summ( )n

I am a psychologist and communication professional, with a focus on cross-cultural and cross-generation communication. I studied psychology and human-computer interaction, and specifically speech communication with computers and other smart devices.

During my post-graduate studies I taught general and social psychology at the Kazakh State University, and then worked as a communication consultant and researcher with a number of PR, advertising, direct-marketing and market research agencies (including Burson-Marsteller, the world-largest PR group, where I was involved in a large scale communication programs in the former Soviet Union countries).

I lately focus on communication issues in (and via) social networks, including internet communities, on-line games and virtual worlds.

Last ten years I worked with the Strategic Future Design Team of Philips Design, where I lead or participated in numerous projects for both Philips and external clients. I was trying to support design and innovation teams by sharing both information and inspiration, my knowledge about possible futures, social and cultural developments in different regions. My other role was to help to (hopefully) better understand people and their living in multiple contexts, and eventually involve people and designers in co-research and co-design. In addition to ‘normal’ business projects, I also participated in R&D programs, including Ambient Intelligence, Experience Design, and future-focused Design Probes. Over these ten years I managed to develop quite a few new tools and methods for people research, futures studies, and innovation design.

During last few years I has been increasingly exploring the potential of digital tools (of all sorts) in supporting the design process. This included multiple social web platforms, virtual worlds, multiplayer online games, and hybrid interactive and experiential environments. Centralasian (later truncated to Cea) is my nick-name in many online realms (and also a name of my first blog, which I started already in 2002. In addition to this more or less private blog, I try to maintain my more professional blog, Playing Futures.

I wrote a number research papers and book chapters [at some point I need to compile a list of those]. I also relatively frequently speak at various conferences and workshops. For three years I was teaching a course on ‘People and Societies Change for Design Process’ at the Department of Industrial Design, Technical University Eindhoven, and currently seek another teaching opportunity with a University or Design School.

Before joining Philips Design I worked with a few research institutions and business consultancies, including OMRI, GfK, Burson-Marsteller, and BRiF, the very first private social research agency in Central Asia (which I was also a co-fonder of). I studied Social Sciences (with a focus on transitional economies), Clinical Psychology and earlier in my life, Mathematics.

I am a very enthusiastic photographer and keep my blog of abstract photography and since recently a web-site.

An average member of Summ()n is 33.2 years old, and has 12.8 years of working experience in such areas as psychology, sociology, future research, software and web application development, game design and communication.

By definition, summ()ners are networkers and collaborators. The total amount of creative professionals in our joint networks of the nearest proximity exceeds hundred of people.

See also the individual bios of the summ()ners: Kateria Khomenchuk, Otto Kokke, Slava Kozlov aka Cea, Aleksey Kulakov, and Nicolay Yaremko aka Maki.