Meg Kinney is an ethnographer, strategist and co-founder of Bad Babysitter, a consultancy blending documentary storytelling with brand strategy. Named MRS/ICG Independent Researcher of the Year in 2017, she's worked with Fortune 500 companies like Procter & Gamble, Walmart, and Nordstrom. Featured in Gillian Tett's "Anthro-Vision," Kinney pioneered video-based shopper ethnography and holds a Master's in Natural Resources from Virginia Tech.
I start every conversation with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine who helps people tell their stories. It's such a beautiful question, I borrowed it. And it's such a big question, I kind of over-explain it the way that I'm doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you're in total control. You can answer or not answer in any way that you want to. And the question is: Where do you come from?
Oh gosh, I love that. I think I identify myself as coming more from a time than a place—so, the 60s and 70s in Indianapolis, Indiana. More and more, I realize just where I get certain character traits or things I've needed to unlearn. As I really make a point of trying to grow as a person—not just stumbling through life kind of growth, but the actual intentional, "I only have so many years left" kind of growth—I find myself reflecting a lot on my childhood.
So much of who I am is informed by the early 70s in a very conservative place. And, without getting too much into it, I had... I was that house on the street where parents of kids were like, “I don’t want you spending the night over there,” or, “I don’t want you going down there.” We were kind of set off in the neighborhood a lot. There was just a lot that always went down at my house.
It was a time where things were very stigmatized. My mother suffered mental health issues. My parents got divorced—that didn’t really happen much. I'm the youngest of three, and my older brother and sister were never in school with me; they were always just enough older. But being the 70s, they were very much a part of that scene.
I just think I’m from a time that has informed me a lot. But Indianapolis—and I wouldn’t trade a Midwestern upbringing for anything. I think it gives you a very deeply embedded sense of humility. Respect is a big theme, and an agrarian work ethic, and all that. But eventually, it was a place that I realized I simply must leave.
Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Yeah. I mean, the funny answer that I used to give—without even knowing what it really meant—was, “I want to be a landscape architect.” I don’t know why. But I always loved the outdoors—still do. Spent a lot of time by myself outside in deep and imaginative play. And something about the creative process...
So when I went to college, I really wanted... I started out studying fine arts. I’ve always loved the arts. And then quickly realized that I was not going to be an artist. But yeah, something in a creative field of some kind.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And I'm curious—you talked a little bit about it—what did it mean? Can you tell a story about 70s Indianapolis? What it was like growing up?
Well, I mean, only from my little purview. I didn’t have a lot of adult supervision. I was around a lot of adults. So when I wasn’t left unattended, I was around adults.
My dad had a bar. He and his second wife had a bar and a catering business. So I washed dishes at a really young age, but was around the regulars at his bar. My brother and sister—their curse was they could pretty much do whatever they wanted, as long as they took me with them.
So, I think by comparison to most kids under ten, I probably saw a lot of things. But as I’ve become more reflective, I’ve realized that really did create a bit of a template for what I do today. I’ve always been an observer, and kind of been most comfortable on the perimeter of something—just sort of seeing things play out.
Music was a big part of it. There was a soundtrack, as we all know, to that time. And that, to this day, is an immediate rocket ship right back to times and places.
It was in the city. It was kind of rural until it became suburban.
What was the bar?
Oh, it was called Lord Byron’s British Club.
Wow.
Yes. It was kind of the neighborhood place for— as I used to say—men who drove Cadillac’s, drank scotch, and wore Sansabelt slacks. You kind of know... I think that helps you locate it.
But yeah, my dad, you know, he always found something new to do. He was always self-employed. So he was a builder, then he was in real estate, then he was in the restaurant business, and then he was back. He was very scrappy that way.
But yeah, growing up in the bar was kind of fun. And interestingly, I’ve made this connection recently that I’ve always liked being on the service side of an equation. I started out in agency life, and now, as an independent consultant, I’ve worked client-side exactly two times in my career—and they were both very short-lived.
So I think it kind of cast the die for me to be in service. I like that. I derived a lot of joy from interacting with people, taking their dishes away, chit-chatting with them, asking if they needed anything else. I liked that—and I still do.
Yeah. So catch us up. Tell us—where are you, what are you doing, what’s the work that you’re doing?
Well, it’s funny, I talked to somebody the other day who said, as we evolve as independent people, the trick is to never have to actually quit what you do, or quit your company’s name or your website, and start over. Instead, just try to peel layers and make the water go a different direction.
Since 2008, I’ve been an independent consultant, using ethnography—or just the ethnographic lens—as a way to contextualize data and tell stories around numbers that can align people, and hopefully make things more human in the process. It’s always sort of been a humble pursuit. Affectionately, I’ve always just said, “Giving a damn is a competitive strategy.”
I started my career in the agency business and came up through the ranks in advertising as an account planner, then a strategist, and then led a big insight and strategy group for a publicly traded agency network. I did that whole thing and kind of stepped away from it right at the apex because I realized I really just love qualitative understanding of things.
I’ve always been more interested in the immeasurable than the measurable. But, you know, I exist in capitalism, so I completely respect the numbers side of things. I’ve just always thought that helping explain things in human terms—to provide interpretation of numbers and what they actually mean, and why you should care, and the decisions you could make that would benefit you and the people you’re trying to serve at the same time—just seemed like something I wanted to do.
I was fortunate that I had met enough people in my advertising career that when I hung my own shingle, they were like, “Hey, we want to bring you into this.” And that just kind of evolved into—I just like to help people get through the mud. When people are stuck, I like helping them get unstuck, whether it’s being paralyzed by too much information, or the market isn’t behaving the way they think it’s supposed to behave, and they don’t know where to go next.
I like parachuting into something kind of messy and helping find the signal in the noise.
So—long-winded answer—but to my original point about not really quitting your business and opening a new one: now, probably due to a combination of the market, synthetic users, preoccupation with AI, and a little bit of ageism… a lot of my clients who sponsored my projects have retired. It’s a different time for somebody like me.
And I know there’s a role—now more than ever, I think. I think what I bring to the table is probably needed more than ever. But that’s not the shiny thing right now. So I feel like presently I’m kind of in a bit of a “waiting out the storm.”
I will say during the pandemic, I kind of hit the ejection button. That was my second client-side thing, and I had two years in the cannabis industry—which was a fascinating education in and of itself. But yeah.
Yeah, well, I identify quite a bit with what you’ve just described—about waiting out the storm, and just how sort of confounding the current moment is. And having woken up and been in this for so long—or realizing that it has been so long. I appreciate you being open about that. And I wonder, maybe just to return to first principles, what do you love about the work? Like, where's the joy in it for you? When you talk about giving a damn—I love "giving a damn" as a competitive advantage. Yeah, what do you love about the work? Where's the joy in it for you?
Oh, gosh. On a very practical level, I mean, I love fieldwork. I just love being out in the mix, in situations I know nothing about, for the sole purpose of building trust with somebody so that they'll open their world up to me. I love that entire exchange, and I personally take a lot of pride in that.
I really think I can talk to anybody. I can shapeshift. And, you know, quick shout-out to people who have interviewing skills—not everyone has the gift. I just love the fieldwork. I love talking to people.
From the business application side, where I derive a lot of joy is when what I bring back contextualizes whatever business problem people are wringing their hands around. When what I bring aligns the room—I love it when I can tell a story from the field that explains data they're looking at but don’t understand what drives it.
I love when I can come in and say, “Let me tell you a story,” or better yet, “Let me push play.” Let me play you some footage, because we do video-based ethnography whenever we can. Or just the introduction of the camera in the setting—whether we’re shooting it or the participant is capturing things. I love when you can align a room.
Because misinterpretation is so easy, right? Everyone is looking at a business problem through the lens of what the expectations are on them—what am I held accountable for? I kind of call this the strategy cul-de-sac, where a CEO will be like, “Okay, this is what the numbers are saying, this is what we're doing, this is our initiative.” Everyone interprets it through their own lens, goes off, deploys in the way they think they're supposed to—and the needle never moves, right?
And then they come back, and it’s like, “What is happening?” There’s nothing like stories from the field to loosen that up and help people realize, “Oh my gosh, you mean that simple thing we're doing in this part of our sales training is creating this speed bump for us?” I love it when the light bulb goes on.
Yeah. And I feel like—I mean, we met, or interacted, or connected—I don't know if it was... it feels like ages ago. And, you know, your name—Bad Babysitter—I remember meeting you a long time ago, and it always occurred to me that you guys were really early in video. Really advocating video first, ethnography out front.
And I don’t know if that’s factually true, but I wonder—looking back—how has it changed? Where are we? Because I have that same experience too—the power of pushing play. Just a three-minute clip of somebody telling a story just blows the doors off so much, if you can align everybody.
So what is my question? I think my question is: What was it like leading with video ethnography in 2008? And how has it changed now? Where are we in the lifecycle of that kind of research and storytelling?
Yeah. Man, I appreciate that you come from that era—not to, like, wax nostalgic—but where I really got into it was, I had an amazing boss when I worked in the agency business. He just really believed in my whole approach. And I didn’t even know anything about anthropology.
It wasn’t until I met some anthropologists at Procter & Gamble, just as, you know, an agency person. And they said, “You know, you're an ethnographer.” And I was like, “What is that?” And then I learned, “Oh, what is video ethnography?” I just loved that idea of enrolling a research subject in the telling of their own story.
It was like, “Oh, we’re going to make a documentary film about you. And it can be whatever you want it to be about. And I’m here to just help you do that.”
That was before everyone had a camera in their pocket, right? So it was a rig. And my boss—I said to him, “You know what would drive incredible business for us? If we did a proprietary study.” And he actually funded me to do a year-long proprietary study about the culture of shopping in America.
We had a video guy at the agency who did corporate, institutional videos. I grabbed him, and we went into the field. We didn’t know what we were doing. These were clunky rigs, but we were just out there explaining to people—and people got on board. We were doing shop-alongs, and then we rigged the secret camera. I’m sure you did that too. You didn’t used to be able to have a camera in a retail environment.
Those were incredible days. But that work product—that deliverable—was incredible. That study was responsible for explosive agency growth.
I wanted to do more of it. As people started having cameras in their pockets, there was this shift: “Okay, now I want it through your perspective.” Those are artifacts that are interesting in and of themselves—giving people tasks to do, or reflections, and that sort of thing.
I still, though, whenever we can, like to do the old-school version. It’s slimmer now—my partner uses an iPhone. Sometimes he has a bigger DSLR camera. But I still like to be the one capturing the things, because I do think zooming in on things or panning wide at certain times is effective in telling a story. There’s a little bit of film wisdom there.
But yeah, it’s changed completely. I’m not opposed to research subjects taking the imagery themselves, at all. But the creating of an industry around that has produced a lot of junk.
Well—yes. Yes. Can you say more about this?
Oh, and, you know, there are many research tools out there. All of them have a time and a place. But, you know, the whole—in the name of expediency—“Well, can’t we just get 10 people in this age group to go take pictures of things they think are cool?” Sure. Yeah. I don’t know what you think you’re getting, but okay.
So, again, as you and I have to evolve, it’s like, all right, that’s a tool in the box. But deep understanding of human motivation and all that does not come from that method.
No, it’s interesting. It brings up so much. I mean, a question I had sort of lingering and waiting—because you talked about your instinct for people, being in the interview, being someone who’s interested in people. So there’s one question about the role of the researcher, because very often—I say this a lot—I feel like I’m really good at this, but that my ability becomes invisible because it just looks like a conversation.
You know what I mean? Like you say, it’s not something anyone can observe as a notable, remarkable skill. It’s just, “Oh wow, look, Meg’s really great with people,” or “Peter’s really nice with that person.”
Or “Well, that’s a great recruit. That person really has command of their thoughts.”
That’s right. That’s right. And then the other—so I want—that’s like the bulk of the question. And then I want to bracket your observation about this—I guess is it auto-ethnography? Or the outsourcing of data collection to the consumer. But you used that word “just.” I feel like I have an argument against the word.
“Can we just...” Anytime anybody uses that phrase, I feel like they’re doing real harm to something. You know what I mean? “Can we just do this?” It’s just sort of like, well, there’s so much you’re erasing from the process.
So I guess my question is: What’s the role of the researcher? And maybe, what have you learned? What does it mean to you to be somebody who talks to people and tries to understand them? Yeah, I think that’s the question.
Yeah. I mean, with my clients, the way I come at it always is: What kind of decisions do you need to make from whatever I deliver to you? I am here to help you have confidence in your decisions. I am going to give you that confidence because I’m firing your own human instincts. Yes, you’ve got a lot of numbers. I’m not here to change your interpretation of that. I’m here to help your instincts fire. I’m here to help you smell an emergent signal.
So, what decisions do you need to make? What’s preventing you from making your decision? Let’s design research that gives you that. Because I don’t have any interest in research that’s inert, or leaves people still hungry, or like, “Well, so what?”
The researcher has been defending their role in the C-suite for as long as I’ve been doing it. So your question, what does it mean to be a researcher today? I’m trying to find new language to describe that.
Leaders are always going to need instincts—even with AI. We have to have our instincts. And that’s as much being in touch with your natural environment as getting out of your box. I think collectively there is anxiety around that, with the emergence of the absolute steamroller that is AI.
But I’ve got to find the language. People are hearing: “Hey, we’re still going to need people.” The machine doesn’t have taste. The machine can’t probe. The machine can’t ask why. The machine can’t see an emergent signal. The machine’s only about the probabilities of things. It’s predictable. It’s a flattener. All that.
We’re hearing that—but at this moment, the fervor and the gold rush is too strong. So I’m not like in a “let’s ride it out” mindset, but I do feel like it’s going to come back around to the question: What is the role of the researcher today?
There are those leaders who are always ahead and have always gotten it. And frankly, they’ve always believed in ethnographic work. For everyone else, it’s like: What is the thing that research can say that fits into the slipstream of the conversations that are happening now, that are so efficiency-driven?
I always come back to: every leader who’s accountable in a company is always afraid of getting it wrong, right? I want to help people say, “We did the best we could to understand the situation.”
I’m not a person who is here to give anyone predictability. But I am a person who’s here to say, “I can help you feel it. You can trust yourself.”
Yes. Well, I wanted to ask about the word “instinct.” You keep returning to this idea of instincts. It’s about qualitative understanding. What’s the role of instinct in qualitative understanding? What do you think qualitative actually does for your clients?
I think—generally speaking—it’s always just this constant reminder that people are gonna people, you know?
I mean, I’m sure you’ve had these situations where there’s this tiny thing you’ve observed or that you hear, but it unlocks so much, right? I think, yeah, it reminds you that humans will surprise you. It reminds you that there are many different ways to get what you want. Giving a damn is one of them.
Like, “Hey, we could innovate over here. It would help these people. It would actually be a net positive for your customer. And it would positively impact your bottom line.”
I’m always like, “Is that something you might be interested in?”
You know? I mean, I have countless stories from the field of that happening. But I don’t—I’m not answering your question. I am somebody who loves emotion. I’ve always loved emotion. I’ve always felt emotion. Why we try to zero it out of a professional situation, I have no idea.
I’m fond of saying, every business problem is a human problem. Even if you’re talking about raising the price of something and people don’t buy it—that’s a human problem. People didn’t see the value, and you’re doing that.
Everything is about trying to get people to do something—everything in business. You’re trying to get people to do something you want, behave the way you want them to. And qualitative is this reminder that there are so many ways to do that, that can be a net positive, that can be differentiating, that can spark innovation, or can just be kinder.
Yeah, as far as—it’s interesting, the role of qualitative. I know you interviewed Simon, and I love his UXification of Research paper. The idea of generative research is now taking a backseat to qualitative being: “Tell me what you think of this.” “How about this prototype?” I think there will be a big swing.
I do. I’m optimistic. I think the pendulum will swing.Now, will I still be here for that? I don’t know.
But yeah, that’s a long-winded, very indirect, non-answer to your question about qualitative. But the language—I’m presently, as you can see, struggling to determine what is the thing I can say as I’m pitching projects. Because there are plenty of people who are there to take care of efficiency.
Yes.
I will drop into your workflow, and I will conduct my research and design it in a way that is compatible with the way you work. But I am not here to help you do anything more efficiently.
Yeah. This reminds me of when John Dutton invited me to answer this question for his newsletter. It was kind of, “What’s the role of qualitative in the age of AI and synthetic users?” And it really sparked a real existential crisis. Because when you really look closely at generative AI, it really does—or mimics, or looks like—most things that I think I do. And that’s why the synthetic user stuff is growing the way that it’s growing. Because it looks like it’s doing what we do.
But yeah, I really had to come to terms with what it is that we do. And I was attracted to your use of the word instinct, because I feel like qualitative probably apologizes too much for being... you know, or tries to... or abandons the humanity of the work too quickly in order to get access to the C-suite.
But what we really do is this sort of magical form of understanding that’s not—like you said, what is it? You said something about the immeasurable up front. What’s the line that you say?
Oh, I’ve just always been more interested in the immeasurable than the measurable.
Yeah, that’s right. But I think you’re making a really good point about maybe we need to hold the line more as qualitative researchers and not be apologetic. Or build the value in.
Sorry—yeah. What did you say?
I love what you were saying about maybe we shouldn’t apologize for its squishiness. Yes, right. Because I’m here to take what we’ve learned and put it into the business equation—but let’s let it be squishy. Let’s let it be unruly.
Yes. And I feel like—tell me what you think about this—that qualitative, through the business lens, very often looks like a bad form of quantitative. Or some other thing that’s not really connected to data (number one) or real understanding (number two).
And so we haven’t even made the case yet to sit alongside quantitative. You know what I mean? Just to sit next to quantitative as a necessary partner that delivers a particular kind of data, collected a particular kind of way, that delivers a particular kind of understanding.
That’s not—you don’t even compare it. It’s like... you’re not even in the same boat. And what I came down to is the idea of intuition.
Because I’ve had the experience that you’ve had, where you press play on one person telling the tiniest little story about their experience in a category, and it just blows the doors off of the internal understanding of the business.
And it’s a story. You know what I mean? It’s not a number. There’s not a measurement in it. And people are—it blows their minds. And it changes everything.
Oh my gosh, yes. And I live for those moments.
I have a story that I like to tell about that very thing. So I was working with Benjamin Moore. I ended up working with them for like three years, across their entire ecosystem—but beginning with the homeowners and understanding: When is the paint purchase occasion?
Well, the quantitative longitudinal studies that they’d always done said, “Why are you painting?” And, you know, you would have regions of people—Benjamin Moore would say, “Well, it’s when you’re moving and you need to improve the value of your home.”
You have smoke damage, you have water damage, or you’re bored. That’s when people decide to paint. And this was just institutional understanding—that that was it.
So every year they would benchmark to see the changes in that, using the same quantitative instrument over and over again, and tie many of their programs to moving these things.
Oh my gosh. You go in and you play one four-minute vignette of a woman talking about—after losing her daughter, she knew her grief was over when she was willing to repaint her room and take it down.
Then you hear a guy, in the same vignette, say, “I had this woman who was this wild lover. I was shooting way above the rim, and we were lying in bed, and she’s like, ‘You should paint this room green.’” And he’s like, “We were standing in this room—it was a horrible color green.”
And we ask, “Are you still together?” And he’s like, “No.”And the whole C-suite bursts out laughing, right?
So you take them from a lump in their throat about a woman who uses paint symbolically to tell herself she can move through her grief, and answer it with this sheepish guy who painted his bedroom this awful color—for sex.
You can’t get that any other way.
And to your point, that blew the whole thing open. And we were like, so it is emotional. It’s not transactional.
That’s right. Right.There are moments in life.
And what if we just changed the language at retail to say:What are you going through right now that has you wanting to change?“Oh, we’re having a baby.”“Oh, we just got married.”You know—all these things.
And so that’s just one example of how one marketing tactic, sales language, benefits the retailer, benefits the brand—all those things. But you would never get that if you didn’t go spend hours with people talking about paint and life.
Yeah, that’s so beautiful. I mean, those really are the thrill. They really are the thrill, because it is a totally different kind of understanding. I like to describe it as: it smuggles in so much information. Do you know what I mean?
Right.
It’s just sort of like—yes, they don’t see it coming, and they can’t read—when I say “they,” I’m talking about client-side people who are fluent in, I guess, what I think of as an analytical understanding that quantitative data gives. But maybe they’re uncomfortable with the kind of intuitive understanding—or instinctual understanding—you describe from qualitative. And they can’t resist it, because it is sort of elemental. It’s human in that way.
Yes. And you’re right—I love this idea that it smuggles in. Because, you know, another layer: the woman moving through grief was basically a ringer for Fran Drescher.
She was a New Yorker. She had her little teacup dog. She was dressed head-to-toe leopard. She was very sassy—but then immediately softened when she talked about the loss of her daughter.
Right.
And so, also, there’s the visual trick that’s being played on the client. And the guy who painted for the woman—a really tall, kind of awkward guy, you know. And it just... there’s so many things. So many layers. To your point, smuggling is a great word for that. It’s just so full. And I don’t know. To me, that kind of work, and that kind of experience you have when you show—when this connection happens, where everyone in the boardroom is suddenly really feeling the business situation—it’s like...I just want to say, “You could feel like this all the time. We can have way more fun than this. And we can drive business.”
So, in preparing for our conversation, I dug around a little bit, and I wasn’t aware that your work was featured in Gillian Tett’s book. And there’s a Primrose School by me—I think it’s still around. But I wanted to give you a chance to tell that story. And for anybody who doesn’t know: Jillian Tett, anthropologist at the Financial Times, wrote a book called Anthro-Vision, advocating for all the stuff we’re talking about. What was it like? Can you tell that story about Primrose and what it was like to be featured like that?
Oh, that’s so nice of you to bring that up. Yeah, I had submitted a paper to EPIC, which is a global community of people using the ethnographic lens to advance business. I’d submitted it to the annual conference—it got accepted—and I presented the case study. And Gillian Tett happened to be in the audience.
Oh, wow.
Which was interesting. It was in Providence, Rhode Island. I didn’t know who she was. But then, like two months afterward, I got a call from the PR people at Primrose who were like, “Great job getting in the Financial Times.”
We really appreciate that. And I was like, the what? And they’re like, “You—we got mentioned in the Financial Times.” And I was like, “We did?” So Gillian had written—when she was editor-at-large, still for that publication—she’d written about the presentation. And I was like, wow. That was... that was really nice.
And then, oddly enough, not too long after that, she reached out directly and said, “Hey, I’m writing this book, and I’m really interested in how you used an anthropological approach to solving this company’s business issues.”
Primrose—for those who don’t know—it’s like a billion-dollar early education company.
Oh boy.
And they have—I think they’re probably up to over 500 franchises of preschools. An incredible story. A female founder, Jo Kirshner, is a supernova. It’s a really incredible company.
And again, we ended up with a three-year gig with them, doing their whole ecosystem. But it began with: How does a new generation of parents go about making this decision? Because they had all this data that indicated, “We’re moving people through the funnel. Great. We’re running our social ads. They’re clicking on it. They’re going to the pages on the website. We’re directing them to the tour page. They’re booking the tour.”
And then—they’re not signing up. What is happening?
And the CEO, Jo, she had a hunch. She said, “I think our franchisees maybe come from a different era of parenting. What’s happening here?”
So we did a six-month study—spending time with young parents navigating the decision. Ones who rejected Primrose, ones who had just enrolled, and ones who were at the very beginning of that journey—going with them on school tours.
One of the really fascinating things about that was just explaining that this generation is in a peer-to-peer world, and you’re talking to them about your pedagogy up here.
You need to break that. Because it used to be Dr. Spock—we had the experts, right? It was one-to-many. And we were like, “No, no, no. You’ve got to—you’re a peer.”
So there was a lot of work around just language. And what parents wanted—they wanted resilient kids. It’s like: “My child will learn to read. I don’t need him learning cursive or reading at four. I want him to understand how to be with others.”
A lot of generational things like that.
But then, one of the other things—again, you could never do this without this kind of research—was going on the tours. Over and over again, when we would be with a young mom and she had her baby—this is for moms giving up for the first time, right? It’s not like, “Oh, he’s three and we’re changing preschools.” It’s, “My baby,” you know?
And every tour would start with: you meet the parents—and we always pretended to be like an aunt or something. “Oh, this is my aunt and uncle—they’re going to go along on the tour with us.”
Every time, the school director—when they got into the room where the babies are—would immediately launch into how clean the room was. Because apparently, in quantitative surveys, constantly benchmarked in ratings and reviews, cleanliness is obviously a big deal.
So they’re like, “Oh, cleanliness is a huge deal—let’s launch into cleanliness.” And every single time, they would give the baby to a teacher—just to put the mom at ease—and the director’s talking about cleaning solutions. And the mom looked nauseous. Just really destabilized. Nothing spoken—purely observed.
We noticed this. And when we got back in the car, we’d say, “So when she was talking about the cleaning...” and all these moms were like, “I’m worried if these people are going to love my child. I don’t care about bleach concentrate.”
And we were able to go back and say, “You know what? Just don’t say anything for the first minute. Let there be silence.”
Just a little tweak like that in the tour was one of those things that unleashed a whole...It’s like—let mom process. Yeah. And get to bleach later. So again—just, you know, thank you for asking.
Oh, of course. I definitely feel like I have a weird little underdog complex as a qualitative ethnographic type person. So I’m always excited by moments when it gets celebrated and championed. I was excited to—I don’t know that I knew that when it happened—so I was happy to hear you talk about it.
And we have a little bit of time left, and I was curious—you mentioned EPIC. Talk to me about EPIC. Talk to me, maybe about—are you still on the board there? Is that right?
I just joined the board.
All right. There we go.
Yeah. It’s my first board ever.
Congratulations. All grown up.
I know. Baby’s going places. Yeah.
Talk to me about EPIC and what excites you about it and the role. Yeah. I mean, I guess—where does it fit in everything we’re talking about?
Yeah. I found—well, both Hal and I found—EPIC 10 years ago. We’ve been members for 10 years, and it was truly out of a moment of just feeling isolation, being in this weird little niche, trying to do business development. Just like, oh my gosh, we need people. We need our people.
And just Googling around and stumbling upon this organization that initially—I’ll be honest—I was like, what is this? It has the word “ethnography,” they have a conference, but they talk in ways I don’t understand. And it felt very academic.
And it is—it has quite the academic backbone, in the best possible way. But we just rolled the dice and were like, well, this conference is in New York. Let’s just go. And if it’s a bust, hey, we’re in New York City. That’ll be our own good-time growing.
So we went. And EPIC is—it’s not a trade group, because it has no agenda. It’s not there to ratify standards or anything like that, that a trade organization might. They describe themselves as a community. It’s global.
The language it’s used for the last 10 years—it’s a 20-year-old organization—has been about advancing the value of ethnography in business. Of course, as you might imagine, we’re grappling with the word “ethnography.” It’s the most meaningful method that is so misunderstood.
But it is a group. It’s UX researchers, it’s design researchers, it’s anthropologists, it’s social scientists. It’s people like me. I call it purebreds and pound puppies.
I’m a pound puppy.
Wait—I was going to say, who’s who there? I’m a pound puppy.
Yeah. Well, you need them both, right? They do different things.
And every year, there’s an annual conference. You can submit to do a case study, a paper, a Pecha Kucha, a speculative design installation. And it’s been a really special, special group where you can go and openly debate things, right?
It is that safe space of people who care deeply about the human social science perspective in business. But we’re not in the business of absolutes, right? So there’s lots to debate. And there’s a lot of application of theory versus what actually just happens in the real world.
So it’s been a lovely professional oasis—and a lovely debate arena.
We’re having our big conference in Helsinki in two weeks. And I think we’re going to try to do a big membership drive at the start of the year.
But like many organizations post-pandemic, people are like, “Ah, do I really need to get on a plane? Do I really need to go be there? Can’t I just join virtually?” Or, “Here are all these other virtual webinars, and I never even need to leave my desk.”
So we’re kind of suffering that situation, as many in-person events do.
So yeah, I kind of came on the board because I have a marketing background. And most people come from other backgrounds—there are a lot of people from socio-technical research, and that sort of thing.
So yeah, that’s my remit: to help them get some sea legs under them and broaden the aperture, because it really is for anyone who cares about this thing called humanity and believes that humanity and business don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Beautiful. I want to thank you so much. We’re kind of running out of our time. This has been a blast. It’s nice to see you again. And this is just a real treat. So thank you so much for accepting my invitation.
You’re so kind. I’m not used to—I’m not comfortable being the one dominating conversations. So thank you for finding all the buttons to hit play. That didn’t hurt a bit, Peter.
Nice. High compliment.
I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much. I love what you’re doing. Please don’t stop.
That’s kind. Thank you very much.
