This is funding to support the first-ever U.S. conference on persuasive technology, to be held April 26-27, 2007, at Stanford University (BJ Fogg, Conference Chair). Investigation into persuasive technology began in 1993 when BJ Fogg began his doctoral work at Stanford to investigate how computing technologies, from websites to mobile phone software, could be designed to influence people so as to change beliefs and behaviors. Trained as an experimental psychologist by professors Cliff Nass and Byron Reeves, Fogg has continued his work until today, teaching at Stanford and running a scientific research lab on campus. Fogg's 2003 book "Persuasive Technology" helped bring understanding and focus to this emerging domain, and inspired a group of academics at the Technical University of Eindhoven to host the First International Conference on Persuasive Technology in 2006, at which Fogg was the keynote speaker. That event attracted 140 academics, scientists, and practitioners from around the world, and the 28 peer-reviewed papers were published in a volume by Springer Verlag. This year's event is a direct outcome of that success; locating this first-ever U.S. conference on persuasive technology at Stanford is appropriate, in light of the role Stanford has played in shaping this domain. The research presented will be empirical in nature, drawing mostly on methods from the social sciences, the specific papers to be presented being selected from among over 80 papers received by the submission deadline and currently being evaluated by 42 reviewers through a blind peer-review process. The conference will adopt a single-track format that allows time for questions and discussion. Because of the event's location in Silicon Valley and Stanford's connection to persuasive technology, the organizers expect this conference to attract a large number of participants, and they are specifically encouraging graduate students to participate by offering reduced registration fees for students, a poster session, and deeper involvement for 12 student volunteers, who will attend the event without charge in exchange for their help. The peer-reviewed papers will be published as conference proceedings and distributed after the event; the presentations and discussions will also be videotaped, to allow sharing the content with a larger audience. A key goal of the conference is to build a coherent community of researchers; with this objective in mind, the organizers plan to hold monthly online gatherings after the conference using a new Internet service designed for large online discussions. Additional information relating to all aspects of the conference can be found at www.persuasivetechnology.org.
Broader Impacts: Bringing together the world's experts on persuasive technology will help accelerate our understanding of how computers can motivate and influence people. The exchange of research findings and methods at this conference will improve the quality of our scientific community's work in two ways: we'll be better able to ask interesting research questions because we'll have a broader understanding of the domain, and we'll have access to a wider range of research methods proven by others in the community. The conference will also serve as inspiration and invitation for graduate students to do new research in persuasive technology. Perhaps most importantly, the conference will hasten our understanding of how to use computers to motivate people in beneficial areas such as health promotion, environmental conservation, elder care, and education. As we learn to use computers to solve problems in these important domains, we will be able to improve quality of life for individuals and save money for government and NGOs in addressing some of today's biggest problems.
