Mobile Middleware: Embracing the Personal Communication Device (MobMid'08)
http://kyle.gsd.inesc-id.pt/minema

December 2, 2008
Leuven, Belgium

Workshop co-located with the 9th ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware
Conference (Middleware'08)


WORKSHOP SCOPE

The rise of relatively powerful communication devices and in particular mobile
phones has enabled the deployment of a large spectrum of novel applications, such
as context-aware applications, health-care monitoring, sport tracking,
collaborative computing, etc. Extending middleware approaches designed for mobile
computing environments to personal communication devices calls for an effective
system design that can cope with the resource-constrained nature of such devices
and provide adequate services when operating in highly heterogeneous environments.

It is still unclear and to many respects an unexplored research area how and to
what extent traditional middleware services for mobile computing can be provided
on personal communication devices. Porting existing middleware architectures to
new computing platforms such as mobile phones turns out to be, in many cases, an
unfeasible approach. Instead, mobile phones require a thorough rethinking of
middleware architectures and their supporting software modules to allow
applications to make effective use of the available computational power, memory,
and communication technologies. Additionally, programming novel computing devices
such as mobile phones is still a complex and time consuming development process.

Following the success of previously organized MiNEMA events, the objective of
this workshop is to foster exchange of ideas and lively discussions in order to
identify problems and solutions on building mobile middleware on personal
communication devices. Research will be presented by both young and senior
researchers in the field. The presentation of completed research as well as work
in progress is expected to create a dynamic programme which should encourage
fruitful discussions and new collaborations. We welcome papers focused on
identifying open issues in the field, describing limits and advantages of
existing solutions, or introducing novel techniques.


WORKSHOP TOPICS

The main topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

* Architectures and protocols to support widespread development of mobile applications
* Software management techniques for personal communication devices
* Power and memory management for resource-constrained personal communication
devices
* Dynamic resource discovery in mobile and heterogeneous computing environments
* Multi-device heterogeneous interactions
* Mobile data synchronization in networks of mobile phones and other consumer
electronic devices
* Mobile communication and data encoding
* Location monitoring and tracking for personal communication devices
* Application personalization and user-centric models
* Mobile information access on personal communication devices
* Failure analysis and reliability techniques for mobile phones and other
personal devices
* Experiences in programming mobile applications using JavaME, Windows Mobile,
Android, etc.
* Tools and programming support for middleware development, deployment and
debugging on personal mobile devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, etc.
* Performance evaluation and experimentation with mobile devices


IMPORTANT DATES

* Abstract submission deadline: July 25, 2008
* Paper submission deadline: August 1, 2008
* Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2008
* Final camera ready papers due: October 8, 2008
* Workshop date: December 2, 2008


PAPER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

MobMid 2008 invites authors to submit original and unpublished work.
Contributions will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee.
Potential participants may submit three types of contributions:

* Research paper: presents ongoing research and preliminary insights on mobile
middleware for personal communication devices (4-6 pages).

* Research topic: identifies potentially open questions in the domain and sets
out a plan for how to answer those questions during the workshop - based on a
presentation (3-4 pages).

* Experience paper: a summary of complete research tracks and/or projects. This
work can be submitted by sending a position paper (4-6 pages), optionally
complemented with references to existing publications describing the work.

Please submit your paper in PDF, using the ACM proceeding format
(http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html). Submission implies that at
least one of the authors will register and present the paper. Accepted papers
will be selected based upon their originality, technical soundness, and relevance
to the call for papers. Submissions must not exceed 6 pages. The proceedings will
be uploaded to the ACM Digital Library.

More information about submitting a paper to the MobMid'08 workshop can be found
on the submission web page.


ORGANIZERS

Workshop Co-Chairs:
- Oriana Riva, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, oriva@inf.ethz.ch
- Luis Veiga, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, luis.veiga@inesc-id.pt

Technical Program Committee:
- Agathe Battestini, Nokia Research Center, USA
- Paolo Bellavista, Universit� di Bologna, Italy
- Sonia Ben Mokhtar, University College London, UK
- Renato Cerqueira, PUC-Rio, Brazil
- Carlos Flores Cortes, Lancaster University, UK
- Paolo Costa, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Domenico Cotroneo, Universit� di Napoli Federico II, Italy
- Cristiano di Flora, Nokia Corporation, Finland
- Roy Friedman, Technion, Israel
- Jaakko Kangasharju, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
- Boris Koldehofe, Universit�t Stuttgart, Germany
- Fabio Kon, University of S�o Paulo, Brazil
- Sam Michiels, K.U.Leuven, Belgium
- Jose Mocito, INESC-ID/University of Lisbon, Portugal
- Mirco Musolesi, Dartmouth College, USA
- Tatsuo Nakajima, Waseda University, Japan
- Charles Perkins, Nokia Siemens Networks, USA
- Luis Rodrigues, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal