’s software allows for these diverse perspectives to come together in a more accessible way.”
Kirstein Resch said it’s a chance to connect members of Alberta’s innovation community to a central hub of knowledge and resources.
“In communities like Rainforest Alberta it’s very much about wayfinding,” she said.
“Entrepreneurs like me who are in the ecosystem, they’re looking for funding, they’re looking for connections or looking for partnerships, mentors, customer discovery, all these different kinds of things at different stages of their journey. Asking the collective community helps them find the resources they need as they need them.”
It’s also a way to keep people engaged in their company, or organization, Kirstein Resch said. With more work-from-home in a post-pandemic world, it’s helping keep employees connected. She said most employees know less than 10 people in their organization. With inqli, they can connect. Particularly the younger generations, a group that’s digitally native, she said.
“They want to make those connections remotely, not only to get their questions answered and improve their own knowledge and productivity within the organization,” Kirstein Resch said.
“They really just want to know the people in the organization.”
