1)What is the mode of meetings for the working group?

Working group meetings will be held as tele conference calls. These will be supported by web based tools for effectiveness. The timing will be 1-2 hours at a time convenient to all the participants from all over the world, once a month. Even when a face to face session is planned, phone based participation will be provided.

2)Do I need to have membership in IEEE and IEEE-SA for being part of working group?

No. If you want to run for Officer positions, you need to have membership of IEEE and IEEE-SA. The first elections for these positions will be held in the first working group meeting. So if you are interested in officer positions, please become a member soon. Apart from that if you would like to participate in the sponsor ballot to vote on the standard(once the draft is ready), you need membership of IEEE-SA or pay a per ballot fee.

3)Any specific educational qualification needed?

No special qualification is needed. Interest in Indian language computing and basic knowledge of atleast one Indian language will be sufficient. Knowledge of Indic computing, Linguistics, Graphics/User Interface design principles will be an added advantage to the working group.

4) What is the time committment expected?

It is desired to have a fast paced standard development for the standard to be released in a timely manner so that it will be useful to all the stakeholders. The team through deliberations will set the frequency of meetings. Apart from the main WG meeting, there could be sub group meetings for specific aspects of the standard like language, conceptual model, user interface issues etc and each member will be expected to participate in atleast one such sub group. Sub groups/members will come up with proposals which will be discussed in the main WG meetings.

5) What are the involvement levels (Voting Member, Non Voting Member, Observer, Interested) in the Working Group?

a) Voting member : A person who is deeply interested in the WG scope and would like to spare sufficient time for the Working Group. He/she will have access to WG Secure area (Wiki and private documents) and mailing list. He/she is expected to maintain voting rights by participating in meetings and polls. A person failing to maintain the membership will be put in interested category. (Voting member status is given to all who attended the first meeting on 25 Jan 2012 and then sent an email with Employer , Affiliation, Desired involvement level as Voting member to the WG Chair as discussed and communicated in the first meeting. Others can obtain the Voting member by attending two meetings and expressing an interest)
b) Non Voting member : A person who is interested to become a voting member but missed the first meeting of WG. He/she will be given partial access to WG Secure area (Read only access to Wiki and no access to private documents such as those used for meetings) and mailing list to attend the first two meetings following sign up based on specific request. The involvement level will be changed to Voting member or Interested after completion of two meetings based on update from the participant. If no update is received, the involvement level will change to Interested. He/She will not have access to the private documents of the WG, which includes the presentations for the WG meetings.
c) Observer : An expert in the subject area of WG, who is unable to spare time become a WG Voting member. The WG decides that such a person can add value by being observer. He/She will have access to WG secure area and mailing list.
d) Interested : A person signing up to WG to learn about major updates from the WG. (default for new people) He/She will not have access to WG private area, mailing list and private documents.

6) How can I avoid getting two copies of the same mail from WG mailing list?

IEEE WG mailing list mentor tool uses both the primary and seconday email-id that you specified in profile to send the mails. This has been reported as a bug. In the meantime, please remove your secondary email-id from your myProject profile to avoid getting additional copy of emails from WG mailing list.

In view of the huge interest in this intiative and also as the WG is in its initial stages, you may expect lot of mail. If you are a voting member, please make sure that you go through the mails promptly.

7) Is there an etiquette for WG mailing list?

WG mailing list is a useful tool for discussions. It is configured to send the reply to the mailing list. Unfortunately, there is no provision for moderation due to tool limitation. If you need to send the reply to only the Sender, please edit the To: address and change the email address before you hit the send button in your email client. In case some one replies to the mailing list a message meant only for sender, you can help by alerting the sender about the etiquette and point to the FAQ (this) page.

8) I am no longer interested in being part of the WG. How can I resign and stop receiving mails?

Please login to myProject and remove the check box against the Working Group (just reverse the signup steps). Please also alert WG chair to unsubscribe you from the list.

9) I used to have access to mentor Wiki and mailing list. I am not able to access it any more. What happened?

Following each meeting, the WG Roster is updated and access to WG has been removed for voting members who failed to attend the last two meetings despite alerts and access to mailing list for non voting members who failed to attend both the last meetings. All such people have been put into interested category, which means that they will not have access to Wiki or mailing list or private documents

If any such members are interested in future, they can request for non voting member involvment level, which will be considered in due course.

10) The above FAQ does not answer my question?

Please contact WG Chair at arjunaraoc@ieee.org.