UGS2009 - 1st International Workshop on User-generated Services

co-located with the 7th International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC2009) and
ServiceWave2009

Stockholm, Sweden, November 24th 2009, 9:30 - 13:30

News

16 December 2009: We have collected and uploaded the slides for all presentations. You can find them below in the schedule.
23 November 2009: The schedule for UGS has now been decided, including an interesting invited talk on the Open Alliance for Service Front-Ends. The proceedings are now available online at CEUR-WS, Vol. 540.
18 November 2009: We expect a nice turnout - 39 participants have registered for UGS2009, compared to an average number of workshop participants of 31.25!
23 October 2009: The list of accepted papers, incl. abstracts, is now available.
17 October 2009: The date for the workshop has now been set to the 24th November, 9:30 - 13:30.
04 October 2009: We are happy to announce that we have accepted a total of 7 papers for presentation at the workshop. Details about each paper following soon!
15 September 2009: The submission system is now closed - thanks to everyone who submitted to our workshop. Stay tuned for the results of the reviewing phase!
07 September 2009: Due to numerous requests we have extended the submission deadline by one week to 13/09!
06 July 2009: Web site and CfP up.

Schedule and Accepted Papers

The UGS2009 proceedings are published at CEUR-WS, Vol. 540.

Time	Presentation	Slides
`09:30-09:45`	Welcome and Introduction	PPT
`09:45-10:10`	Lightweight Composition of Ad-Hoc Enterprise-Class Applications with Context-aware Enterprise Mashups Florian Gilles , Volker Hoyer , Till Janner and Katarina Stanoevska-Slabeva Abstract ... The huge demand for ad-hoc and situational enterprise-class applications led to a new kind of Web-based applications, known as enterprise mashups. End users from the business units with no programming skills are empowered to combine and reuse existing company internal and external resources within minutes to new value added applications. In order to handle the growing number of mashable components, we propose a context-aware concept for enterprise mashups that supports users to find relevant components according to their current situation and to compose them automatically. The designed context model which is structured in the three domains agent, computing and environment is implemented in the SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace prototype to demonstrate its applicability and business benefits.	PDF
`10:10-10:35`	User-centric Composition of Service Front-ends at the Presentation Layer Tobias Nestler , Lars Dannecker and Andreas Pursche Abstract ... The emerge of web services in Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) within companies or at the global internet offers new ways for the creation of web applications. Even though the composition of services via business processes are covered by existing tools and solutions, concepts for a lightweight service consumption are still in a preliminary phase and prevent users with limited IT skills getting easy access to web services and their offered functionalities. This paper presents an user-centric design approach to model and create simple service-based applications in a graphical way without being necessary to write any code.	PDF
`10:35-11:00`	Supporting Dynamic Service Composition at Runtime based on End-user Requirements Eduardo Silva , Luís Ferreira Pires and Marten van Sinderen Abstract ... Network-based software application services are receiving a lot of attention in recent years, as observed in developments as Internet of Services, Software as a Service and Cloud Computing. A service-oriented computing ecosystem is being created where the end-user is having an increasingly more active role in the service creation process. However, supporting end-users in the creation process, at runtime, is a difficult undertaking. Users have different requirements and preferences towards application services, use services in different situations and expect highly abstract mechanisms in the creation process. Furthermore, there are different types of end-users: some can deliver more detailed requirements or can be provided with more advanced mechanisms, while others can not. To tackle these issues and provide end-users with personalised service delivery, we claim that runtime automated service composition mechanisms are required. In this paper we present the DynamiCoS framework, which aims at supporting the different phases required to provide end-users with automatic service discovery, selection and composition process. In this paper we also present the developed prototype and its evaluation.	PDF
`11:00-11:30`	Coffee Break
`11:30-11:55`	Using Personal Information Management Infrastructures to Facilitate User-Generated Services for Personal Use Olaf Grebner Abstract ... Ad-hoc and situational applications for personal use will gain more and more traction in the work support for knowledge workers (KWers). Personal information is a key element in these applications. Composition environments for situational applications like, e.g., Yahoo Pipes, enable end-users to compose services into an application targeting their individual problems. However, we analyze that these composition environments lack access for a KWer's personal information and require redundant development of services for common KWer activities. Addressing these issues, we present an infrastructure that manages the KWer's personal information consistently and thus provides services that serve as basis for enabling end-user driven service composition for application for personal use. The infrastructure consists of two key components, a basic personal information management system to maintain a KWer's personal information cloud in a unified and integrated form and domain-specific services that offer business logiactivities in applications for a KWer's personal use.	PDF
`11:55-12:20`	Rethinking the Semantic Annotation of Services Nikolaos Loutas , Vassilios Peristeras and Konstantinos Tarabanis Abstract ... This work extends and enhances existing semantic service models by involving users and by including service metadata related to the user's view of the service and their behavior. We borrow ideas and extend the models and practices for the annotation of Web content and information resources that has recently become popular in widely-used social platforms. Users are encouraged to describe in their own terms the services they use. Our approach strengthens user participation in the Web and more generally in the service industry by providing service metadata, which are later used as a form of lightweight user-side semantic annotation of services. This annotation is provided explicitly by the users and/or implicitly by identifying patterns in the users' behavior. This type of service annotation acts supplementary to the service descriptions provided by the service providers and is linked to the actual use of the services. Finally, we harvest the collected metadata and use it for facilitating discovery and clustering of services, as well as to enable service recommendations and matchmaking with users' profiles.	PDF
`12:20-12:45`	Composition of Interactive Service-based Applications by End Users Abdallah Namoune , Usman Wajid and Nikolay Mahendjiev Abstract ... In this paper, we investigate web users' mental models of services, the underlying risks and benefits of service composition, and the problems anticipated while combining web services into final interactive applications. For this purpose, three focus groups were performed, involving 35 participants with no specialist technical skills. The results of the focus groups revealed a high level of users' orientation towards service composition and consumption. However, several concerns, primarily related to personal privacy, trust, and technical difficulty, were highlighted during the focus groups. This paper discusses and proposes the remedies to overcome these issues.	PDF
`12:45-13:10`	Towards Ontology Matching for Intelligent Gadgets Oszkar Ambrus , Knud Möller and Siegfried Handschuh Abstract ... The FAST environment allows users to graphically compose intelligent, i.e. semantically annotated gadgets from predefined building blocks and deploy them on various mashup platforms, thus enabling the interconnection of different systems and services. Since different parties involved in the creation of gadgets and building blocks conceptualise knowledge in different ontologies, using ontology matching as a means to reconcile differences in the various conceptualisations is a crucial issue. This paper discusses first steps in our effort to integrate ontology matching in an end-user-oriented environment such as FAST, using an e-commerce-related scenario. We evaluate a number of tools and approaches for solving different levels of complexity in ontology matching and define the direction of integrating ontology matching into the FAST environment.	PPT
`13:10-13:30`	Invited Talk: Open Alliance for Service Front-Ends: Building together the front end of the Future Internet of Services Juanjo Hierro (Telefónica I+D, Chief Technologist, Software Technologies), Nikolaos Tsouroulas (Telefónica I+D, Head of Open Source Reference Implementations Unit) Abstract ... In this session the Open Alliance for Service Front-Ends will present its mission, vision and current activities and roadmap. Together with all the participants of the workshop we will explore opportunities for collaboration and exchange ideas about challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.	PPT

User-generated Services: Workshop Overview and Goals

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) have transformed the way software systems are being developed. However, the development of services is still service-centric rather than user-centric. The reuse and combination of such services requires the assistance of a skilled developer. The workshop aims to explore research and development which will empower end-users to participate in the generation, combination and adaption of services to create functionality and solve problems in their work - what we call user-generated services.

Background

User-generated content (UGC) has become a major source of information on the World-Wide Web. Wikis, blogs, web-based user forums and social networks have empowered end-users to collaboratively create content and share it. UGC is not only a phenomenon in the private domain but has become a major source for technical solutions as exemplified by search results of technical problems in Google: solutions are increasingly found in sites providing UGC.

Thus end-users have become a major source of knowledge, similarly leveraging the “resources at the edge of the network” as P2P systems have done on a technical level. The next logical step is that after supporting the creation and management of data, the same should be done at the level of services created and provided by end-users, i.e., “User-generated Services” (UGS). UGS can cover a range of services, from ad-hoc, situational applications for personal use to more advanced enterprise mash-ups supporting a community of users. In order to facilitate UGS, tools and infrastructures to create, combine, reuse and execute possibly complex services in an easy manner are needed.

There is a range of issues that have to be addressed in order to realise the vision of user-generated services: service front-ends that support new ways of visualising and interacting with services have to be explored; questions of modelling end-users, who can range from naive users to power users, come into play, as well as modelling user behaviour and user context; automatic and semi-automatic methods for service composition are relevant, in order to lower the learning curve and technological threshold that users need to overcome for the creation of services.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers and developers from both academia and industry, covering the different fields that are relevant for user-generated services, such as service oriented computing, semantics, human computer interaction and software design. The workshop will foster an exchange of ideas to further the state of the art in the field, share and define new ideas and practical experiences in designing, creating, deploying and using user-centric services, establishing new methodologies, techniques and graphical interfaces. The findings aim to facilitate and attract non-technical users to create and use electronic services, which architectural models would be the most adequate, and how for example semantics can play a role in designing and creating them.

Topics of Interest (not limited to)

Methodology and Conceptualisation
- Techniques to facilitate the creation of services by end-users
- User-centric software development methodologies
- Methodologies to accommodate different kinds of end-users (naive, power user, ...)
Architectures and Platforms
- Platforms and middleware to facilitate the connection of back-end services and service front-ends
- Architectures for service front-ends
- Indexing and cataloguing of services
- Deployment of services
- Easy service composition
End-user Interfaces and Service Front-ends
- Intuitive visual tools to manipulate and combine service components
- Interface metaphors to hide and abstract service complexity from non-technical users
- Different patterns for user-service interaction
- Interfaces to enable service and resource mashups
- Exposing existing back-end services to end-users
- Studies dealing with usability of Service Front-ends
Context and Behaviour
- Taxonomies and Ontologies describing user context
- Context-based personalisation of services and tools
- Context-based service search
- Behaviour-aware service recommendation
Service design
- Methods to dynamically reuse and personalise services
- Integration and composition of services
- Piping/wiring of services
Automisation
- (semi-)automatic service oriented application development
- (semi-)automatic composition of services

Contributions

We invite full paper submissions, as well as posters and demos. Papers must consist of original, unpublished research and must not be under review by another conference, journal, or workshop. Authors of accepted submissions will be invited to present their work at the workshop (in presentations of ca. 20 minutes). The focus of UGS is user-centric, so we also encourage posters and demos of running applications. Posters and Demos should describe prototypical implementations of systems related to the workshop topics. Accepted submissions will be presented in a separate poster/demo session.

Format requirements for the submission of papers are:

Maximum 10 pages, including title page and bibliography for full papers.
Maximum 5 pages, including title page and bibliography for short papers.

Accepted full papers will be included in the workshop post-proceedings, which are planned to be published in the Springer Verlag Services Science book series. Full papers are not to exceed 10 pages including all references and figures. All papers must be prepared in the Springer LNCS format.

Metadata about all papers, including title, abstract, authors and author affilitions, will also be made available publicly at http://data.semanticweb.org.

Camera-ready copies will be required about 2 to 3 months after the conference. Authors will therefore have the possibility to improve and rework their papers on the basis of comments made during the workshop presentation.

To submit a paper, please log on to the UGS2009 page on EasyChair.

The call for papers is available here.

Important Dates

September 06, 2009 September 13, 2009	Submission deadline
September 27, 2009	Acceptance notification
October 15, 2009	End of early-bird registration period for ICSOC
November 23 or 24, 2009	Workshop (decision for exact date is pending)

Organisation

Organising Committee (alphabetically)

Schahram Dustdar, TU Vienna, Austria
Manfred Hauswirth, DERI/NUIG, Ireland
Juan José Hierro (Juanjo), Telefonica I+D, Spain
Javier Soriano, UPM, Spain
Florian Urmetzer, SAP, Switzerland

Administrative Chairs (alphabetically)

Knud Möller, DERI/NUIG, Ireland
Ismael Rivera, DERI/NUIG, Ireland

Programme Committee (alphabetically)

Marco Aiello, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Sami Bhiri, DERI/NUIG, Ireland
Walter Binder, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Manuel Fradinho, Cyntelix
Siegfried Handschuh, DERI/NUIG, Ireland
Volker Hoyer, SAP
Till Janner, SAP
Clement Marie Jonquet, Stanford University - BMIR, USA
Dimka Karastoyanova, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Bernd Krämer, Fernuniversität Hagen, Germany
Knud Möller, DERI/NUIG, Ireland
Klaus Pohl, Univ. Duisburg/Essen, Germany
Ismael Rivera, DERI/NUIG, Ireland
Nikolaos Tsouroulas, Telefónica I+D, Spain

Acknowledgement

UGS2009 is supported by the European FAST Project (FP7 216048).