In industry today a number of services are building upon the paradigm of the Internet of Things, which refers to networked objects and items that have the capability to report about their state, location, or certain conditions. In contrast to the human-crafted 50 petabytes of data available on the Internet, the Internet of Things seeks to enable computers and things “to observe, identify and understand the world—without the limitations of human-entered data” (Kevin Ashton who promoted the term first). RFID and other sensing technologies are applied to overcome the media breaks when capturing and transferring information from the real (business) world to the virtual (information) world for managing physical objects, items and goods more efficiently. In recent years, the Electronic Product Code (EPC) has become a worldwide unambiguous code for the designation of physical goods triggering RFID initiatives in large chain stores – e.g. Walmart and Metro -, industrial enterprises and government organizations. This fine-grained real-time information on goods helps to improve today’s ordering decisions based on point-of-sale and inventory data in retail, it can be used to optimize processes in retail and industry, and is also a promising candidate to combat threat of counterfeits to brand manufacturers. Overall, in industry and retail the Internet of Things, at least based on RFID, has moved from a vision to practice generating a number of valuable business services.

Besides this emerging industry practice also lives of everyday citizens get continuously interlinked with information beyond the desktop computer: the emergence of more powerful mobile phones - smart phones such as the iPhone, Android-powered HTC G1, or Nokia N-series - has established the mobile Internet. Location-based services suddenly become available and also social computing can leave the sandbox of the desktop computer and, as such, become an instant companion of everybody everywhere. Additionally, the deployment of 2D barcodes and consumer RFID applications - such as NFC, touchatag, swinxs or Nabaztag - are triggering the adoption and diffusion of ubicomp technology and allow linking items and objects in homes and everyday lives with information.

While a few core services, such as mobile payment and ticketing, have already hit the tipping point to fund the initial set-up efforts, the broad range of services and applications addressing everyday citizens’ needs has yet to be identified in order to drive development and adoption of this technology to the next level.

We are soliciting submissions describing applications, tackling infrastructure issues, introducing meaningful forms of interaction as well as articles discussing business scenarios that show the commercialization of Internet-of-Things applications for citizens. What if we had technology that gathered data from things of our daily lives, tracked and counted everything in order to solve citizens’ needs (e.g. reduce waste, prevent loss, and improve search)?

Submissions should address citizens’ needs. Topics are proposed but not limited to:

• Emerging applications and interaction paradigms
  • using mobile phones and other mobile devices as gateways to services for citizens
  • integrating existing infrastructure in homes (digital picture frames, smart metering of energy etc.)
  • enabling end-user programming and service mash-ups
  • embedding virtual services into physical artifacts
  • developing emerging services and applications
• Infrastructure and network
  • extension of existing network paradigms and web protocols (‘web of things’)
  • integration of social networks
  • opportunities and limitations of standards
• Case studies and experience reports
  • case studies on real-world deployments
  • user studies on technology perception and acceptance
• Social impact and consequences
  • discussion of anticipated behavioral changes of users
  • security and privacy

The workshop will collect a set of case studies and findings related to networked pervasive computing applications (Internet-of-Things) making sense for everyday citizens. These will be made available to the community and beyond in electronic form. We also plan to create a written record of the outcome of the workshop for a journal or magazine.
Of similar importance we want to foster a community that spans research and industry in the area of applied and commercialized pervasive computing for citizens.