Microsoft, Intel organise corporate ethnography conference

The first Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC), jointly organised by Microsoft and Intel, will take place on 14 and 15 November 2005 at the Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA, USA.

The conference (see programme) will promote the use of ethnographic investigations and principles in the study of human behavior as they are applied in corporate settings. By understanding people; what they do, how they do it and how these change over time, companies can create better corporate strategies, processes, and products, as well as enhance and simplify people’s lives. Beyond this, the conference aspires to promote the integration of anthropological perspectives, methods and theory into business practices.

The EPIC theme for 2005 is Sociality: the social and collective nature of people’s interactions with products and services, or more broadly, the complex, dense and dynamic set of social relations within which people conduct their lives, and through which material culture comes to have meaning.

(via Ideas Bazaar)