live blogging epic 2008the corporate gaze: transparency and other organizational visions

the 'traditional' balloon, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

While the administrative talks make room for the keynote at EPIC 2008 I'm amused by the tradition of this balloon. Can we discuss tradition when the event is four years old? Can we discuss tradition, perhaps, because it is an American event first time ever outside U.S.? Its purpose is to shake and shiver as speakers approach the end of their allocated slot, and while the idea is potentially effective, it certainly makes me feel cheezy. That sorted, time comes to move on with Christina Garsten's The Corporate Gaze: Transparency and Other Organizational Visions.

The boundaries of transparency are the boundaries of the corporation.

Obvious: transparency vs. opacity. Less obvious: transparency vs. secrecy.

Transparency in architecture: easy to see from inside out, not from outside in. If you ask me, people protecting their updates on Twitter are no different, so let's no restrain this to architecture.

Transparency appears to be a remedy for all kinds of corporate crises.

Transparency as a technology for trust or mistrust? Huh?!

Transparency as a matter of position and angle.

Transparency and CSR become a business opportunity for a company like Nike.

Ikea is keen to engage with customers, and partners. Hell, no! Assembling my cheap flatpack furniture does not equal taking the reaching hand of the cute company wanting to play with me.

Organisational conscience = do we behave in a moral way? Morality testing of employees.

I stopped writing down because it seemed very silly to me, very unprepared, if not at least badly presented: no case study, but plenty definitions and little palpable findings. The few questions that were allowed pointed out a lot of poignant concepts and angles (race, social process vs. corporate one, etc.) that weren't even touched, and made Garsten look even more unprepared: another very good question, I could talk about that a lot, of course, but I won't. We learned, for example, that, in relation to transparency (see above), technology rather means mechanism or proxy...

Shortly, I wrote in a new document window: this is no revolution. Chris added on the next line: this is nothing. So far it looks like any other conference, sadly, BUT we hope we'll change our minds sooner than later, and we're out to find a proper coffee now.


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