Semantic Ambient Media Experience (SAME 2008)

Workshop in conjunction with ACM Multimedia 2008
Vancouver, BC, Canada; October 27th - November 1st, 2008

http://namu.cs.tut.fi/acmmm2008/same2008/index.html

http://www.mcrlab.uottawa.ca/acmmm2008/

*) several papers will be published in the ACM Multimedia 2008 proceedings;
*) workshop results will be published in special issues our journals;
*) deadline for papers: 30th June 2008 (extended till 16th of July 2008)

DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKSHOP

The medium is the message! And the message was literacy, media democracy and
music charts. Mostly one single distinguishable media such as TV, the Web,
the radio, or books transmitted the message. No in the age of ubiquitous and
pervasive computing, where information flows through a plethora of
distributed interlinked media - what is the message ambient media will tell
us? What means semantic in this context? Which experiences will it open to
us? What is content in the age of ambient media? Ambient media are embedded
throughout the natural environment of the consumer - in his home, in his
car, in restaurants, and on his mobile device. Predominant sample services
are smart wallpapers in homes, location based services, RFID based
entertainment services for children, or intelligent homes. The distribution
of the medium throughout the natural environment implies a paradigm change
of how to think about content. Until recently, content was identified as
single entities to information - a video stream, audio stream, TV broadcast.
However, in the age of ambient media, the notion of content extends from the
single entity thinking towards a plethora of sensor networks, smart devices,
personalized services, and media embedded in the natural environment of the
user. The consumer actively participates and co-designs contextual media
experience One example is e.g. location based information. Initiatives as
the smart Web considering location based tagging for web-pages underline
this development. This multidisciplinary workshop aims to address the
challenges:
- how to select, compose, and generate ambient content?
- how to present ambient content?
- how to re-use ambient content and learning experiences?
- what are the characteristics of ambient media, its content, and
technology?
- how can collaborative, participatory, or social media service better
supported and extended?
- and what are ambient media in terms of story-telling, interactive, and
art?
The workshop aims at a series, and at the creation of a think-tank of
creative thinkers coming from technology, art, human-computer interaction,
and social sciences, that are interested in glimpsing the future of semantic
ambient intelligent empowered media technology.

We are aiming at multidisciplinary, highly future oriented submissions that
help to develop the 'ambient media form' for entertainment services, such
as:
- case-studies (successful, and especially unsuccessful ones)
- oral presentation of fresh and innovative ideas
- artistic installations and running system prototypes
- user-experience studies and evaluations
- technological novelties, evaluations, and solutions

The following (and related) topics are within the scope of this workshop and
shall act as examples:
- Understanding of the semantics of ambient content and methods for adding intelligence to daily objects
- Mobile and stationary sensor data collection and interpretation algorithms and techniques
- Context awareness and collection and context aware composition/selection of ambient content
- Creation and maintenance of meta-information including metadata and data management
- Ambient and mobile social networks, user generated content, and co-creation of content and products
- Characteristics of ambient media, its content, and technological platforms
- Ambient content creation techniques, asset management, and programming ambient media
- Algorithms and techniques for sensor data interpretation and semantic interpretation
- Applications and services, including ambient games, art and leisure content in specific contexts
- Ambient interactive storytelling, narrations, and interactive advertising
- Personalization, user models, multimodal interaction, smart user interfaces, and universal access
- Experience design, usability, audience research, ethnography, user studies, and interface design
- Business models, marketing studies, media economics, and 'x'-commerce

The workshop aims at answering the following questions:
- What is 'content' and how can it be presented when it becomes 'ubiquitous' and 'pervasive'?
- How to select, compose and generate ambient content?
- How to manage and re-use ambient content in specific application scenarios (e.g. e-learning)?
- What is interactivity between the single consumers and consumer groups in the ambient context?
- How can collaborative or audience participatory content be supported?
- Which methods for experience design, prototyping, and business models exist?
- How can sensor data be interpreted and intelligently mined?
- How can existing media such as TV, home entertainment, cinema be extended by ambient media?

IMPORTANT DATES
- paper submission: June 30th , 2008
- notification of acceptance: July 15th, 2008
- final papers due: August 01st, 2008

please submit at: http://namu.cs.tut.fi/acmmm2008/same2008/index.html

TARGET AUDIENCE

The target audiences are researchers and practitioners in the field of
ubiquitous and pervasive computation and its related areas. These include
pervasive computation, emotional computation, content creation, ubiquitous
computation, human-computer-interaction and usability experts, mobile
industry, service creators, etc. Workshop participants shall have previous
experience in this or related fields to be able to contribute on a high
scientific level. The workshop participants will actively contribute to the
development of semantic ambient media, due to a different method of workshop
organization. Participants shall 'participate' rather than passively
contribute. The participants shall discuss and actively elaborate the topic
and we plan to kick-off an international web-based informal forum for
ambient media, which shall increase the effect of this workshop
tremendously.
We strongly welcome multidisciplinary contributions coming from the media
technology, artistic, and human experience side. Case studies (successful
and especially unsuccessful), artistic installations, technologies, media
studies, and user-experience evaluations are highly welcome, which are
affecting the development of ambient media as new form of media. Especially
visionary contributions shaping the future of ambient media are strongly
welcome.

WORKSHOP CHAIRS
- Artur Lugmayr, Tampere University of Technology (TUT) & lugYmedia Inc., FINLAND
- Thomas Risse, L3S Research Center, GERMANY
- Bjorn Stockleben, Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg (RBB), GERMANY
- Juha Kaario, NOKIA, FINLAND
- Kari Laurila, NOKIA, FINLAND

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Shu-Ching Chen, Florida International University, USA
Heiko Schuldt, Uni Basel, SWITZERLAND
Andreas Rauber, TU Vienna, AUSTRIA
Mark Billinghurst, Canterbury University, NEW ZEALAND
Carlos Ramos, Polytechnic of Porto, PORTUGAL
Carsten Magerkurth, SAP Research, GERMANY
Ismo Rakolainen, FogScreen, FINLAND
Jan Nesvadba, Philips, THE NETHERLANDS
Gabriele Kotsis, University Linz, AUSTRIA
Jussi Kangasharju, Helsinki University of Technology, FINLAND
Pablo Caesar, Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, THE NETHERLANDS
Zhiwen Yu, Kyoto University Yoshida-Honmachi, JAPAN
Tuula Leinonen, Fakegraphics, FINLAND
Sofia Tsekeridou, Athens Information Technology, GREECE
Richard Chbeir, Bourgogne University, FRANCE
Bjorn Landfeldt, NICTA, AUSTRALIA
Konstantinos Chorianopoulos, Ionian University, GREECE
Carmen Mac Williams, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, GERMANY