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04.07

NexThing: The Professional Environment of the Future

By Jim Isaak

NexThing is a hypothetical construct which is technically feasible and likely to emerge before 2010 either "from scratch" or as the evolution or merger of existing companies. The NexThing concept captures the shape of things to come with respect to how professionals will interact in the future.

NexThing will integrate the following capabilities together in a coherent way:

1. The content repository of Blogger, UTube, PLoS and DSpace

2. The indexing facilities of Google

3. The personalization facilities of Amazon

4. The post-publication-peer-review facilities of Amazon, myFlicks or Blogger

5. The citation aggregation of CiteSeer, and Google (which uses citation as one key factor in their search ranking)

6. The online community facilities of Yahoo

7. The online networking facilities of mySpace, FaceBook, and Second Life

8. The dictionary, encyclopedia and history facilities of Wikipedia

9. The advertising sponsorship and placement models of Google, video games, movies and television as a revenue source

10. And eventually the full online, multi-user, virtual reality of Second Life, World of Warcraft, Everquest and Never Winter Nights

NexThing represents the next phase in an ongoing wave of technological change to which the IEEE must adapt if it wishes to remain relevant to our profession. We know that both professionals and students are using Google as their first source of information in many cases¹. The IEEE can boast about its status as the world's largest publisher of technical material, but if people are looking elsewhere, it means nothing. Content publishers' current best hope is that either the highest quality content is not returned, or that it is obscured in the millions of hits. However, these are both problems that Google and others are dedicated to overcoming.

The IEEE's second line of defense is that authors still value the reputation of publishing with the likes of the IEEE gifting the organization the limited copyright privilege it needs, and not posting it online in their own space (which limits Google Scholar to delivering links to our version and not the free version.) The DSpace initiative, Public Library of Science, Open Access and some members of the U.S. Congress are pushing in the other direction. The tide of freely accessible content is washing hard against the sand castles of "exclusive quality," and "academic recognition." These tenets may hold up for quite a while, but their foundations are unstable and compromised. And if academic communities begin recognizing online content that is post-publication-peer-reviewed, both flanks will be lost.

In anticipation of the post-publication-review trend, NexThing will provide online communities for professional groups that already leverage the elevation of peer-reviewed content from any source. Since such exchanges can occur without publication delays, and in a transparent way, NexThing's communities will provide much faster access to emerging information than our current processes.

A model like this has already been adopted with pre-publication posting in the world of physics because they just cant wait for the cycle from peer-review to publication to share the rapidly exploding base of information.

BarCamp is an idea started by Chris Messina in Palo Alto a few years ago. BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. The goal of BarCamp is to provide an alternative to expensive and often exclusive technology conferences. BarCamp events are free and user-organized. BarCamps have been held in dozens of cities around the world.

From a Nov. 3rd email of GNSEG
(Greater Nashua Software Entrepreneur Group)

Consider the above quotation in its full context. A technical conference based on free and open concepts; and an independent (and very successful) local chapter is promoting it. Not an IEEE chapter, just an ad hoc group that didnt crystallize around IEEE seeds. Now, convert this to global participation via the evolution of Second Life, with quality control via these online peer communities, and support from related industry with a virtual trade show. You have a self sustaining, or even revenue generating form of conferences, with no travel or participation cost.

There are three core concepts in the IEEEs mission: quality information, networking of professionals, and benefits to humanity. The IEEE uses peer review to select quality information for conferences and adds professional editing for the papers it accepts into its print publications. Information is sold to attendees, subscribers, members and institutional subscribers the IEEE's primary revenue source.

IEEE networking opportunities conferences, committee meetings and chapter activities all foster technological innovation, which accounts for 85 percent of the nation's economic growth². And yet, the IEEE does not promote this benefit to humanity as a distinguishing benefit.

IEEE articles, authors, peer-review teams, speakers, conference committees, workshops, conferences and chapters will not disappear overnight. However, it is likely that the preponderance of emerging fields of interest will connect first into the freely available network already in people's homes and offices. A tipping point can occur when existing authors find this alternate route more attractive or compelling than the exclusive quality domain of the IEEE or others. Students who are already heavily into this domain of information access and networking will move into the supplier side of the process, accelerating the migration. The road that was once pitched steeply uphill can become a downhill run in a hurry.

It is possible that the IEEE may partner with others professional societies, foundations, agencies, governments, industry to deliver such an online environment for the public good. We could be NexThing. Or perhaps Google, in its inadvertent explosion of services will stumble into being NexThing. Or some Google wannabe may pull the pieces together. In this time frame, the IEEE may establish its "benefit to humanity" to the point where donations are replacing subscription and conference revenues.

What is clear is that the information and networking environment of the 20th century will pass away to be replaced by instantaneous, global channels operating with new business models. From those of us steeped in the traditional models, we must greet the future with the gladiator's greeting: Morituri te salutant [we who are about to die salute you].

References

1. Carol Tenopir, Ph.D., Suzie Allard, Ph.D. and Kenneth Levine, Ph.D., "How Technology Professionals Work," IEEE Market Study, September 2006. See the related article in the March 2007 issue of The Institute.
    

2. Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, The National Academies Press, 2007.

Jim Isaak is a member of the IEEE Board of Directors and the Computer Society Board of Governors. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.