Grad B: OK ,
PhD F: That 's looks strange .
Grad B: now we 're on and it seems to be working .
Postdoc E: Oh there we go .
PhD C: One two three four five six
PhD A: That is weird .
Postdoc E: This looks good .
PhD A: It 's like when it 's been sitting for a long time or something .
Grad B: So , I mean I don't know what it is . But all all I know is that it seems like every time I am up here after a meeting , and I start it , it works fine . And if I 'm up here and I start it and we 're all sitting here waiting to have a meeting , it gives me that error message and I have not yet sat down with been able to get that error message in a point where I can sit down and find out where it 's occurring in the code .
PhD A: Next time you get it maybe we should write it down .
Grad B: Yep , we will . One of these days .
Professor D: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Was it a pause , or ? OK . Was it on " pause " or something ?
Grad B: No .
Postdoc E: OK . Don't know .
Professor D: So uh so the uh , the new procedural change that just got suggested , which I think is a good idea is that um , we do the digit recordings at the end . And that way , if we 're recording somebody else 's uh meeting , and a number of the participants have to run off to some other meeting and don't have the time , uh , then they can run off . It 'll mean we 'll get somewhat fewer uh , sets of digits , but um , I think that way we 'll cut into people 's time , um , if someone 's on strict time uh , less . So , I th I think I think we should start doing that . Um , so , uh , let 's see , we were having a discussion the other day , maybe we should bring that up , about uh , the nature of the data that we are collecting . uh @ @ that uh , we should have a fair amount of data that is um , collected for the same meeting , so that we can , uh I don't know . Wh - what what were some of the points again about that ? Is it PhD F: Uh , well , OK , I 'll back up .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD F: Um , at the previous at last week 's meeting , this meeting I was griping about wanting to get more data and I I talked about this with Jane and Adam , um , and was thinking of this mostly just so that we could do research on this data um , since we 'll have a new this new student di does wanna work with us ,
PhD A: Well , great .
PhD F: th the guy that was at the last meeting .
PhD A: Great .
PhD F: And he 's already funded part - time , so we 'll only be paying him for sort of for half of the normal part - time ,
PhD A: What a deal .
PhD F: uh Yeah .
Grad B: And what 's he interested in , specifically ?
PhD F: So he 's comes from a signal - processing background , but I liked him a lot cuz he 's very interested in higher level things , like language , and disfluencies and all kinds of eb maybe prosody ,
Grad B: Mm - hmm . Great .
PhD F: so he 's just getting his feet wet in that . Anyway , I thought OK , maybe we should have enough data so that if he starts he 'd be starting in January , next semester that we 'd have , you know , enough data to work with .
Grad B: Right .
PhD F: But , um , Jane and Adam brought up a lot of good points that just posting a note to Berkeley people to have them come down here has some problems in that you m you need to make sure that the speakers are who you want and that the meeting type is what you want , and so forth . So , I thought about that and I think it 's still possible , um , but I 'd rather try to get more regular meetings of types that we know about , and hear , then sort of a mish - mosh of a bunch of one one - time Grad B: One offs ?
PhD F: Yeah , just because it would be very hard to process the data in all senses , both to get the , um to figure out what type of meeting it is and to do any kind of higher level work on it , like well , I was talking to Morgan about things like summarization , or what 's this meeting about . I mean it 's very different if you have a group that 's just giving a report on what they did that week , versus coming to a decision and so forth . So . Then I was um , talking to Morgan about some new proposed work in this area , sort of a separate issue from what the student would be working on where I was thinking of doing some kind of summarization of meetings or trying to find cues in both the utterances and in the utterance patterns , like in numbers of overlaps and amount of speech , sort of raw cues from the interaction that can be measured from the signals and from the diff different microphones that point to sort of hot spots in the meeting , or things where stuff is going on that might be important for someone who didn't attend to listen to . And in that uh , regard , I thought we definitely w will need it 'd b it 'd be nice for us to have a bunch of data from a few different domains , or a few different kinds of meetings . So this this meeting is one of them , although I 'm not sure I can participate if I You know , I would feel very strange being part of a meeting that you were then analysing later for things like summarization .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
PhD F: Um , and then there are some others that menti that Morgan mentioned , like the front - end meeting and maybe a networking group meeting .
Grad B: Right . Yep . Yeah , we 're we 're hoping that they 'll let us start recording regularly .
PhD F: So So if that were the case then I think we 'd have enough .
Grad B: So . Mm - hmm .
PhD F: But basically , for anything where you 're trying to get a summarization of some kind of meeting {comment} meaning out of the meeting , um , it would be too hard to have fifty different kinds of meetings where we didn't really have a good grasp on what does it mean to summarize ,
Grad B: Yeah .
PhD F: but rather we should have different meetings by the same group but hopefully that have different summaries . And then we need a couple that of  We don't wanna just have one group because that might be specific to that particular group , but @ @ three or four different kinds .
Grad B: Yeah , we have a lot of overlap between this meeting and the morning meeting .
Professor D: S So PhD C: Yeah .
PhD F: See , I 've never listened to the data for the front - end meeting .
Grad B: Yeah , we we 've only had three .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: So .
PhD F: OK . But maybe that 's enough . So , in general , I was thinking more data but also data where we hold some parameters constant or fairly similar ,
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
PhD F: like a meeting about of people doing a certain kind of work where at least half the participants each time are the same .
Grad B: Um Professor D: Now , let l l let me just give you the other side to that cuz I ca because I I don't disagree with that , but I think there is a complimentary piece to it too . Uh , for other kinds of research , particularly the acoustic oriented research , I actually feel the opposite need . I 'd like to have lots of different people .
PhD F: Right . Right .
Professor D: As many people here a a and talking about the kind of thing that you were just talking about it would have uh too few people from my point of view . I 'd like to have many different speakers . So , um I think I would also very much like us to have a fair amount of really random scattered meetings , of somebody coming down from campus , and and uh ,
PhD C: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: I mean , sure , if we can get more from them , fine ,
Postdoc E: Mm - hmm .
PhD F: Right .
Professor D: but if we only get one or two from each group , that still could be useful acoustically just because we 'd have close and distant microphones with different people .
PhD F: Yeah , I definitely agree with that .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Mm - hmm .
PhD F: Definitely .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Can I can I say about that that the the issues that I think Adam and I raised were more a matter of advertising so that you get more native speakers . Because I think if you just say an And in particular , my suggestion was to advertise to linguistics grad students because there you 'd have so people who 'd have proficiency enough in English that that uh , it would be useful for for purposes You know .
Professor D: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: But you know , I think I 've been I 've I I 've gathered data from undergrads at on campus and if you just post randomly to undergrads I think you 'd get such a mixed bag that it would be hard to know how much conversation you 'd have at all . And and the English you 'd have The language models would be really hard to build
Professor D: Well , you want to i
Postdoc E: because it would not really be it would be an interlanguage rather than than a Professor D: Well , OK , uh , first place , I I I don't think we 'd just want to have random people come down and talk to one another , I think there should be a meeting that has some goal and point cuz I I think that 's what we 're investigating ,
Postdoc E: OK .
PhD F: It has to be a a pre - existing meeting , like a meeting that would otherwise happen anyway .
Professor D: so
Grad B: Right .
Professor D: Yeah , yeah .
Postdoc E: OK .
Grad B: Yep .
Professor D: So I was I was thinking more in terms of talking to professors uh , and and and uh , senior uh , uh , d and uh , doctoral students who are leading projects and offering to them that they have their hold their meeting down here .
PhD F: That 's I think what we and I agree with .
Postdoc E: Oh , interesting !
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Oh , I see . Oh , interesting !
Professor D: Uh , that 's the first point . The second point is um I think that for some time now , going back through BeRP I think that we have had speakers that we 've worked with who had non - native accents and I th I think that Postdoc E: Oh , oh . I 'm not saying accents . u The accent 's not the problem .
Professor D: Oh , OK .
Postdoc E: No , it 's more a matter of uh , proficiency , e e just simply fluency .
Professor D: Yeah .
Postdoc E: I mean , I deal with people on on campus who I think sometimes people , undergraduates um in computer science uh , have language skills that make , you know that their their fluency and writing skills are not so strong .
Professor D: Oh ! You 're not talking about foreign language at all .
Grad B: Yeah . Yeah , just talking about .
Professor D: You 're just talking about Postdoc E: Well , e I just think ,
Grad B: We all had the same thought .
Postdoc E: but you know , it 's like when you get into the graduate level , uh , no problem . I mean , I 'm not saying accents .
PhD C: Uh - huh .
Professor D: Yeah , then we 're completely gone .
Postdoc E: I 'm say I 'm saying fluency .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: It 's  The the habits are already burnt in .
Postdoc E: Well , yeah . I 'm just saying fluency .
Professor D: But Grad B: Well , I think that , um I think that the only thing we should say in the advertisement is that the meeting should be held in English . And and I think if it 's a pre - existing meeting and it 's held in English , {comment} I I think it 's probably OK if a few of the people don't have uh , g particularly good English skills .
Professor D: Yeah .
Postdoc E: OK , now can I can I say the other aspect of this from my perspective which is that um , there 's there 's this this issue , you have a corpus out there , it should be used for for multiple things cuz it 's so expensive to put together .
Grad B: Right .
Professor D: Right .
Postdoc E: And if people want to approach Um , i so I know e e You know this The idea of computational linguistics and probabilistic grammars and all may not be the focus of this group ,
Professor D: Uh - huh .
Postdoc E: but the idea of language models , which are fund you know generally speaking uh , you know , t t terms of like the amount of benefit per dollar spent or an hour invested in preparing the data ,
Professor D: Mm - hmm . Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: if you have a choice between people who are pr more proficient in {nonvocalsound} um , i more fluent , more more close to being academic English , then it would seem to me to be a good thing .
Professor D: I guess I maybe Hmm . I
Postdoc E: Because otherwise y you don't have the ability to have Uh , so if if you have a bunch of idiolects that 's the worst possible case . If you have people who are using English as a as an interlanguage because they they don't uh , they can't speak in their native languages and but their interlanguage isn't really a match to any existing , uh , language model ,
Professor D: Uh - huh .
Postdoc E: this is the worst case scenario .
PhD C: Yeah . Yeah .
Professor D: Well , that 's pretty much what you 're going to have in the networking group .
Postdoc E: And Grad B: Right .
Professor D: because because they most the network group is almost entirely Germans and Spaniards .
Postdoc E: Well Oh . But the thing is , I think that these people are of high enough level in their in their language proficiency that Professor D: I see .
Postdoc E: And I 'm not objecting to accents .
Professor D: OK .
Postdoc E: I I 'm I 'm just thinking that we have to think at a at a higher level view , could we have a language model , a a grammar a grammar , basically , that um , wo would be a a possibility .
Professor D: Uh - huh .
Postdoc E: So y so if you wanted to bring in a model like Dan Jurafsky 's model , an and do some top - down stuff , it to help th the bottom - up and merge the things or whatever , uh , it seems like um , I don't see that there 's an argument Professor D: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: I 'm I what I think is that why not have the corpus , since it 's so expensive to put together , uh , useful for the widest range of of central corp things that people generally use corpora for and which are , you know , used in computational linguistics .
Professor D: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: That 's that 's my point . Which which includes both top - down and bottom - up .
PhD C: It 's difficult .
Professor D: OK .
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor D: OK , well , i i let 's let 's see what we can get . I mean , it it I think that if we 're aiming at at uh , groups of graduate students and professors and so forth who are talking about things together , and it 's from the Berkeley campus , probably most of it will be OK ,
Postdoc E: Yes , that 's fine . That 's fine . Exactly . And my point in m in my note to Liz was I think that undergrads are an iff iffy population .
Professor D: but OK . OK .
PhD F: I definitely agree with that , I mean , for this purpose .
Professor D: OK .
Grad B: Well , not to mention the fact that I would be hesitant certainly to take anyone under eighteen , probably even an anyone under twenty - one .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: Grads and professors , fine .
PhD C: Yeah .
Grad B: So .
Professor D: Oh , you age - ist !
Grad B: What 's that ? Well , age - ist . {comment} The " eighteen " is because of the consent form .
Postdoc E: Age - ist .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD F: Right , Yeah .
Grad B: We 'd hafta get find their parent to sign for them .
PhD C: " Age - ist " . Yeah . Yeah .
Professor D: Yes .
Postdoc E: Yeah , that 's true .
Grad B: So .