1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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,
chains for news and decisions,
static web pages for governance
I believe these communications should be modernized as recommended by Gartner
02/26/10

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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
CS has two year experience started at version 3 and now at version 5.2.2
Version 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

11. P730 Liferay demo

12. 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

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

14. 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

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

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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 Standard
Computer Standards Column, i.e. Safety Issues in Modern Bus Standards
White Papers, i.e. ‘Coexistence Assurance’ (CA) Document - TAG
Journal, tbd
Tutorials, i.e. IEEE
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 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

23. 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

24. Backup slides
02/26/10

25. Liferay web portal template
Committee/WG Name & Abbreviation
Web Content
Charter / Mission
Scope / PAR
Plan for this year
Report for last year
Officers, roles & s
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