BECC Closing Plenary: EmPowering Storytelling with Interaction. This talk was given by me at BECC 2023 in Sacramento in a session moderated by Beth Karlin. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Maya Angelou

1. The (Em)Power
of participatory
storytelling
Birgit
Penzenstadler
@twinkleflip
Birgit Penzenstadler
Chalmers Univ. of Tech.
Lappeenranta Univ. of Tech.
birgitp@chalmers.se

2. Birgit Penzenstadler
• Associate Prof, Software Engineering for Sustainability
• CV: Phd@TUM -> UCI -> LB State (& LUT) -> Chalmers|GU
• Research:
• Sustainability Design (www.sustainabilitydesign.org) since 2010
10 years RE4SuSy workshop series 2012-2021
• Wellbeing & Resilience studies (www.twinkleflip.com) since 2020
• Education:
• SE4GD Software Engineering for Green Deal Master‘s program
https://se4gd.lutsoftware.com
Policy:
• EUGAIN European Initiative for Gender Balance in Informatics https://eugain.eu 
DEIA work
@twinkleflip

3. Plus: Positionality statement.
Me: Born 1981, white woman of European descent.
German upbringing and ancestry.
Privileged in education, associate professor.
Software engineering, sustainability, wellbeing.
Lived on four continents, visited many countries.
Yoga teacher and embodied mindfulness coach.
Reviewer 2: This has no place in a research article. Research is
objective and measurable.
Me: I‘m transparent about my potential bias.

4. Motivation

5. Course
“Digitalization
for
Sustainability”
“Digital storytelling as
a form of multimodal
composition helps
cultivate a
participatory culture
that fosters social
activism,
collaboration, and
inclusion in the
classroom.” (Ali
Alalem, 2023)
Students of all levels
5 weeks / 2 sessions p.w.
Keep their attention
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science
“I’ve learned that people
will forget what you said,
people will forget what
you did, but people will
never forget how you
made them feel.”
—Maya Angelou

6. Inspiration
tarotcardsoftech.ar
tefactgroup.com

7. The results

8. The results

9. Storytelling at
BECC 2023:
Creating a
Comic book
Fun training
session
with Chris & Rachel
yesterday – ask
them 

10. Let’s
do this!
What’s
your
story?

11. • People
(character, curiosity)
• Place
(context, setting)
• Plot
(incident, resolution)
• Purpose
(message, call-to-action)
Elements: 4 Ps
Art work: Alex Grey

12. Story of me,
story of we,
story of now
What I’m taking away
from BECC 2023…
People: _______
Place: ________
Plot: _________
Purpose: ______

13. RESOURCES & References
• TEDx talk: Breathing the stress out of technology https://youtu.be/04JkvbF4I9A
• Sustainability awareness framework SusAF (Workbook): https://zenodo.org/record/7342575
• Wellbeing studies: https://www.twinkleflip.com/rise-2-flow/
• Christoph Becker „Insolvent“, MIT Press 2023
• The AI Dilemma https://youtu.be/xoVJKj8lcNQ?si=LAvkFMEtdld2avRz
• https://tarotcardsoftech.artefactgroup.com
@twinkleflip
Birgit Penzenstadler
Chalmers Univ. of Tech.
Lappeenranta Univ. of Tech.
birgitp@chalmers.se
Lorenz Hilty, Beth Karlin, Cristy Martinez Montes, Richard Torkar, Juliet Norton, Francisco Gomes, Leticia Duboc, Stefanie Betz, Christoph Becker, Steve Easterbrook, Sedef Akinli Kocak, Ruzanna Chitchyan, Ola Leifler, Jari Porras, Norbert Seyff, Ian Brooks, Shola Oyedeji, Colin C. Venters