Grad B: That 's on my web pages .
PhD A: Network !
Grad B: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Interesting .
Grad B: Though All sorts of interesting things you can do with that ,
Postdoc E: Interesting .
Grad B: I mean , not only can you do microphone arrays , but you can do all sorts of um multi - band as well .
Postdoc E: Hmm .
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: So it 's it would be neat .
Postdoc E: Ah !
PhD A: I still like my rug on the wall idea , so if anybody patents that , then Grad B: But I think Postdoc E: Well , you could have strips that you stick to your clothing .
Grad B: in terms of PhD A: Yeah !
Grad B: Yeah .
PhD A: Hats ?
Grad B: In terms of the research th research , it 's really it 's whatever the person who is doing the research wants to do .
PhD A: Shirts .
Grad B: So if if Jose is interested in that , that 's great . But if if he 's not , that 's great too .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD C: Yeah , yeah .
Professor D: Yeah . Um , I i I i I would actually kind of like us to wind it down , see if we can still get to the end of the , uh , birthdays thing there .
Grad B: Catch some tea ? Um .
Professor D: So
Grad B: Well , I had a couple things that I did wanna bring out .
Professor D: OK .
Grad B: One is , do we need to sign new these again ?
Postdoc E: Well , it 's slightly different . So I I would say it would be a good idea .
PhD A: Are they new ?
Postdoc E: Cuz it it 's slightly different .
Grad B: Yep .
PhD A: Oh .
Professor D: Oh , this morning we didn't sign anything cuz we said that if anybody had signed it already , we didn't have to .
Grad B: Yeah , I I should 've checked with Jane first , but the ch the form has changed .
Postdoc E: It 's slightly different .
Grad B: So we may wanna have everyone sign the new form .
Professor D: Ah - oh .
PhD C: OK .
Grad B: Um , I had some things I wanted to talk about with the thresholding stuff I 'm doing .
Postdoc E: I had to make one Grad B: But , if we 're in a hurry , we can put that off . Um and then also anonymity , how we want to anonymize the data . Uh .
Postdoc E: Well , should I I mean I have some results to present , but I mean I guess we won't have time to do that this time . But it seems like um the anonymization is uh , is also something that we might wanna discuss in greater length .
Professor D: Um . I mean , wha what Postdoc E: If if we 're about to wind down , I think what I would prefer is that we uh , delay the anonymization thing till next week , and I would like to present the results that I have on the overlaps .
PhD A: We still have to do this , too , right ?
Professor D: Right .
PhD A: Digits ?
Professor D: Right .
Grad B: No - well , we don't have to do digits .
Professor D: Well , why don't we Uh , so @ @ OK . @ @ {comment} It sounds like u uh , there were there were a couple technical things people would like to talk about . Why don't we just take a couple minutes to to briefly {comment} do them , and then and then and then and then and then we Grad B: OK , go ahead , Jane .
Postdoc E: I 'd Oh , I 'd prefer to have more time for my results . e Could I do that next week maybe ?
Professor D: OK . Oh , yeah . Sure .
Postdoc E: OK , that 's what I 'm asking .
Professor D: Oh yeah , yeah .
Postdoc E: And I think the anonymization , if y if you want to proceed with that now , I just think that that 's that 's a discussion which also n really deserves a lo a you know , more that just a minute .
Professor D: We could s
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: I really do think that , because you raised a couple of possibilities yourself , you and I have discussed it previously , and there are different ways that people approach it , e and I think we should Grad B: Alright . We 're we 're just We 're getting enough data now that I 'd sort of like to do it now , before I get overwhelmed with once we decide how to do it
Postdoc E: Well , OK .
Grad B: going and dealing with it .
Postdoc E: It 's just Yeah . OK . I I 'll give you the short version , but I do think it 's an issue that we can't resolve in five minutes .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: OK , so the the short thing is um , we have uh , tape recording uh , uh , sorry , digitized recor recordings . Those we won't be able to change . If someone says " Hey , Roger so - and - so " .
Grad B: Right .
Postdoc E: So that 's gonna stay that person 's name .
Grad B: Yep .
Postdoc E: Now , in terms of like the transcript , the question becomes what symbol are you gonna put in there for everybody 's name , and whether you 're gonna put it in the text where he says " Hey Roger " or are we gonna put that person 's anonymized name in instead ?
Grad B: No , because then that would give you a mapping , and you don't wanna have a mapping .
Postdoc E: OK , so first decision is , we 're gonna anonymize the same name for the speaker identifier and also in the text whenever the speaker 's name is mentioned .
PhD A: I don't Grad B: No . Because that would give you a mapping between the speaker 's real name and the tag we 're using , and we don't want Postdoc E: I I don't think you understood what I what I said .
Grad B: OK .
Postdoc E: So uh , so in within the context of an utterance , someone says " So , Roger , what do you think ? " OK . Then , uh , it seems to me that Well , maybe I uh it seems to me that if you change the name , the transcript 's gonna disagree with the audio , and you won't be able to use that .
PhD A: Right , you don't wanna do that .
Grad B: We don't we wanna we ha we want the transcript to be " Roger " .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad B: Because if we made the the transcript be the tag that we 're using for Roger , someone who had the transcript and the audio would then have a mapping between the anonymized name and the real name , and we wanna avoid that .
Postdoc E: OK , well , but then there 's this issue of if we 're gonna use this for a discourse type of thing , then and , you know , Liz was mentioning stuff in a previous meeting about gaze direction and who 's who 's the addressee and all , then to have " Roger " be the thing in the utterance and then actually have the speaker identifier who was " Roger " be " Frank " , that 's going to be really confusing and make it pretty much useless for discourse analysis .
Grad B: Oh . Ugh ! That 's a good point .
Postdoc E: Now , if you want to , you know , I mean , in some cases , I I I know that Susan Ervin - Tripp in some of hers , uh , actually did do uh , um , a filter of the s signal where the person 's name was mentioned , except
Professor D: Yeah Yeah , once you get to the publication you can certainly do that .
Postdoc E: And and I cer and I So , I mean , the question then becomes one level back . Um , how important is it for a person to be identified by first name versus full name ? Well , on the one hand , uh , it 's not a full identity , we 're taking all these precautions , um and they 'll be taking precautions , which are probably even the more important ones , to they 'll be reviewing the transcripts , to see if there 's something they don't like {comment} OK . So , maybe , uh , maybe that 's enough protection . On the other hand , this is a small this is a small pool , and people who say things about topic X e who are researchers and well - known in the field , they 'll be identifiable and simply from the from the first name . However , taking one step further back , they 'd be identifiable anyway , even if we changed all the names .
Grad B: Right .
PhD C: Mmm .
Postdoc E: So , is it really , um {comment} You know ?
Grad B: Ugh !
Postdoc E: Now , in terms of like so I I did some results , which I 'll report on n next time , which do mention individual speakers by name .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: Now , there , the Human Subjects Committee is very precise . You don't wanna mention subjects by name in published reports . Now , it would be very possible for me to take those data put them in a in a study , and just change everybody 's name for the purpose of the publication . And someone who looked Professor D: You can go , you know , uh , " Z " uh , for instance .
Postdoc E: Yeah , exactly . Doesn't matter if Professor D: Uh . Um , yeah , I mean , t it doesn't I mean , I 'm not knowledgeable about this , but it certainly doesn't bother me to have someone 's first name in in the in the transcript .
Postdoc E: That 's the same thing you saw .
Grad B: OK .
Professor D: Uh , I think you don't wanna have their full name to be uh , listed .
Postdoc E: Yeah , and and in the form that they sign , it does say " your first name may arise in the course of the meetings " .
Grad B: Yeah .
Professor D: And so PhD A: Well Professor D: Yeah . So again , th the issue is if you 're tracking discourse things , you know , if someone says , uh , uh , " Frank said this " and then you wanna connect it to something later , you 've gotta have this part where that 's " Frank colon " .
Postdoc E: Or " your name " .
Grad B: Yeah , shoot !
Professor D: Right ?
Postdoc E: Yeah , and and you know , even more i i uh , immediate than that just being able to , uh Well , it just seems like to track track from one utterance to the next utterance who 's speaking and who 's speaking to whom , cuz that can be important .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: S i You know , " You raised the point , So - and - so " , it 's be kind of nice to be able to know who " you " was .
Grad B: Shoot !
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: I I 'm thinking too much .
Postdoc E: And ac {comment} and actually you remember furthermore , you remember last time we had this discussion of how you know , I was sort of avoiding mentioning people 's names ,
Professor D: Yeah , I was too . Yeah .
Postdoc E: and and it was and we made the decision that was kind of artificial . Well , I mean , if we 're going to step in after the fact and change people 's names in the transcript , we 've basically done something one step worse .
Grad B: Yep . Well , I would sug I I don't wanna change the names in the transcript ,
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: but that 's because I 'm focused so much on the acoustics instead of on the discourse , and so I think that 's a really good point .
Postdoc E: Misleading .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: You 're right , this is going to require more thought .
Professor D: Yeah . L let me just back up this to make a a brief comment about the , uh , what we 're covering in the meeting . Uh I realize when you 're doing this that uh I mean , I didn't realize that you had a bunch of things that you wanted to talk about . Uh , and so , uh and so I was proceeding some somewhat at random , frankly . So I think what would be helpful would be uh , i and I 'll I 'll mention this to to Liz and Andreas too , that um , before the meeting if anybody could send me , any any , uh , uh , agenda items that they were interested in and I 'll I 'll take the role of organizing them uh , into into the agenda ,
Postdoc E: OK . Sure .
Professor D: but I 'd be very pleased to have everyone else completely make up the agenda . I 've no desire to  to make it up , but if if no one 's told me things , then I 'm just proceeding from my my guesses , and and uh , and i ye yeah , I I 'm sorry it ended up with your out your time to I mean , I 'm just always asking Jose what he 's doing , you know , and  and so it 's  There 's uh , there 's obviously other things going on .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: Oh , it 's not a problem . Not a problem . Yeah . I just I just couldn't do it in two minutes .
Grad B: How will we how would the person who 's doing the transcript even know who they 're talking about ? Do you know what I 'm saying ?
PhD A: " The person who 's doing the transcript " {comment} The IBM people ?
Grad B: Yeah . I mean , so so how is that information gonna get labeled anyway ?
Postdoc E: How do you mean , who what they 're who they 're talking about ?
Grad B: I mean , so if I 'm saying in a meeting , " oh and Bob , by the way , wanted wanted to do so - and - so " ,
Postdoc E: How do you mean ?
PhD A: They 're just gonna write " Bob " on it or do @ @ Grad B: if you 're doing Yeah , @ @ they 're just gonna write " Bob " . And so . If you 're if you 're doing discourse analysis ,
Postdoc E: They won't be able to change it themselves .
Professor D: What ar how are they gonna do any of this ?
Grad B: Yeah , really .
Postdoc E: Well , I I 'm betting we 're gonna have huge chunks that are just totally un untranscribable by them .
Professor D: I mean , they 're gonna say speaker - one , or speaker - two or speaker I mean I I PhD A: They can't do that .
PhD C: Yeah , I think Grad B: Well , the current one they don't do speaker identity .
PhD C :
Grad B: because in NaturallySpeaking , or , excuse me , in ViaVoice , it 's only one person . and so in their current conventions there are no multiple speaker conventions .
Professor D: So it may just be one long transcript of a bunch of words .
Grad B: Yep .
Postdoc E: Oh . I think that My understanding from Yen Is it Yen - Ching ? Is that how you pronounce her name ?
Professor D: Uh Yu - Ching , Yu - Ching . Yeah .
Postdoc E: Oh , uh Yu - Ching ? Yu - Ching ?
Grad B: y Yu - Ching .
Postdoc E: was that um , they will that they will adopt the part of the conventions that that we discussed , where they put speaker identifier down . But , you know , h they won't know these people , so I think it 's Well , they 'll they 'll adopt some convention but we haven't specified to them So they 'll do something like speaker - one , speaker - two , is what I bet , but I 'm betting there 'll be huge variations in the accuracy of of their labeling the speakers . We 'll have to review the transcripts in any case .
Professor D: And it and it may very well be I mean , since they 're not going to sit there and and and worry ab about , uh , it being the same speaker , they may very well go the eh the the first se the first time it changes to another speaker , that 'll be speaker - two .
Postdoc E: Yeah .
Professor D: And the next time it 'll be speaker - three even if it 's actually speaker - one .
Postdoc E: You know Uh - huh . You know , that would be a very practical solution on their part .
PhD C: Yeah . It 's a good idea .
Professor D: Yeah .
Postdoc E: And and but then we would need to label it .
Grad B: Yeah we we can probably regenerate it pretty easily from the close - talking mikes .
PhD C: Yeah . Yeah , I think Postdoc E: And that 's OK .
PhD C :
Postdoc E: Yes , I was thinking , the temp the time values of when it changes .
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: So . But I mean that doesn't This doesn't answer the the question .
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: But that Postdoc E: That 'd be very efficient .
Grad B: The p It 's a good point , " which what do you do for discourse tracking ? "
PhD C: Because y y you don't know to know , eh you don't need to know what i what is the iden identification of the of the speakers . You only eh want to know Grad B: Hmm . For for acoustics you don't but for discourse you do .
Professor D: Well , you do .
PhD C: Ah , for discourse , yeah . Yeah . Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah . If if if if someone says , uh , " what what is Jose doing ? " and then Jose says something , you need to know that that was Jose responding .
PhD C: Yeah , yeah . Yeah . Yeah . Yeah , yeah , yeah . Yeah . Yeah ,
Grad B: Ugh , {comment} that 's a problem .
Professor D: Uh , so .
Postdoc E: Mm - hmm .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Unless we adopt a different set of norms which is to not id to make a point of not identifying people by name , which then leads you to be more contextually ex explicit .
PhD A: That would be hard .
Postdoc E: Well , people are very flexible . You know ? I mean , so when we did this las last week , I felt that you know , now , Andreas may , uh , @ @ {comment} uh , he he i sometimes people think of something else at the same time and they miss a sentence or something , and and because he missed something , then he missed the r the initial introduction of who we were talking about , and was was unable to do the tracking .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: But I felt like most of us were doing the tracking and knew who we were talking about and we just weren't mentioning the name . So , people are really flexible .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD A: But , you know , like , at the beginning of this meeting Or , you I think said , you know , or s Liz , said something about um , uh , " is Mari gonna use the equipment ? " I mean , how would you say that ?
Postdoc E: Yeah ?
PhD A: I mean , you have to really think , you know , about what you 're saying bef
Grad B: if you wanted to anonymize .
PhD C: Yeah . Yeah , is Professor D: " Is you know who up in you know where ? "
PhD A: Yeah . Yeah .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: Right ? Use the PhD A: I think it would be really hard if we made a policy where we didn't say names , plus we 'd have to tell everybody else .
Grad B: Yeah , darn ! I mean , what I was gonna say is that the other option is that we could bleep out the names .
Postdoc E: Well , it
PhD C: Yeah .
Grad B: but then , again that kills your discourse analysis .
PhD A: Right .
Postdoc E: Uh - huh .
PhD A: Yeah .
Grad B: Ugh !
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Yeah .
PhD A: I I think the I think I don't know , my own two cents worth is that you don't do anything about what 's in the recordings , you only anonymize to the extent you can , the speakers have signed the forms and all .
Postdoc E: That 's that 's the issue .
Grad B: Well , but that but that as I said , that that that works great for the acoustics , but it it hurts you a lot for trying to do discourse .
Postdoc E: Well .
PhD A: Why ?
Postdoc E: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: Because you don't have a map of who 's talking versus their name that they 're being referred to .
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah . Th - Bec
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD A: I thought we were gonna get it labelled speaker - one , speaker - two Grad B: Sure but , h then you have to know that Jose is speaker - one and PhD A: Why do you have to know his name ?
Professor D: OK , so suppose someone says , " well I don't know if I really heard what uh , what Jose said . "
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: And then , Jose responds .
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor D: And part of your learning about the dialogue is Jose responding to it . But it doesn't say " Jose " , it says " speaker - five " .
PhD A: OK .
PhD C: Yeah . Yeah .
Professor D: So uh u
PhD A: Oh , I see , you wanna associated the word " Jose " in the dialogue with the fact that then he responded .
Professor D: Right .
Grad B: Someone who 's doing discourse would wanna do that .
Professor D: And so , if we pass out the data to someone else , and it says " speaker - five " there , we also have to pass them this little guide that says that speaker - five is Jose ,
Grad B: And that violates our privacy .
Professor D: and if were gonna do that we might as well {comment} give them " Jose " say it was " Jose " .
PhD C: Yeah . Yeah .
Grad B: And that violates our privacy issue .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Mm - hmm . Yeah .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Now , I I think that we have these two phases in the in the data , which is the one which is o our use , University of Washington 's use , IBM , SRI .
Professor D: Yeah .
Postdoc E: And within that , it may be that it 's sufficient to not uh change the to not incorporate anonymization yet , but always , always in the publications we have to .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: And I think also , when we take it that next step and distribute it to the world , we have to . But I but I don that 's that 's a long way from now and and it 's a matter of between now and then of d of deciding how Grad B: Making some decisions ?
Postdoc E: i i it You know , it may be s that we we 'll need to do something like actually X out that part of the um the audio , and just put in brackets " speaker - one " .
Grad B: Yeah . For the public one .
PhD C: the ? ?
Grad B: You know , what we could do also is have more than one version of release .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: You know .
Grad B: One that 's public and one one that requires licensing . And so the licensed one would w we could it would be a sticky limitation .
Postdoc E: Uh - huh .
Grad B: You know , like Well , we can talk about that later .
Postdoc E: I think that 's risky . I think that the public should be the same . I think that when we do that world release , it should be the same .
Professor D: I I agree . I I agree with Jane .
Postdoc E: For a bunch of reasons , legal .
Professor D: I I think that we we have a need to have a consistent licensing policy of some sort , and Postdoc E: But I also think a consistent licensing policy is important .
PhD A: Well , one thing to to take into consideration is w are there any um For example , the people who are funding this work , they want this work to get out and be useful for discourse .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD A: If we all of a sudden do this and then release it to the public and it 's not longer useful for discourse , you know Grad B: Well , depending on how much editing we do , you might be able to still have it useful . because for discourse you don't need the audio . Right ? So you could bleep out the names in the audio .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: and use the anonymized one through the transcript .
PhD A: But if you release both Professor D: Uh .
Postdoc E: Excuse me . We we do need audio for discourse .
Grad B: But , n excuse me , but you could bleep out just the names .
Professor D: She No , but she 's saying , from the argument before , she wants to be able to say if someone said " Jose " in their in their thing , and then connect to so to what he said later , then you need it .
Grad B: Right . But in the transcript , you could say , everywhere they said " Jose " that you could replace it with " speaker - seven " .
Professor D: Oh I see . I see .
Postdoc E: Yeah . But I  I also wanna say that people Grad B: And then it wouldn't meet match the audio anymore . But it would be still useful for the Postdoc E: Uh - huh .
PhD A: But if both of those are publically available Postdoc E: Yeah . That 's good .
Grad B: But they Right .
Professor D: And th and the other thing is if if if Liz were here , what she might say is that she wants to look if things that cut across between the audio and the dialogue ,
Postdoc E: Well , you see ? So , it 's complicated .
Professor D: and so , uh ,
Postdoc E: Mm - hmm . Yeah .
Professor D: yeah . Sorry .
Postdoc E: I think we have to think about w @ @ {comment} how . I think that this can't be decided today .
Grad B: Yeah , OK , good point .
Postdoc E: But it 's g but I think it was good to introduce the thing and we can do it next time .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: I didn't think when I wrote you that email I wasn't thinking it was a big can of worms , but I guess it is .
PhD C: OK .
Professor D: OK . Yeah , a lot of these things are .
Grad B: Discourse .
Postdoc E: Well it Discourse , you know Also I wanted to make the point that that discourse is gonna be more than just looking at a transcript .
Grad B: Yeah , ab absolutely . Oh , yeah , sure .
Postdoc E: It 's gonna be looking at a t You know , and prosod prosodic stuff is involved , and that means you 're going to be listening to the audio , and then you come directly into this confronting this problem .
PhD A: Maybe we should just not allow anybody to do research on discourse ,
Postdoc E: So .
PhD A: and then , we wouldn't have to worry about it .
PhD C: OK .
Postdoc E: Yeah , we should just market it to non - English speaking countries .
PhD C: OK .
Professor D: Uh , maybe we should only have meetings between people who don't know one another and who are also amnesiacs who don't know their own name .
Grad B: Did you read the paper on Eurospeech ?
Postdoc E: We could have little labels . I I I wanna introduce my Reservoir Dogs solution again , which is everyone has like " Mister White " , " Mister Pink " , " Mister Blue " .
PhD A: Mister White .
Grad B: Yeah . Did you read the paper a few years ago where they were reversing the syllables ? They were di they they had the utterances . and they would extract out the syllables and they would play them backwards .
PhD A: But so , the syllables were in the same order , with respect to each other , but the acous
Grad B: Everything was in the same order , but they were the individual syll {comment} syllables were played backwards . And you could listen to it , and it would sound the same .
PhD A: What did it sound like ?
Grad B: People had no difficulty in interpreting it . So what we need is something that 's the reverse , that a speech recognizer works exactly the same on it but people can't understand it .
Professor D: Oh , well that 's there 's an easy way to do that . Jus - jus just play it all backwards .
Grad B: Oh right . The speech recognizer 's totally symmetric , isn't it .
Professor D: What , what does the speech recognizer care ?
Grad B: Ah , anyway .
Professor D: Um ,
Postdoc E: Oh , do we do digits ? Or ? What do we do ?
Grad B: Uh OK , we 'll quickly do digits .
Professor D: Let 's do digits . Yeah , we we we already missed the party .
Postdoc E: Or do we just quit ?
Grad B: OK .
Professor D: So .
Postdoc E: Yeah .
Grad B: OK , go off here .
PhD A: I think it would be fun sometime to read them with different intonations . like as if you were talking like , " nine eight six eight seven ? "
Postdoc E: Well , you know , in the in the one I transcribed , I did find a couple instances  I found one instance of contrastive stress , where it was like the string had a li So it was like " nine eight two four , nine nine two four " .
PhD A: Oh , really . So they were like looking ahead ,
Postdoc E: And PhD A: huh ?
Postdoc E: Well , they differed . I mean , at that that session I did feel like they did it more as sentences . But , um , sometimes people do it as phone numbers . {comment} I mean , I 've I am sort of interested in in And sometimes , you know , I s And I I never know . When I do it , I I ask myself what I 'm doing each time .
PhD A: Yeah , yeah .
Grad B: Yep .
PhD A: Well , I was thinking that it must get kind of boring for the people who are gonna have to transcribe this
Postdoc E: and I PhD A: They may as well throw in some interesting intonations .
Grad B: Well , except ,
Postdoc E: I like your question intonation .
Grad B: yeah .
Postdoc E: That 's very funny . I haven't heard that one .
Grad B: We have the transcript . We have the actual numbers they 're reading , so we 're not necessarily depending on that . OK , I 'm gonna go off .