B: Mmm .
G: It 's inherently hard .
G: And so you have to make some simplifications
G: and different people make different simplifications ,
F: Mm - hmm .
G: and then you can't compare them at all ,
G: which is what the literature is sort of like now .
G: So , um , and then there 's the issue of recognizer dictionaries , and non - standard forms , and things like that that have to be mapped .
E: Yeah .
G: So " gonna " versus " going to " and that kind of thing .
F: Right .
E: I mean , all those issues yeah I 'm sure we H: Mm - hmm .
B: Mmm .
E: I mean , @ @ like I say . I 'm I 'm personally not interested in those for my particular aspect of the project
G: They 're not hard
G: but E: but SRI in general is is the G: but we definitely will be interested in some language and dialogue .
E: Yeah .
E: And s I don't know , maybe we will end up transcribing stu
B: Mm - hmm .
E: if Hor - if Horacio wants , you know , wants that done , maybe that 'll be maybe we 'll end up doing that .
G: So .
F: Well G: And UW is also probably gonna be interested in that too ,
G: the dialogue kinds of things .
G: So , i
F: Well , so it 's a G: you know .
F: so it seems like , um , if you and Jane D: Is is Morgan nodding his head ?
F: Yeah .
H: Yeah .
D: OK .
F: So if you and Jane keep keep in touch about transcription conventions , that would be very helpful .
G: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
G: Yeah , that 's originally We should thank Jane
B: Right .
G: because that 's how I originally she showed me some transcripts and I thought , " Wow ,
F: Yeah .
E: I mean , it 's kind of amazing too that , you know , the transcription tool we just converged on the same B: Mm - hmm .
G: this is great " .
F: Yep .
G: Oh , yeah .
B: Yeah , yeah , to study using the same thing .
E: All these things were very , very similar .
H: Yeah .
A: You were also thinking about the same tool ?
H: That 's interesting .
G: Yeah .
E: It 's E: We we we were gonna use the same tool .
A: Wow !
G: But what if you had like written the s the Tcl kluge or something , and then both done the same E: We we set up that tool already ,
E: yeah .
A: Already !
E: Yeah .
F: Hmm .
F: That 's right .
H: Well , the I mean , and in some ways that does change the , uh , the economics of doing that .
A: I mean , it 's B: Can you do that ?
F: Right .
H: But , um .
B: Hmm !
F: It 's much more worth while to do if someone else is gonna use it .
B: Yeah .
B: Yeah .
G: Yeah .
H: Yeah .
E: Yeah ,
F: Although again if this now named company is the one who 's gonna do the transcription , I sus I suspect they have in house tools that they 'll end up using .
E: that 's right .
H: Mm - hmm ,
H: mm - hmm .
H: But we still H: yeah .
E: Uh - huh .
G: But you still need something that can display these channels .
H: That 's interesting .
H: Right , we need we need some kind of browsing .
G: e e better than what it can do , I mean .
H: Yeah .
H: It 's G: And then I guess
G: who is the contact at UW ?
G: Like
G: Morgan ?
G: Morgan doesn't have a microphone
G: but is it is it F: That 's alright .
H: He 's allowed to speak ,
F: He can talk anyway .
H: he ca
G: I mean Mari and D: Well , he could be reached he could be reached by the far field ,
H: yeah .
D: couldn't he ?
G: Mari or or or Katrin , or Jeff , or D: Yeah .
G: Yeah .
G: I mean , both I think both Jeff and Katrin have some time on this .
G: No , on the p on the DARPA project , who would be sort of contacts for Mari .
G: And if Mari 's too busy then B: Mmm .
G: OK ,
B: Mmm .
G: yeah .
H: Hmm , @ @ .
F: I was .
A: Uh - huh .
E: I don't think we have any problem .
E: I mean , we had certainly in our you know , the proposal that we tried to make to NSF , we were assuming we would distribute this through the LDC .
A: No ,
A: yeah .
A: Yeah ,
A: I I mean ,
A: this this is something that re re requires a bootstrap .
F: LDC is what we were thinking too .
E: Yeah ,
B: Mm - hmm .
G: Yeah .
E: so we have no problem with that .
A: I mean , there is no LDC database .
G: Yeah .
H: Mm - hmm .
A: There is , at least we have to share the data , I mean .
B: Mmm .
A: That 's the bottom line ,
G: I I mean , I think eventually LDC could be very interested in it ,
A: uh .
G: especially if you have a tool that can do this .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
G: I mean , there isn't one .
F: Hmm .
G: And and the data .
G: So maybe it 'll we can actually A: Yeah .
G: You can sell corpora eventually to the LDC
G: and you can get time , student time , to clean up the corpus and things .
H: Hmm .
G: So .
G: Yeah .
G: Mm - hmm .
A: Yep .
H: Right .
D: I wanted to ask one question about the the nature of the design .
E: It 's terrific .
D: Th - Given that the overlaps are up up uh , where the difficulty comes , in a bunch of a areas , um , whether it would be useful to have some of the sessions have like an additional rule
D: where if a person , you know , the that there 's someone who recognizes people to speak or something like that to cut down on the D: so you then you have the meeting context ,
D: you have multiple channels ,
D: you have the microphones n varying the way you want them to vary ,
D: but you 'd cut down substantially on the overlaps .
D: It wouldn't be f for all meetings
D: but whether maybe just sprinkled through there once in a while , something like that might be useful or not .
D: Just wanted to raise that .
D: I don't know .
H: I mean , it 's difficult because you want it to be real speech , right ?
H: And also it 's not clear how well people can even adjust to even adjust to that kind of rule .
D: Mm - hmm .
E: Yeah .
E: I mean , s it tho those those kinds of things are sorta the kind of things that we were thinking of of trying ,
H: But if there F: Robert 's rules .
H: Yeah .
E: cuz we are having we do have a more artificial set environment again .
D: Mm - hmm .
E: We 're trying something totally new
E: having people speak to the computer .
E: I don't think we talked about that in particular
E: cuz we didn't we haven't done any pilots ,
E: we haven't seen this , incredibly difficult data of overlapping .
E: But this is
E: uh , Christine Helverson , who 's working on this with me from the s um , aspect of user , you know , usability and stuff , would , y you know E: sh she 's interested in these sorts of things .
E: What what can you ask people to do that , um , that they can reliably do and without too much , you know , cognitive load , um , that can help things out ,
E: or , you know , those sorts of issues .
E: So ,
E: I don't know .
E: Maybe it 's something that could fit easier in in our context than in a general meeting context .
E: I don't know .
D: Well , what I can say is that wha sometimes , you know , if if if we were to have this kind of coordination thing , some some of the overlap is due to someone wanting to claim the floor at a certain point
F: Well I think that F: Mm - hmm .
D: without knowing that other people have the same desire at the same point in time .
D: And if and if you were to have someone who was like a moderator , then you raise your hand , the moderator would say , you first ,
E: Just have a button .
D: you know ,
D: or yeah ,
D: press the button .
E: And ring the buzzer .
D: And and I think , you know , there are always gonna be backchannels ,
D: I think that 's natural and lovely .
E: Mm - mmm .
H: Mm - hmm .
D: But these these overlaps that are due to people n not knowing other people wanna leap in at the same time and and wanting to coordinate you know , I think that , uh , it could be lessened .
F: Hmm .
E: I don't know .
D: Not eliminated entirely .
F: There are certainly f formal meeting settings where that 's what 's happens ,
F: y that you know , Robert 's rules of order and all that .
D: Yeah .
G: Right .
F: Uh , so that 's not something we had thought about before
F: but I think it it it certainly is another type of meeting that could be done .
H: Yeah .
D: Mm - hmm .
F: Uh , no ,
F: I didn't .
F: I didn't know we were gonna be recording this meeting ,
H: We F: so I didn't .
H: no H: Yeah , in general
F: Yes ,
F: in the other meetings we have .
H: yeah .
H: Yeah .
D: And they 've been collecting digits too .
D: OK .
F: So that 's another thing we should talk about , is making sure that we 're doing it in the same way .
B: Mm - hmm .
E: We  For a t for a completely different reason I assume
B: Mmm .
E: but F: So I I E: And and not within a not within a big room .
E: Just , uh .
E: Yeah .
B: Mmm .
D: That 's a good idea .
F: Yeah , if I had known and here we have all these new speakers , I could have gotten lots of digits in
H: Yeah .
F: but G: But sorry ,
G: so you connect you collect digits in conversation
G: or or individ
F: No , no , I have people read them .
H: Yeah , yeah .
H: We we give people a list of digits
H: and they have to like put them into their discussion ,
G: Uh .
H: like say , " Five , one , seven , seven , three . "
F: Seven .
C: You - you 're encouraged to , you know , just utter digits once in a while .
G: I was thinking B: Yeah .
G: Never mind ,
A: You say , " hey ,
G: I 'm getting attacked .
A: by the way , eight ! "
E: Uh - huh .
B: Mmm .
G: So you don't need the meeting for that .
G: You can just sit me in this room and set up all the microphones .
E: But you need the room and the set up .
G: Right ,
G: OK .
G: Right , right .
B: Right .
E: Yeah , we 're doing digits G: OK .
H: Yeah .
E: yeah , we 're not doing digits in the in the room set up at all .
E: We 're doing it for a complete
E: I mean ,
E: one of the specific things I 'm interested in is knowing um , is the open mike issue .
E: When you 're talking to the computer , knowing when you 're done speaking .
E: And so I 'm loo interested in in well , in interested in looking at prosody .
E: Um ,
F: Oh , cool .
E: and so we 're just having we 're just doing lists of digits to see when people pause to know , you know , " there was a big gap in time here
E: but , they " you know , we can tell prosodically they weren't done ,
E: so .
E: Yeah .
G: I I think that 's a really good idea .
B: Hmm .
H: But but there is H: but there is also this fascinating prosodic thing that goes on
G: To always G: yeah .
H: because you what we we have is like these lists of ten digit strings or twenty digit strings
H: and they 're like one one to five or one to seven digits .
H: And people read through them .
H: And you know , we 're saying , well we won't to be able to separate them
H: so please pause between
H: but it 's very people don't like doing that .
H: And so there is this prosodic thing which is which is indicating when whe the pauses between these digit strings .
H: And then when they finish , the actual the whole sheet , there 's this nice , wonderful yeah , phrase @ @ .
B: Mmm , mmm .
G: Oh , yeah .
E: Yeah ,
F: Nice falling ,
G: Oh , yeah ,
B: Declination , yeah .
E: right .
G: d
F: yeah .
G: If you definitely shouldn't use your last sample .
E: Right .
H: And it F: So .
G: I mean , people that do prosody work , they add a few at the end
H: Right .
F: Oh ,
F: I hadn't thought about that .
G: because otherwise people will B: Mmm .
H: Oh right .
F: I hadn't even thought about throwing out the last couple .
G: Yeah .
G: Yeah .
G: No , but that that is beautiful
F: Definitely should .
B: Mm - hmm .
G: because then you can get this F zero floor for each of the speakers .
H: Mm - hmm .
E: Oh , right ,
E: just look at the very last  look at the very end .
G: Just from that .
B: Right ,
C: Yeah .
B: yeah ,
B: yeah ,
B: yeah .
H: Yeah , yeah .
F: Don't throw it away
F: but don't use it in your training .
G: Your your junk is our , uh , training data .
H: Treat especially B: Mmm .
H: Yeah .
F: Cool .
G: No , that 's a really good idea
G: to have some standard G: I mean , especially if a the different sites can do something like that .
G: You 'll at least be able to see whether difficulty across site is due to , you know , the lexicon version ,
F: And H: Right ,
H: right .
G: uh .
H: There 'll be a common H: That 'd be great .
G: Yeah .
H: Yeah , that 's a good idea .
E: Funny .
F: Hmm .
D: That 's a good idea .
G: Oh .
B: That 's the reason ,
G: You should definitely D: Mm - hmm .
B: uh - huh .
G: it 's some kind of calibration , uh , for uh many of these tests .
H: Yeah .
F: Right .
B: Mmm .
F: The only thing I don't like about it is that it 's not phonetically very rich ,
H: Right .
G: Well , you could have TI you know , " she put her dirty laundry in the clean  clean bathwater " , whatever .
F: but .
F: Yeah ,
F: that 's right ,
F: TIMIT .
F: So we actually talked about that .
F: Yeah ,
F: it 's plenty bad .
F: It 's plenty bad just with digits ,
B: Mmm .
G: Yeah .
B: Mmm .
F: although I haven't trained any nets on it .
F: I 've just been using existing digits or Broadcast News nets
F: since we don't have enough data yet .
E: And what are these what are the digit strings are from TI digits and , uh F: One , seven , eight , two , three , one , three , seven , eight , four .
E: Uh H: Yeah ,
H: it 's TI - digit strings .
E: I don't F: M that sorta thing .
E: Uh D: That 's right ,
D: this we could each make up a string .
F: Yeah .
H: It 's actually E: How how long are how long chunks are they ,
F: But what were they ?
E: a
H: it 's like but from one to one to nine digits .
F: They vary from C: One two three four .
H: It is actually the the actual digit strings from TI - digits .
E: OK ,
F: I I just extracted exactly the same ones ,
E: yeah , I 've never looked over the TI - digits corpus ,
H: OK .
G: Have we all memorized these ?
B: Up a bit .
E: I don't know .
F: so .
G: Maybe we know them .
H: Yeah .
F: That 's like the TIMIT sentences .
G: Right .
H: Yeah .
B: Yeah .
F: Greasy wash water ,
D: I know the numbers that were used
F: oh .
B: In one ear .
D: but I don't remember the combinations .
H: The order ,
H: yeah .
B: Just the order ,
B: OK ?
F: But , so I have a bunch of tools for generating these and for helping transcribe them .
F: Since you know what you know what the transcript is you don't have to type it in , you just have to segment it .
E: Mm - hmm .
F: So I have tools for doing that .
F: Using X - X Waves , Tcl - TK , Perl , and maybe some C programs too .
D: We could do some digits .
F: Well I I don't have any of the print outs .
D: OK .
F: I I print them out a a as I need them .
F: So what I should do is just print out a whole stack and leave them up here
F: but I haven't done that .
H: Put them on the Internet ,
H: put them on a web page .
D: That 's what I was wondering .
G: Eh yeah , you could write write them write something on the board
F: Well , but i
D: Ha - wha I mean , we could just make make numbers up ,
G: and ,
G: I don't know .
F: It 's it 's a different task .
D: can't we ?
G: Yeah ,
F: It 's a different task than read .
G: yeah .
F: You you do it differently if it 's sitting in front of you and you 're reading it than if it 's not .
D: OK .
F: So ,
G: Right .
F: I guess we could write them down and then read them ,
F: but .
B: Mm - hmm .
D: OK .
F: I I we can get digits .
H: I F: I mean , a as you said , we don't have to be in a meeting .
F: And so if we 're short on digits I can just , you know , capture people in the hallway ,
F: drag them in here ,
F: and have them read digits for me .
F: That 's right .
D: Oh , can you bring them up from the D: no ,
D: OK .
D: Alright .
D: I wanted to ask about also the air conditioning .
D: Are uh , is there a plan to to turn the air conditioning off in some of these meetings or is it always gonna be on ?
G: Yeah , it 's way too cold in here .
H: We should do that
H: cuz y you can turn it off on that that thing right there
B: Right .
F: Well ,
H: and it makes a huge difference .
B: You also gain noise from the projector as well , isn't it ?
F: the the hum we hear right now is actually the projector ,
B: Yeah , yeah .
G: A all right .
H: But the projector ,
F: not the air conditioner .
H: yeah .
E: Huh .
F: The projector is much louder than the air conditioning .
H: This is the first time we 've done it with a projector .
D: Yeah ,
D: but I was just thinking , he was showing it on what he showed us on the web site ,
D: you could see the contribution of the air conditioning .
F: Yep .
D: And I just wondered if that was gonna be sometimes clear .
E: But the projector 's not part of your meeting
E: or or or is it ?
E: Do is this normally gonna be on during collection ?
F: Um , no ,
F: not normally ,
F: not for our meetings .
F: I at least very few of the ones we 've done have we had to do anything on the computer .
B: No ?
B: It E: For ours it will
E: but we have a rear projector ,
E: so it 's in a separate room .
B: Mmm .
F: Right .
B: It actually gives you a way of calibrating microphone position in a way .
B: Doesn't it ?
F: That 's right ,
F: from volume .
B: Yeah .
F: That 's interesting .
B: For volume , it 's a point source pretty much ,
G: Mmm .
B: yeah .
D: Hmm , hmm .
B: So .
F: Although unfortunately , you know , they 're all pretty close ,
B: Hmm .
F: right ?
B: t Uh F: Oh , look !
F: Digit strings .
D: Oh wow ,
D: there you go .
A: Mm - hmm !
G: Modern technology .
A: Oh , I see .
D: Perfect .
G: See , you may wanna call up your computer .
G: " Computer ,
G: give us digit strings . "
B: Digit strings ,
F: That 's right .
B: yeah .
H: Wow ,
H: but the c but the recorder just crashed .
D: I think I recognize those .
F: Oh no !