Alignment Tango: Communities and Markets
Session Overview
Date and Time: Monday, August 19, 11am – 12:30pm
Location: East Wing Hall, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, Los Angeles
Discussant: Jeffrey Greger, Independent
Aligning communities and companies isn’t a one-time task of product-market fitting; it requires ongoing mediation between organizational and social worlds. These presentations share methodologies and tactics for using community perspectives, cultural insights, and social context to shift business strategies and products for better alignment.
Presentations
Ethnographers as Intermediaries: Plurality as a Double Edged Sword in Web3
PAPER PRESENTATION
Mrinalini Tankha, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Portland State University
Chris Rogers, Researcher, Crypto Council for Innovation
Based on original research, this paper shows how builders and founders in the Web3 industry are driving a plurality of projects and products enabling cross-chain operability to create diverse blockchain ecosystems. While this is generative for innovation in the industry, we argue that it is displacing user and community-centered perspectives and preventing fully fleshed out end-to-end Web3 solutions to urgent social problems. Given this disconnect, we propose re-situating the role of ethnographers as intermediaries that can translate or convert different kinds of value in an increasingly global and embedded techno-economic landscape.
Mrinalini Tankha is Assistant Professor of anthropology at Portland State University with research interests in money, technology, and design. Her work looks at the effects of financial exclusion on the everyday lives of communities. She is currently leading a project on the uses of cryptocurrency in Cuba as well as an NSF-funded project using big data and ethnographic methods on trust in cryptocurrency during times of crisis. She is also co-designer of the board game Loy Loy: The Savings Game.
Chris Rogers is a social impact blockchain and Web3 researcher who has been working in the space since 2021. He holds a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and a graduate certificate in business blockchain from Portland State University. He is currently working on a project documenting the experiences of Black and Latinx founders in the Web3 industry and developing a Web3 use case database for illustrating applications of blockchain technologies to policymakers and regulators.
Challenging Foundations: Seeking New Truths in Community Voices
Morgan Hay-Chapman, Strategist, Zeus Jones
Ethnography in business settings often has a narrow agenda: to bring insight to a business problem or uncover nuance about a consumer opportunity. In this session we will showcase ethnographic inquiry not just as a tool for solving immediate product, service, or design challenges, but as a foundation for understanding and addressing a systemic societal issue.
Jen Shadowens is freelance Strategist and researcher (and former Partner at Zeus Jones). She holds a master’s degree from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She favors work at the intersection of business and community, helping companies make a real difference in the world.
Morgan Hay-Chapman is a strategist and researcher at Zeus Jones. Her work is centered on finding human-centered solutions to brand and business challenges for clients like Target, Land O’Lakes and Chipotle. She is an advocate and leader in advancing the role of community-centered research in business.