EPIC Talks is a webinar series created by our community, for our community. Talks cover topics that are highly relevant to us as practitioners, introducing methods, technologies, ideas, and best practices that make our work better and foster meaningful professional connections. Formats can range from lectures or seminars to panels, discussions, and debates. EPIC Talks are proposed and created by EPIC members, bringing together a global community on the leading edge of ethnography in business. Participation is free and open to EPIC Members—join now!
An EPIC Talk with , , & Overview Our thid EPIC Talk on the latest strategies, opportunities, and challenges of gig work. Last year’s presentation covered how to get started, find work, make an impact, and navigate a career path—watch it here. This year, panelists from 4 countries addressed these topics with a specific focus…
An EPIC Talk with: (Xeno Co-Lab, India) (Fjord/Accenture, Mexico) (EGGS Design, Norway) (ri studio, UK) (REACH Insights, South Africa) (Convo, India) (Xeno Co-Lab, India) Thursday, August 20, 2020 8:00–9:30am San Francisco / 10am Mexico City / 4pm London / 5pm Cape Town / 8:30pm Mumbai *Join 15 minutes early for informal intros & chatter with…
An EPIC Talk with (UC Berkeley), (Uber) & (Good Research) Overview Qual and quant are so divided these days—by academic discipline, language, communities of practice, job titles. In many organizations, there’s also a hierarchy based on misconceptions about research and the kind of evidence that’s suitable to “act on.” But EPIC people are leading the…
An EPIC Talk with , , & Overview In our goal to understand meanings and practices, logics and relationships, cultural and social phenomena, our ethnographic practice hinges on ‘being there.’ Now, the coronavirus pandemic has radically restricted our ability to share physical space with research participants, stakeholders, clients, and colleagues. As we adopt new tools…
An EPIC Talk with (Ad Hoc LLC), (Fjord/Accenture Digital), & (Fjord) Overview The daily work of ethnographers requires being the room with key people, working through a range of challenges in shared spaces. We do this in workshop settings, for brainstorming and planning, and for the myriad ways we collaborate with teams, stakeholders, clients, and…
The novel coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered our work and lives in a matter of weeks. Our ethnographic sensibility, which keeps us immersed in the lives of people on the ground, has shifted to meticulous social distancing, or even more extreme isolation. At work, research projects are cancelled or radically altered; teams are adapting to…
An EPIC Talk with JOHN PAYNE (Verizon) Overview Human-centered design has driven a two decade renaissance in product development, providing a transparent framework that exposes rationale, demystifies process, and provides more reliable outcomes than many other approaches to innovation. The cycle of empathy, ideation, and prototyping that the best designers have long practiced has been…
An EPIC Talk with (JC & Associates) Overview What is organisational culture and how does it shape how we work? Why does the business world and organisations tend to misunderstand organisational culture? How can an ‘anthropological mindset’ give value to organisations? This webinar will set out to answer these three questions by blending a mixture…
An EPIC Talk with TIMOTHY DE WAAL MALEFYT (Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University) and MARYANN MCCABE (Cultural Connections LLC) Overview Consumers often exhibit complex, even contradictory behavior with brands. Ask mothers about making dinner and their immediate reaction may be: “cooking is a drag.” So a food company responds with brand communications addressing ‘the…
An EPIC Talk with RACHEL CARMEN CEASAR, Culture of Health+Tech Consulting Overview 50 users. 75 hours of recorded interviews. 1250 pages of transcripts. Sometimes a post note analysis just doesn’t cut it. When shifting through tons of complex data, grounded theory methods can be a helpful tool to systematically organize and make sense of it.…
An EPIC Talk with ZEYNEP ARSEL, Concordia University Overview In-depth interviews are an essential resource for consumer insights and can inform product and service design, brand management, human-technology interface, customer service, amongst others. Nothing gets to the heart of people and uncovers their experiences, anxieties, feelings, and desires than a well-conducted interview. A good interview…
VIDEO LIBRARY
An EPIC Talk with ELLIE RENNIE, RMIT University Approx 50 minutes Overview The value of blockchain is often expressed in terms of what it eliminates—the cost of establishing trust. Portrayed as a “trustless” technology or itself a “trust machine”, it seems to open horizons for innovation by “solving the trust problem.” In fact, the technology…
An EPIC Talk with KATE SIECK (RAND) & STEVEN GARCIA (TeamOne) Approx 57 minutes Description The language of change is practically ubiquitous these days: from tech startups to legacy manufacturers and government agencies, organizations of every stripe want to innovate, grow, pivot, reorient, or disrupt. But although the language of change is varied, the burgeoning…
An EPIC Talk with MADELEINE CLARE ELISH, Data & Society Approx 50 minutes Overview Breathless rhetoric about AI has promised safer, more accurate systems that would take the “human out of the loop.” With more nuanced visions of AI, not to mention some high-profile catastrophes, the prevailing rhetoric now promises that keeping a “human in…
