One of the last phenomena that draws our mind back to the Second World War era isabout to manifest itself as history and modernity continues on an unstoppable collisioncourse. The offspring of post-war 'baby boomers' are about to retire en-masse acrossEurope. In an Information Society, where knowledge is the prize commodity, thehaemorrhage of knowledge about to unfold will have a significant impact.The impact of this will be harder felt in some sectors and countries than others. Forexample, what has been termed 'the greying' of the teaching profession is about toimpact with one million teachers across Europe set to retire by 2015. In Germany, thiswill amount to 70% of all teachers. The trend is particularly widespread in Finland where500,000 workers across all sectors, more than one in every six people in the workforceand almost 10% of the total population, will retire in the next 3 to 5 years; in Ireland thesame level of retirement will occur in the next 8 to 10 years.Capturing, collating and using the tacit knowledge of this retiring generation is now ofcritical importance. Developing appropriate structures and tools to facilitate this is theprimary objective of this project. Using a range of multi-media, multi-platform tools,'Tacit Knowledge' will harness the life, working experience and knowledge of retirees asa support mechanism and reference tool for those continuing in the labour force.A series of specialist 'Blog', 'PodCast and interactive Audio Visual Over InternetProtocol (AVOIP such as Skype) mentoring areas will be developed addressing specificpublic and private sector business areas. In conjunction with this a virtual mentoringpanel will be trained and established comprising retired workers to respond to scenariotesting and problem solving. A business model will be developed to facilitate thoseretiring from the knowledge economy into paid employment in the "Tacit KnowledgeEconomy".'SilentK' will develop and provide:• A virtual workspace for retirees to facilitate extension of their working life• A pedagogical strategy aimed at encouraging the continued active participation ofretirees• An induction and training programme for retirees aimed at imparting necessarytechnical skills• An interactive Web 2.0 site facilitating user created content and mentoring in key areas• A business model to support the "Tacit Knowledge Economy in all partner countries.While the Information Society depends on the creation of 'new knowledge', the value of'old knowledge' is beyond doubt. By capturing this tacit knowledge the impact will be feltfor generations to come and the continuing contribution of older workers through avirtual workplace will be secured. 'Tacit Knowledge' will necessarily be developed in allpartner languages.