Just because it's winter doesn't mean it's too early for camp. Sun Microsystems will host the OpenEco Energy Camp on Thursday, Jan. 10, and swimsuits and sleeping bags are purely unnecessary. (Marshmallows are optional.) Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean it’s too early for camp. Sun Microsystems will host the OpenEco Energy Camp on Thursday, Jan. 10, and swimsuits and sleeping bags are purely unnecessary. (Marshmallows are optional.)Eco-minded business leaders and analysts as well as open-source software developers will be attending the event in San Francisco, which Sun is dubbing (in addition to Energy Camp) an “unconference.” “Sun will provide access to environmental leaders and creative tools to help spark ideas, but the real agenda and conversations of the day will be led by the audience,” according to the announcement.Speakers will include: Hunter Lovins, author of “Natural Capitalism”; Adam Werbach, founder and CEO of Act Now Products, former Sierra Club president, and Wal-Mart sustainability consultant; and Sun’s VP of eco-responsibility, Dave Douglas. Also attending: Software developers interested in “coding for the environment” by contributing to OpenEco.Org, Sun’s online community aimed at providing tools to help participants assess, track, and compare energy performance and share best practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Green-tech is indeed becoming a hot topic at conferences around the globe (and cyberspace), from New York to Second Life to San Francisco (at InfoWorld’s forthcoming Virtualization Executive Forum). The OpenEco Energy Camp event venue is the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF, 1675 Owens Street, in San Francisco. The doors open at 9:00 a.m., and the event will conclude at around 5:30 with dinner. Attendance is free. If you can’t attend in person, there will be a Webcast on Ustream, linked from sun.com and Openeco.org/energycamp. A Wiki will be available at www.openeco.org/wiki/Energy_Camp_2008.For more information or to register, go to Openeco.org/energycamp. Related links: Sun launches community for measuring, comparing GHG emissions InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum landing page Eco group brings climate-change conference to Second Life Big green event in the Big Apple — and it’s free Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter. Technology Industry