Edinburgh, 24th–26th January ‘99
Ethnographic studies in real and virtual environments

Kathy Bruckner k.bruckner@mail.qmced.ac.uk

'Inhabited information spaces' and 'connected communities' offer possibilities with potentially far-reaching implications for the organisation of work and cultural exchange in the future, from supporting the exchange of information relevant to a local community, to allowing a spatially distributed community to 'meet' in a virtual space, to providing large-scale electronic environments for different communities.

The Esprit i3 Workshop on Ethnographic Studies in Real and Virtual Environments, which took place at Heriot–Watt University in Edinburgh at the end of January, focused on these areas. It aimed to explore the representation and use of information in people's activities in real and virtual environments from an ethnographic perspective, and to discuss and disseminate research and research findings in this field.

The workshop was organised by the Living Memory (LIME) and eSCAPE projects, and was sponsored by i3–net. Workpackage 2 of the Living Memory project hosted the event.

The quality of the papers submitted to the workshop was generally very good, and 13 out of the 22 papers submitted to the workshop were selected by reviewers for presentation. The papers covered a range of ethnographic methodologies applied in a variety of real (e.g. a military command and control centre) and virtual (e.g. an online community of journalists) settings. They explored issues such as sociality, lurking and personality projection in virtual environments. Some produced interesting mechanisms for presenting the results of ethnographic research, like community graphs and representations using soft systems methodology.

Formal paper presentation sessions were interspersed with informal discussion sessions and social activities, which provided opportunities for the exchange of views and ideas between participants. It was encouraging to welcome participants from commercial organisations (such as France Telecom, AT&T, Xerox Research Centre, Philips Design, NCR Knowledge Lab) as well as from the academic community within the UK, the US, and the rest of Europe. A number of other Esprit research projects were also represented. This mix provided a good balance of experience and focus, and contributed to the high quality of the debate.

As seems to be becoming the norm these days, one of the paper sessions was interrupted by the ring of a mobile phone. Participants shifted in their seats and looked around accusingly. After a few rings the presenter (who shall remain nameless) interrupted her talk and piped up “Sorry, I think that’s mine!”.

The discussions explored a number of contentious issues. For example, to what extent should “situated”or “contextual” design be seen as a separate field of enquiry and practice from academic ethnography? There was considerable enthusiasm for continuing the debate through an electronic forum. The Living Memory project hopes to establish a discussion list in the near future – with the proviso that participants will have to agree not to conduct ethnographic studies of the discussion group!

We are also exploring the possibility of publishing the workshop papers in a format which can be more readily accessed by the wider research community.

If you would like further information about the workshop or the Living Memory project please contact Katie Bates (k.bates@mail.qmced.ac.uk; ).