Notes from Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference – EPIC 2007

EPIC is the premier international forum bringing together artists, computer scientists, designers, social scientists, marketers, academics and advertisers to discuss recent developments and future advances around ethnographic praxis in industry. Keynote speakers this year were Intel-Social Anthropologist Genevieve Bell and Brenda Laurel of California College of the Arts.

Jeffrey Bardzell, an assistant professor of HCI/Design and new media at the School of Informatics in Indiana University, reviews some of the topics that were discussed at the conference in Keystone, Colorado, USA. Jeffrey’s blog is OTOinsights.

 

“There was an interesting tension that many of the researchers seemed to be facing. On the one hand, their work was being used to help develop models for complex business practices. On the other hand, as ethnographers, they wanted to focus on concrete situations and contexts and the real, flesh-and-blood people within them. From my perspective, one way that this tension got addressed was to work proactively to improve communication between managers (who want the models) and employees, on whom the models are ideally grounded and in any case who will have to live with them once they are developed. Stated more abstractly, the ethnographers seemed to want to make a distinction between managing complex processes (which is seen as good) and implementing rationalist control schemes (which are seen as inhuman and bad).

 

Another major issue is one of legitimation. How can ethnographers convince managers and marketing leaders to take them seriously? How do they justify their work both intellectually (methods, data, etc.) and also from a business perspective (actually leads to better business processes or products)? Complicating this argument is the perceived conflict between the reductionist, abstract models that managers and marketing professionals want and the rich, individual “thick” and nuanced descriptions that ethnographers value and provide. Another way of saying this is that there is a lot of thinking about how ethnographic research can, should, does, or fails to connect to business cycles, that is, there is a lot of thinking about ways that ethnography can have real business impact.”

 

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Notes found via BuzzTracker

Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, EPIC 2007, to be held in Keystone, Colorado/USA

Sputnik and Vaccine Technology Research

I took part in the EPFL Innovation Day ‘07 at the campus in Lausanne, Switzerland, yesterday.

It coincided with the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, the Russian Sputnik. Oleg G. Ivanovski (84), Program Manager on Sputnik 1, told in an exclusive video interview how he and his team put the first satellite in orbit just to start the conquest between Russia and the USA. The rest of the world begged to differ, and responded in astonishment, admiration and, later, shock.

The shock lead to harsh criticism for American president Dwight Eisenhower, says Science and Technology writer Bruno van Wayenburg in his article Sputnik’s Builder.

“Get something up!” the President ordered NASA, explained Carl Raggio (photo) who worked on Explorer 1. “It was clear to both countries from beginning that space belongs to everyone”, he said.

 

Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier (63) who logged more than 1,000 hours in space, presented the Swiss Cube, the first small satellite (1 kg cube with a 1 liter volume) to be launched end-2008, and the visions for the future.

 

KPMG Tomorrow’s Market 2007

The evening was highlighted by the celebration of the KPMG Tomorrow’s Market 2007 award. A 50,000 Swiss Franc cheque went to Sai Redding (27). Sai is a PhD student at EPFL who developed and patented a nanoparticle that can deliver vaccines more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost of current vaccine technologies. Congratulations, Sai!

 

 

“It’s great to be in Lausanne. Unlike US Universities where paperwork eats up a big part your day, at EPFL they just let me do my research”, Sai told me. He has a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.

PEZ

The Swiss Cube image was taken from EPFL.