I've been amused by one of the negative reactions the idea for this workshop has already generated. The aim of this workshop is to allow people to come together to "build a community to forecast and create the upcoming era of advertising in pervasive information environments."
This community will allow for the full and frank discussion of all aspects of advertising both positive and negative which will be possible as further advancements in pervasive information environments come to pass. As people knew Spam would come with email, banner/blinking/adwords with the web we can clearly predict advertising, in some form will come hand in hand with the wide-spread deployment of devices, displays, services which form the edifice of future pervasive computing environments. Ignoring this fact won't make it go away, discussing it to ensure appropriate measures to allow us to opt-in or out, government regulation, self-directed policy etc. is the responsibility of our research community.
The trend toward such infrastructure is already taking place. This article drew my interest as it states that "The market for Digital Signage is set to grow rapidly over the next few years. A recent report by MultiMedia Intelligence predicts that the digital signage market will more than double in size by 2012 to consume 2.3 million displays, having grown by 34% from 2007 to 2008 to 1.1 million displays." [1] "Digital Signage" is a clear example of the ubiquitous infrastructure required to realise many of the pervasive computing scenarios we envisage for the future. However, without a discussion aorund their use, first and foremost in advertising we cannot hope to understand how they might be used in alternate contexts.
If this topic is of interest to you I encourage you to submit by May 1, 2009 one-page submission to allow you to join the workshop as a participant.