INTRODUCTION

With this year’s focus on evolution, we felt it was also an appropriate time to consider how ethnographers themselves are evolving, and how this evolution of individual practitioners is, in turn, changing the field of ethnographic praxis and influencing our evolving community of practitioners. Our goal is to both highlight how far our field has evolved over a fairly short span of time, and to raise awareness of the impact we each individually have over its direction as we conduct our own work, whether that work is primarily research, management, or teaching. Certainly we are not the first to take a reflexive view of our community practices; EPIC itself has been a venue for many reflections and self-definition over the last few years. At the first EPIC conference in 2005, Blomberg introduced the notion of hybrids to conceptualize our identities across design, research, applied, academic, corporate, and citizen. In so doing, she highlighted the importance of the intersection of work across disciplines, and in fact, the necessity to expand beyond ethnography to truly impact industry outcomes (Blomberg 2005). Likewise, Flynn and Lovejoy noted that “our biggest challenge as practitioners is to redefine perceived value beyond our immediate contexts of praxis” (Flynn and Lovejoy 2008:248). They questioned what this “arc of impact” would mean for the identity of ethnographers, and even whether ethnography itself had an organizational glass ceiling (Flynn and Lovejoy 2008:249). Such concerns are not unreasonable. Lombardi provoked the EPIC audience in 2009 by proposing that ethnographic labor risks being de-skilled, with more and more outsourcing of “fieldwork.” As we evolve our careers and our community, it behoove us to look toward the “higher order activities” that are not so easily de-skilled. For instance DePaula and his Intel colleagues described themselves as “decision-makers in the corporate business environment” who are asked “to contribute as product and business strategists, as dealmakers, and as corporate narrators” (DePaula, et. al. 2009:3).

As we turn our gaze toward the evolution of ethnographic praxis and the evolving roles of practitioners, we want to begin by looking back at how the practice and practitioners come to this point. We are mindful that this audience has come to ethnographic praxis through different disciplines and routes. Yet, training in a field (and in the field), either formally or informally, is a part of all of our backgrounds. Byrne and Sands (2002) have noted that design has traditionally worked on an apprenticeship model, while social science focuses on mentoring. Lombardi noted that ethnographers’ “work was rooted in our professional traditions, passed on through various kinds of apprenticeship, and was essentially under our direct control” (Lombardi 2008:42). Thus, when confronted with introducing ethnographic fieldwork to engineers at Fujitsu, Ikeya and this colleagues were unprepared because “professional” ethnographers have learned “through a mostly unstructured and, to be honest, self-directed process” that was enhanced by informal discussions with peers and faculty. Therefore, he and his fellow ethnographers not only had to introduce methodology to professionals from another field, they had to dig into differences of mind-set and value. (Ikeya, et.al. 2007).

This “situated learning” is key to building a workplace community according to Lave & Wenger (1991). The process of sharing information and experiences within these diverse groups provides a place for members to learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally (Lave & Wenger 1991). Eventually the “practices of social communities” allow individual and group identities to emerge in relation to these communities forming what we now call Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998: 4). These workplace Communities of Practice, along with other factors, has had an impact on the evolving careers of individual practitioners. In turn, their career trajectories, workplace experiences , and the sharing the work at venues such as EPIC, is shaping a collective, and evolving, Community of Practice.

CAREER INTERVIEWEES

To understand career evolution of practitioners, we interviewed 8 members of the EPIC community. We sought individuals who have attended past EPIC conferences, and may have also presented papers and/or volunteered in organizational roles. Each of the interviewees has been “practicing” for at least 10 years, and all have attained a level of professional seniority at the organizations in which they work. As with all qualitative research we realize that a small subset cannot represent every aspects of EPIC community. Given these constraints, we did try to encompass a range of experiences and factors influencing career trajectories by selecting participants to obtain range of disciplines, geographies, ages, and institutions. Our interviewees included:

• 5 women and 3 men
• 6 U.S. citizens and 2 non-U.S. citizens
• 5 currently based in the United States, 3 currently based in other countries
• 5 with academic training in social science (including anthropology, political science, and psychology), 2 with academic training in design, 1 with academic training in computer science
• 5 currently working for large enterprises, 2 currently working for consultancies, 1 currently working for a university

Each individual participated in at least one in-depth interview with open ended questions addressing their formal and informal training, the positions they have held, and what instances led to transitions in their professional lives. We also sought their opinions on the meaning of “ethnographic praxis in industry” and the evolution of the field as they themselves defined it. We recorded, transcribed, and coded all the interviews, which revealed the themes and patterns we discuss here.

SOME (ADMITTEDLY BRIEF) HISTORY

While we don’t wish to give an in-depth description of a past that many have lived through or otherwise heard told around the bar, we do feel it is relevant to provide a brief timeline of “ethnographic praxis in industry” and to acknowledge some of companies that have had an impact. More extensive histories can be found in Reese (2002) and Baba (1998). We will begin with the first social scientists, including Lucy Suchman, Jeannette Blomberg, Julian Orr and Gitte Jordan, who were hired at Xerox PARC in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. At the time, PARC’s interest in social scientists centered on what psychological and linguistic expertise could bring to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Once at PARC, these social scientists broadened their roles to encompass a bigger picture of work, human practice, and technology interactions, and by doing so, we argue, created a Community of Practice. In the last 30 years, the number of people who worked at PARC have made this a significant locus of influence for ethnographic praxis in industry, in particular those who have moved on to other organizations and thus spread their understanding of practices.

Throughout the 1980’s jobs appeared at a variety of companies, but the 1990s was the period when positions for social scientists and design researchers were created within enterprises. We should acknowledge that 6 of our 8 interviewees (as well as both the authors) date their first full time positions as “ethnographic practitioners in industry” (whether or not these were their first full time positions) to the period between 1997-2001. One of our interviewees referenced a “blip in the landscape” that enabled her to get her first job. We believe this “blip” was not unrelated to the establishment of a couple of key firms.

While a number of consultancies represented at this conference were founded during this time, our interviews kept returning to the influences of a couple of significant agencies. The two who stand out are IDEO, founded in 1991, and e-Lab, established in 1994. Like PARC, these firms developed their own Communities of Practice, and employed a great number of practitioners, many of whom moved on to other positions and spread their ideas and practices further afield.

In the early 2000’s “ethnography” became trendy, fueled by stories in the popular media, and more jobs opened up. In 2005 this conference, was established as a home for people who felt other venues, such as AAA, SfAA, CHI, were not fully meeting their needs. It was named in part to capture the interest generated by the term ethnography, and to create a convergence around, as one interviewee put it, “the boundary object that we all share.”