Digital Humanities Blog

  This project has been an interesting experience. It helped me dive deeper into company processes and understand how large systems are put in place in the workplace, giving me a bird's-eye view of how businesses operate rather than a restricted, small-scale perspective. It forced me to step out of my comfort zone, engage with different professionals, and learn from their experiences and expectations. At the same time, it helped me find connections between the digital and the humanities in places I least expected. When I first chose this topic as my Applied Digital Humanities final project, I had concerns. My first concern was that the project wouldn't satisfy the requirements for the class, that it would either fail to be considered "digital" or fail to be categorized within the humanities. But I took that shot in the dark to uncover how systems hidden behind corporate jargon actually have a real, ground-level impact on the lives and everyday processes of individuals...

Our team organized a panel discussion with the Whitworth Philosophy Department to discuss the digital world and its intersections with the study of philosophy, as well as the benefits and concerns we see when those two worlds collide. The invited expert panelists were Dr. Rebecca Korf, Dr. Keith Wyma, and Dr. Nate King. Dr. Rebecca Korf has experience in environmental philosophy and philosophy of science and has conducted research that fuses digital elements with philosophical concepts. Dr. Nate King teaches business ethics at Whitworth and studies how businesses in the digital world change, along with the philosophical questions and implications of that reality. Dr. Keith Wyma mainly focuses on ethics and the ethical practices surrounding AI use and production. Below are some of the questions that were asked during the panel: How would you define digital humanities? What do you see as its purpose in the present academic world? Do you believe digital humanities intersect with philosoph...

 The Avista ERP transformation project goes through several phases: Discovery, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy, Run, and Hypercare. At the time this project was being discussed, Avista was in the Explore phase. Most of the preliminary requirements needed to begin the transformation had already been completed. The two earlier phases, Discovery and Prepare, mainly focus on understanding and evaluating business needs, assembling teams, and setting up the infrastructure and project plans necessary for implementation.      The Explore phase focuses on defining requirements, conducting fit-gap analyses, and hosting workshops that train responsible track and business leads on the changes that will come with the new ERP system. These workshops are divided into workstreams such as Work and Asset Management, Customer Service, HR, Supply Chain, and Procurement. Outside vendors and partner consultants guide employees through the upcoming changes within each workstream. The in...

 

     Wayne Manuel is the Vice President of Operations at Avista. His role has evolved significantly since he first joined the company as Chief Information Officer, a position in which he completed a full strategic plan within his first months. Over time he transitioned into a broader operations and technology role, and today he serves as the executive sponsor of the ERP implementation, signing contracts and meeting regularly with implementation leadership to keep the program on track.      Wayne and I sat down to talk about the origins, challenges, and philosophy behind Avista's ERP initiative. My questions focused on understanding how a project of this scale gets off the ground, what resistance looks like from a leadership perspective, and how the organization plans to bring its workforce along through the change.      During our conversation Wayne walked me through how the ERP vision first took shape. After joining Avista as CIO, he conve...