CS Electronics Products and Services Committee (EPSC) report to SAB on Instant Communities and Special Interest Groups As a member of EPSC, I have been involved in their IT projects along with Pam Jones. In Feb10, CS senior volunteer & staff leaders met at Headquarters, agreed to pilot a new community / interest group model this year. John Walz, IEEE-CS VP for Technical & Conferences Activities Board 26-Mar-2010

Standards Development observations from Gartner Gartner group reports “NIST's [Smart Grid] actions have had an impact, by declaring that the Standards groups are turning to content management and Web 2.0 technologies to overcome challenges. Collaboration software platforms are ideally suited to support the transparency and interactions of standards-making processes and are making a difference.” An important strategic step for IEEE may be to focus its attention and resources on enabling technologies that support rapid development of IEEE standards [IEEE Strategy] As part of the IEEE staff working on strategy on Smart Grid, I came across these recommendations, which I believe are relevant to SAB. 02/26/10

2 F2F in 2009; 3 F2F in 2010; 1 F2F in 2011 requires contributions, collaboration, review, and revise between F2F meetings SC WG need to focus energy between the F2F meetings. CS has some infrastructure for these asynchronous activities.

Standards has many groups Variety of groups Committees / Sponsors, Working Groups, Study Groups, SA Ballot Groups, Technical Advisory Groups [LMSC], & User Groups [P1471] Most group communications are face-to-face (F2F) meetings for collaboration and decisions, email chains for news and decisions, static web pages for governance I believe these communications should be modernized as recommended by Gartner 02/26/10

Sense of identification / association / network Collaboration, EPSC is implementing Instant Communities and considering pilots on Special Interest Groups Sense of identification / association / network Collaboration, Focus on IEEE & CS products & services Attract web traffic to computer.org One of the CS President’s initiatives is allow more flexible groupings with support from the deployment of IC 02/26/10

Instant Communities (IC) Quickly formed by individuals with common technical interests Communicate, operate, collaborate remotely and asynchronously without depending on F2F meetings Governance can be added as the IC becomes more mature / complex Technology is Liferay web portal After finding many vibrant technical communities on Google and Yahoo covering CS FOI, work started on providing a similar and richer CS platform. 02/26/10

Standards Groups benefits with Liferay web portal Collaborative applications, managed by volunteer community leaders and members: Web content blogs, for leadership news to members and potential members, content management system, with versions and permissions wiki, for scope and future directions / roadmap message forum, calendar, etc. Provides transparency to volunteer leaders & members, next higher organization, & staff Inexpensive open source architecture allows new & improved features / applications  Consistent branding and look & feel with other CS web portals Two year experience with IEEE-CS allows easy startup  I have experienced these benefits with the P730 WG. This has been helpful and encouraging new members to join our WG as they can see assets and follow our meeting meetings, action items, and decisions. 02/26/10

Standards Groups roles with Liferay web portal volunteer "community” leaders to manage and recruit / assign "community” members web portal roles including adding content to Web Content sections / pages delete and change permissions of Member and Guest "community” members to be engaged and contribute to web portal roles "guests" to browse and make community membership decision staff to position the right IEEE products & services on the right web pages IT support (e.g. startup portal template, help desk, etc)  CS EPSC to manage feature / applications additions Assignments to your leadership team and granted permissions, can share your leadership burden and engaged your members. 02/26/10

Liferay web portal attributes Open source, free to encourage wide-spread use Rapid innovation with customer-contributed sponsored development and new releases every eight months Maintenance / SLA fees Requires low staff support as Self-Service Portals are volunteer responsibilities http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal CS has two year experience started at version 3 and now at version 5.2.2 Version 5.2.3 built for IC and rolls out mid-April One collaboration example is S2ESC P730 SQA with 18 month experience on computer.org/portal/web/sqa (demo shortly) Your Standards Committees leadership is needed to migrate to CS Liferay Three IC groups: public, restricted, & private. 02/26/10

P730 Liferay demo

IEEE Computer Society Pilot Special Interest Groups (SIG) for invited groups Start with the background rationale John Walz, David Allen Grier, Pieter Botman March 17, 2010 Washington, DC

Purpose of Society & IEEE Serve Public with Technical Knowledge 02/26/10 13

Knowledge Membership Two Purposes Keep Abreast of Knowledge Lead current trends, activities, etc Membership Attract Members who can develop and apply that knowledge 02/26/10 14

Key Issue for Society: Identification Focus of Attention Source of Professional Benefits Assets Leadership Opportunities Stake in Organizational Success 02/26/10 15

Field of Computer Science Too Diverse Attention Shifting too fast Risk having a monolithic society that appeals to few 02/26/10 16

Proposal At Hand: Special Interest Groups (1) Revitalize the two key elements of society Knowledge and Service Smaller Unit Stronger identification More leadership opportunity Better able to follow field 02/26/10 17

Proposal At Hand: Special Interest Groups (2) Flexible: Intellectual, Professional, Topical or other valid problems Easy to Create Easy to Expand Natural path Easy to change or terminate 02/26/10 18

SIGs Online community Focused on defined subjects Online Tools Learn lessons of information age Concentration of like minded individuals Focused on defined subjects Common work of Professionals Creating, validating and disseminating knowledge 02/26/10 19

SIGs Concept New online communities formed around a common interest (e.g., professional, technical, social, geographic) Specifically set up to support authorship and generation of IP Flexible membership – not limited to CS members, a distinct “package” Includes logistical support from CS, and a preliminary funding model w.r.t. the CS The SIG concept is essentially to allow or facilitate communities of common interest – this could mean a community of interest around a technical topic, but it is not limited to technical interests alone. A SIG could form wrt a professional interest, an industry domain interest, or even a regional interest. The SIG would *not* be formed on the basis of CS membership, although there could be some connection in terms of pricing to join a SIG (for a CS member vs.. a non CS member). This would encourage formation of both broad (i.e. not entirely CS members) communities, and perhaps encourage formation of deep (i.e. containing topic experts who are not CS members, gathering to work on material such as papers, tutorials or other IP. At one end of the spectrum of possible SIG communities would be those in which members prepare / develop IP material of some form. A key to this SIG concept is the encouragement and support of such IP development, and the management of that IP from the CS perspective. Support for such IP development within a SIG includes a working environment which includes collaboration and document development features, but also controls and governance. At the other end of the spectrum of possible SIG communities would be those in which members gather to simply learn, read and discuss – rather than to define the state of the practice and publish. The SIG concept would support this with flexible collaboration environment (such as with Liferay) which allows posting of articles and materials, discussions, calendars and support for meetings, newsletters, etc. Finally another important SIG infrastructure important to all possible SIG communities (broad or deep, popular or narrowly subscribed) is the social media (web 2.0) tools with which to draw others into the community and to heighten awareness. Another subtle (web 2.0) related infrastructure aspect will be provision for advertising and sponsorships – important potential sources of revenue which factor into the financial model – see later slide for this discussion. 02/26/10

Infrastructure for SIGs A general collaboration environment (private area, login, discussion, posts, etc.) Must support generation of newsletters, papers, materials and other IP General integration with identity mechanism from IEEE and CS for login Liferay platform identified at least for initial trial SIG implementations Publishing now means -> CSDL & IEEE Xplore First to be a true online “group”, the infrastructure must support basic online group functions, including - login validation - private (or controlled public) web site/area for group web pages - discussion threads - file and document sharing - wikis - calendar - etc (Note VOIP, communications and desktop sharing? Tbd) It was intended that the CS not need to re-invent the wheel with an access/login mechanism of their own, and to try to make use of (integrate with) the IEEE web account mechanism. HOWEVER login access control mechanism this is not yet finalized – in terms of the technical platform features *and* also not finalized in terms of active operational support required. Liferay has been proposed but full IT plans surrounding development implementation and operational support of Liferay communities this year are tbd. Going back to the concept of publishing new IP materials, “publishing” from these SIGs basically means capturing the valuable materials (all IP forms such as papers, books, tutorials, webinars, etc) into CSDL or some other CS channel and making it available electronically – as opposed to only through paper newsletters or printed magazines. Of course because this material will be captured by the CS, it can be re-purposed and used in many CS products and publication channels. 02/26/10

Standards Committees Consensus IP Products Podcasts, i.e. IEEE Talks Software Process Webinars, i.e. Home Networking Standards Video, i.e. WirelessMAN: Inside the IEEE 802.16 Standard Computer Standards Column, i.e. Safety Issues in Modern Bus Standards White Papers, i.e. ‘Coexistence Assurance’ (CA) Document - TAG 802.19 Journal, tbd Tutorials, i.e. IEEE 802.16 Workshop / Conference papers / presentations, i.e. IEEE 802 Standards: A Standards Education Workshop ReadyNotes, i.e. IEEE Software Engineering Standards Support for the CMMI Project Planning Process Area Books, i.e. 802.11 Handbook Two years ago, pointed out our Std members have interest in authoring other ancillary products. SIG can attract and encourage IP creation. By IEEE-CS, IEEE-SA, IEEE-ComSoc, & IEEE-EA 16-May-08 Walz

Standards Committee / WG migration Move offsite web sites back into computer.org using IC Liferay web portal improve standard development cycle & quality Expand standards into technical, conference, publication, educational, or professional activities as part of CS SIG become part of CS business model w/ annual budget funding based on revenue recognition candidates: LMSC, S2ESC Two steps 02/26/10

Backup slides 02/26/10

Liferay web portal template Committee/WG Name & Abbreviation Web Content Charter / Mission Scope / PAR Plan for this year Report for last year Officers, roles & emails Call for new Volunteers Volunteer Guidance Members Committee Newsletter Sponsored Technical Meetings, Blog Messages Calendar events Wiki Library w/ leadership permissions Annual Reports, Annual Plans, Annual Budgets, Meeting agendas, minutes, action items Governance documents Annual Archives, e.g. Newsletters Product & Services and Contributors / Authors Standards, IP supporting Standards deployment PodCasts Webinars, tutorials Handbooks, ReadyNotes, Books Conference presentations / papers Periodical articles Recognition Awards, Fellows, Archives of past Leadership rosters Pick & choose what fits for your SC / WG