The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
IEEE Computing Now
Putting social back in society.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Loyola University Chicago
Department of Computer Science
Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities
IEEE Computing Now and Computing in Science and Engineering Magazine
Workshop on Users, Usability and User-engagement Based on
e-Research, and Web 2.0
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Outline
1
The IEEE Computer Society
2
Enter Computing Now
3
Going Social
4
Going Mobile (Maybe)
5
Scholarly Impact
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this presentation are my own and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the IEEE Computer
Society and the other hard-working and dedicated
volunteers and staff members connected to this effort.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
What is the IEEE Computer Society?
With nearly 85,000 members, the 62-year-old IEEE Computer
Society is the world’s premier organization of computing
professionals, with rich offerings in publications, standards,
certifications, conferences, and more.
As the largest society within the IEEE, the Computer Society
serves nearly 85,000 computing researchers and practitioners
worldwide.
By way of comparison, Association for Computing Machinery
has 95,000 members (very similar profile but has significantly
more resources).
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Who are the actual users?
academics in computing-related disciplines (e. g. computer
science, information technology, computer engineering)
information technology professionals
students
libraries (not all of our users are necessarily human)
corporate clients (ditto)
hobbyists? A very large market that we likely do not serve
terribly well.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
A Look at Member Benefits
From the IEEE Computer Society home page, member benefits
include:
Access to the Computer Society’s Digital Library (CSDL)
Access to development software from Microsoft
Access to 600 technical books from Safari Books Online
Access to 3,000 courses powered by Element K and available
in 10 languages
Valuable networking opportunities through membership in your
local chapter
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Digital Library Benefits
All 27 Computer Society peer-reviewed periodicals with full
archives, covering the spectrum of computing and information
technology
3,300+ conference publications from around the globe
320,000+ quality articles and papers for serious research or
quick answers
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Reality Check
Access to the Computer Society’s Digital Library (CSDL):
Many users get content via institutional library subscriptions.
Access to development software from Microsoft: Many users
and corporations have MSDN subscriptions, often at near-zero
cost.
Access to 600 technical books from Safari Books Online:
Many libraries subscribe to this and sites like Books24x7.
Access to 3,000 courses powered by Element K and available
in 10 languages: This is a clear benefit.
Valuable networking opportunities through membership in your
local chapter: This is a unique benefit. It is unclear whether
chapter membership requires society membership.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Concretely, this leaves...
digital library
training courses
member networking through local chapters
Computing Now is focused on making the digital library and
member networking possible using state-of-the-art techniques
and technologies
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Important Consideration: Generations and “New” Media
Baby Boomers (Post WWII): Various print and broadcast
media.
Generation X (1961-1981): They were the first generation with
widespread access to television during their formative years.
Generation Y (1970s-2000s): The earliest suggested start
dates are the mid to late 1970s and the latest suggested end
dates are the early 2000s." This generation happens to
coincide with most of the personal computing era and the
[early] internet (dial-up and BBSs).
Generation Z (WWW birthday to present): "Digital Natives"
or "The Internet Generation"
Many of us overlap with these generations; however, it is
indeed hard to let go of certain habits.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
A look at Generation Y/Z
A top student who has co-authored a paper with me for an IEEE CS conference.
Are you a member of IEEE or ACM?
“I don’t see a lot of value in it other than the ability to
download papers.”
Are you a member of any other societies or organizations
related to CS?
“I’m a member of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). I don’t
get any real value out of that other than knowing that they’re
funding cool software projects.”
“and nearly all papers I’m interested in are available free. when
they aren’t I’ll contact the author and ask for a copy or just
bounce through a LUC (my university) box to get it.”
I stress that this is non-scientific. However, I sense declining
interest based on informal polling of students over the past 3
years.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Are our users taking usability into their own hands?
increasing number of institutions requiring faculty publications
to be available
open access and institutional repositories (e.g. eprints open
source project)
IEEE CS allows authors to disseminate “private” copies in most
cases (copy of PDF linked to home page)
Sites like myexperiment.org are social portals for sharing
scientific workflows and research plans.
Open source projects (including those of a research nature) are
self-organizing communities for sharing code. Why don’t we
connect to them?
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Nevertheless
I am a proud member and volunteer of the IEEE Computer
Society and want to see it flourish on the modern web (>=
2.0).
There are significant user engagement challenges and
opportunities to ensure success.
Our efforts are almost two years old and are beginning to gain
significant traction and interest.
The show must go on. Our future depends on it.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
What is Computing Now?
one-stop source for new print and online content from the
IEEE Computer Society’s 13 peer-reviewed magazines
selections from our journals and conference proceedings
we highlight cross-publication coverage of hot topics such as
green computing and social networking
as each magazine goes to press, we also post [some] articles
and departments, which are free for a limited time
technology news
book reviews
calls for papers from Computer Society magazines and
journals, and podcasts and video
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Who is Computing Now? (Leadership)
Dejan Milogic, Editor in Chief, Hewlett-Packard
George K. Thiruvathukal, Loyola University Chicago,
Associate Editor
Doree Duncan Seligmann, Avaya Laboratories, Associate Editor
Christian Timmerer, Klagenfurt University Austria, Associate
Editor
Mark Baker, University of Reading, Associate Editor
Brooke Miner, IEEE Computer Society, Digital Products Editor
Steve Woods, IEEE Computer Society, New Media and
Production
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Business Challenges
IEEE and IEEE Computer Society are organized not-for-profit
not-for-profit != not-for-pay
current business model depends on membership dues (partly)
and revenue from publications (mosty)
Interesting business question? Are there more than O(105 )
paying customers or freeloaders expected now or in the future?
I’m not a business person, but the answer to this question is
important for tweaking or replacing the business model.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Locked Digital Content
One of our biggest assets is the CS Digital Library, which
requires a subscription.
Question: How do you enable “social” scholarship when the
content cannot itself be accessed without a subscription?
We could at least support the e-Reader notion of clipping for
in-line commentary/analysis.
Question: What is the incentive for scholarship (commentary)
about scholarship?
Seemingly, we should pay contributors for comments (in the
spirit of reciprocity).
Question: Why should scholars and professionals proliferate
copies (possibly non-authoritative) of their published articles?
Question: Does locked content hamper overall impact? Are
there more than 85,000 who would be interested in any of our
content?
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
A Miscellany of Web 1.0 Usability Problems
a number of silos (chapters and technical committees) that
don’t seem to be connected to our general site
in some cases, the silos are establishing their own (competing)
infrastructure
menus are a problem? consistent navigation with inconsistent
experiences
in part, a self-created problem arising from being an effort
within a society, within an institution; feels very 1.0 at times
still struggling with commenting
should we host it ourselves or leave it to others (e.g.
Friendfeed)? If so, what is the preservation model?
constraints associated with integrating with different systems
cumbersome sign-up process; web 2.0 is about quick/painless
sign-up
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
How we’re using social networking
Synthetic Twitter feeds
LinkedIn group (leveraging professional networking)
Facebook group (general social networking)
I won’t go into all of these but will say a few words about
Twitter.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Twitter
@computingnow is our Twitter feed
It is primarily automated by using TwitterFeed.
What is fed? news articles, new IEEE articles, new CN theme
notifications, editors’ (that’s me, among others) blogs
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
TwitterFeed
Service for transforming RSS feeds into Tweets
Allows for selecting by category (a feature used but not limited
to blogs)
We now pause for a brief demo of our TwitterFeed setup.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Diversion: How to properly “tweet” an article?
Tweet the title? Perhaps, but many journal/article titles are
not written to attract general interest.
Tweet the abstract? In print media, we think of 250 words as
concise.
Tweet length of 140 words suggests ~28 words, or right around
10% of the abstract.
Factoid: According to Blogmundo, the average English word
length is 5.10 (perhaps a bit longer for scientific/technical
articles).
Need to rethink the entrenched print publishing model to
include an abstract of the abstract (a recursive concept).
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
A Recent (and Good) Article
Future Imperfect
by Vinton G. Cerf
As the second decade of the 21st century dawns, predictions
of global Internet digital transmissions reach as high as 667
exabytes (1018 bytes) per year by 2013 (see http://telephony
online.com/global/news/cisco-ip-traffic -0609/). Based on this
prediction, traffic levels might easily exceed many zettabytes (1021
bytes, or 1,000 exabytes) by the end of the decade. Setting aside
the challenge of somehow transporting all that traffic and
wondering about the sources and sinks of it all, we might also focus
on the nature of the information being transferred, how it’s
encoded, whether it’s stored for future use, and whether it will
always be possible to interpret as intended. Read more »
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
If we tweet the bold text, it is unlikely anyone would want to
read it (including Cerf in the tweet might help).
Someone needs to translate techno mumbo jumbo into a
tweetable summary.
Current information system provides limited support for
additional metadata.
Possibility: Push the issue of titles/abstracts upstream; require
human-comprehensible description as part of CS style guide.
Downside: Still need to fix the existing DL articles.
How Engaging are We?
Newsletter has over 64,000 subscribers and is reasonably
succeessful
21% open rate,
3-6% avg click-through rate
Monthly traffic: 35,000 page views by 10,000 unique visitors
Social initiatives a work in progress
@computingnow has 620 followers (best of the 3 so far, still
not 1% of membership)
CN facebook page has 320 fans
CN LinkedIn group has 433 members
Generational issue? Usability issue? Usefulness issue? This is
TBD.
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Mobile Challenges
Site not yet designed to work with mobile web browsers; need
for mobile “profiles” concept.
Even if the site were mobile-capable, the content is not mobile
friendly
PDF not mobile friendly for small devices and e-readers (too
wed to the printed page concept for its own good)
ditto for HTML, although the remedies are simpler
No support for growing mobile need: e-readers
existing content not easily transformable into spartan e-book
formats (Kindle, ePub).
mathematical content and complex diagrams
Distraction-free reading seemingly important, especially in an
era where fewer people appear to be reading
(http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google).
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
readability.com
“READABILITY is a simple tool that makes reading on
the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around
what you’re reading. Follow the steps below to install
READABILITY in your Web browser.”
Explanation at http:
// lab. arc90. com/ experiments/ readability/ .
Web 2.0 approach inspired by e-readers.
JavaScript approach that inspects the DOM for the content
and renders it for e-reading (albeit confined to a browser
session).
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
CRA Tenure/Promotion Best Practices
Written by Snyder, Patterson, and Ullman (three CS
researchers who probably require no introduction)
A call to rethink the notion of promotion and tenure to expand
the focus to more timely publication (conferences) and
artifacts (software, chips, etc.)
Despite being written in 1999, it is remarkably ahead of its
time considering our current efforts in the IEEE CS (and in the
ACM).
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
How social media can help with matters of impact.
Scholars must establish that their work has impact.
Counting publications easy; counting citations (one form of
impact) is less easy and in some cases error-prone.
Allowing for open commenting on all publications could be a
way of measuring impact of modern scholarship.
Aside: Articles that generate extensive discussion, positive or
negative, could be construed as having high impact.
Possible replacement for letters written in responses to journal
articles?
Making it easy to connect other artifacts to published papers
would allow us to distinguish software that is “just useful” from
that of academic value.
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now
The IEEE Computer Society
Enter Computing Now
Going Social
Going Mobile (Maybe)
Scholarly Impact
Parting Thoughts
Computing Now is in its infancy. We’re not there yet but are
making forward progress to engage our members.
Present site (based on LifeRay) does not “feel” like a web 2.0
site. We (as volunteers) are looking at hosting options (more
savvy CMS for web 2.0, Wordpress MU, Drupal, others)
Need to gain better understanding of our users and what they
want from the society. We still don’t have a clear handle on
this issue.
Regardless of what members want, being savvy in current
methods is vital to attracting the new generation of computer
scientists/engineers (Generation Z and beyond)
Incentivizing participation may be necessary (e.g. using social
capital to get a discount on renewal for one year?)
Mobile + detached likely to be important as books “mount a
comeback”
through solid e-reader
and Kindle sales. CN2Go
George K. Thiruvathukal, Ph. D.
Computing Now