Position papers for the “Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability” workshop of Pervasive 2008 will soon be posted online (The event also has a Facebook page).  Workshop organizer Marcus Foth, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, recently announced the selections, among them:

“Using persuasive technology to encourage sustainable behavior”, from a group in the Netherlands; “Taking the Guesswork out of Environmentally Sustainable Lifestyles” from a team in the US;  and a Swiss contributed paper, “The Potential of UbiComp Technologies to Determine the Carbon Footprints of Products.”

The workshop promises to address issues around the design of augmenting, pervasive systems that aim to persuade:

Providing people with environmental data and educational information – via mass communications such as film, TV and print and new media, or micro communications such as pervasive sensor networks - may not trigger sufficient motivation to get people to change their habits towards a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. This workshop seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond just informing and into motivating and encouraging action and change.

This sounds right up our alley; I only wish I could avoid the long carbon-rich flight to Australia to justify attendance.   I hope the organizers provide an open format for publishing and sharing results and even encourage participation from remote participants.   

Do check out the workshop webpage for links to some good resources.

Speaking of conferences, this weekend is CHI 2008, the SIGCHI conference, in Florence, Italy.  This year the conference is “going green” — due to the encouragement of a few folks from the Sustainable CHI Google Group, I believe.