EPIC 2008 draft proceedings available

The fourth annual international Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) took place in Copenhagen, Denmark last week.

As described by Lucy Kimbell, EPIC “brings together those working in organizations for whom ethnography is central to their practice. They might be called designers, design anthropologists, ethnographers, or simply researchers. They might work in product development, in marketing, in strategy/futures, or in usability testing, depending on the organization, its industry practices and its maturity. EPIC brings these practitioners together with academics like me who are interested in the kinds of data that are gathered, or rather created, in the pursuit of organizational goals. As well as ethnographers from Intel, Microsoft and Yahoo, there were many from the (Danish) public sector and from design and research consultancies such as IDEO, live|work, and ReD Associates.”

The draft proceedings are now online and contains a rich treasure trove of materials:

Opening Keynote Address: The corporate gaze: Transparency and other organizational visions
Christina Garsten (Stockholm University)

SESSION 1: WORKING AND PLAYING WITH VISIBILITY

The rise of the techno-service sector: The growing inter-dependency of social and technical skills in the work of ERP implementers
Asaf Darr (University of Haifa)

Now you see it and now you don’t: Consequences of veiling relational work
Lisa Kreeger (IBM) and Elizabeth Holloway (Antioch University)

The invisible work of being a patient and implications for health care
Kenton T. Unruh and Wanda Pratt (University of Washington)

The secret life of medical records: A study of medical records and the people who manage them
Nathaniel Martin and Patricia Wall (Xerox Corporation)

The translucence of twitter
Ingrid Erickson (Stanford University)

Contact lists and youth
Matthew Yapchaian (Intel Research)

(In)visible partners: people, algorithms, and business models in online dating
Elizabeth F. Churchill (Yahoo! Research) and Elizabeth S. Goodman (UC Berkeley)

SESSION 2: REPRESENTATION IN PRACTICE: UTILIZING THE PARADOXES OF VIDEO, PROSE, AND PERFORMANCE

Beyond walking with video
Jonathan Bean (UC Berkeley)

Video utterances: Expressing and sustaining ethnographic meaning through the product development process
Meg Cramer, Mayank Sharma, Tony Salvador and Russell Beauregard (Intel Corporation)

Verfremdung and business development: The ethnographic essay as eye-opener
Anne Line Dalsgaard (Aarhus University)

Design rituals and performative ethnography
Joachim Halse (Danish Design School) and Brendon Clark (University of Southern Denmark)

SESSION 3: NAVIGATING PEOPLE AND PRAXIS ACROSS SPACE AND TIME

All that is seen and unseen: the physical environment as informant
Lisa Reichenbach (in-sync Consumer Insight) and Magda Wesolkowska (Anthropology in Design)

The space between mine & ours: Exploring the subtle spaces between the private and the shared in India
Ashwini Asokan (Intel Corporation)

Drawing from negative space: New ways of seeing across the client-consultant divide
Michelle Frances Chang (ReD Associates) and Matthew Lipson (Orange / France Telecom)

Putting mobility on the map: researching journeys and the research journey
Simon Roberts (Intel Corporation)

The QAME of transdisciplinary ethnography: Making visible disciplinary theories of ethnographic praxis as boundary object
Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall (University of Illinois at Chicago)

SESSION 4: IN SIGHT ON SITE; REVEALING AND SUSTAINING VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE FOR CORPORATIONS

Tracing the arc of ethnographic impact: Success and (In)visibility of our work and identities
Donna Flynn and Tracey Lovejoy (Microsoft Corporation)

Now you see it, now you don’t: selective visibility and the practice of ethnography in the technology sector
Laura Granka and Patrick Larvie (Google, Inc.)

Sustaining stories: The versatile life of sustained in-house ethnographic practice in a global software company
Natalie Hanson and Johann Sarmiento (SAP)

Design anthropologists’ role in SME’s – unveiling attitude & aptitude
Mark Asboe (University of Southern Denmark)

Strangers or kin? Exploring marketing’s relationship to design ethnography and new product development
Sarah Wilner (York University)

Politics of visibility and when Intel hired Levi-Strauss
Rogerio De Paul (Intel Corporation) and Vanessa Empinotti (University of Sao Paulo)

Closing Keynote Address – Reassembling the visual
Lucy Kimbell (Saïd Business School)