Pre-Announcement for the IEEE Boston Section Reflector: 2013 IEEE International Conference on Building the Internet of Things: Technologies and Tools [Working title]

Time: [TBD April – June 2013]  Location: [TBD Greater Boston]

Introduction:
This conference is focused on providing a venue and forum for researchers, educators, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the Internet of Things to lay the groundwork for its successful, rapid implementation. Kevin Ashton, confounder and executive director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT (the creators of the RF-ID initiative, the progenitor of the IoT, credited with coining “Internet of Things”) writes, “ In the real world, things matter more than ideas…We need to empower computers with their own means of gathering information, so they can see, hear and smell the world for themselves, in all its random glory. RFID and sensor technology enable computers to observe, identify and understand the world—without the limitations of human-entered data…The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so.”

A number of conferences, around the world, are devoted to conceptualizing the “Iot Era,” focused on specific areas of applications in: health, transportation, household life, commerce, custom-manufacturing, etc. However, realizing the “IoT Era” requires providing those with applications-specific expertise, and concepts, with the IoT practicum. Specifically, this conference is focused on the tools, technologies and techniques, to interconnect the myriads of sensors and actuators, with local and global-scale computation, storage and system management. We intent to enable the building of the IoT – a world when, and where as Gérald Santucci, Head of Unit “Enterprise Networking and RFID“ for the European Commission, Directorate General Information Society and Media, and author of the definition of the IoT formally adopted by the EU has written, “…we are now heading to the third and potentially most “disruptive” phase of the
Internet revolution – the “Internet of Things.” The Internet of Things links the objects of the real world with the virtual world, thus enabling anytime, anyplace connectivity for anything and not only for anyone. It refers to a world where
physical objects and beings, as well as virtual data and environments, all interact with each other in the same space and time….”

Topics of Interest:
The process of implementing such an Internet of Things requires the development of efficient means for rapid prototyping of sophisticated transducer-rich (sensors and actuators) systems.
Papers are invited in (but not limited to) the following areas:
Open, practical and easy to use tools;
Core hardware and software technologies for sensing and actuation;
Core hardware and software for local computation, communications and storage;
Standards and protocols for networking from the chip to global-scale;
Power harvesting and power-saving architectures and components;
Tools and Design Methodologies;
IoT-related Educational Materials;
Pedagogical innovations;
Practical applications which can serve as models for other projects
Submission
Papers submitted to the conference should not exceed four (4) pages in length.
Submissions must comply with IEEE Computer Society formatting requirements.
Submissions in pdf or postscript format may be submitted on-line [TBD].
Submissions will be judged on originality, appropriateness, technical strength, assessment,
and other relevant criteria. Expanded versions of selected papers will be considered for
inclusion in an appropriate IEEE publication.
See www.ieeeboston.org [To Be Replaced by Conference Website] for updated information