D: OK , you guys are more in business that I am .
H: But it @ @ bu
B: The host probably gets , uh , you know gets a little bit more .
H: Yeah .
D: My feeling is that when I when I when I 've seen that show it 's like there there are sometimes people who totally take over the floor
B: Gets a little boost .
A: Yeah , yeah .
D: and other people are trying to get in , and they can never never get access .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah , yeah , yeah .
D: It depends very much on the mix .
F: Well , but that that 's different than an audio engineer fiddling with the mixing parameters .
D: Yeah , it 's just , I I know that there are periods where two people are talking in t at the same time
F: Right ?
A: At the same time .
A: Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah .
D: and you 're only able to hear um , parts of the weaker voice .
D: And , you know , that 's It 's a style .
A: Uh - huh .
D: It 's a style .
D: Uh , but I but I 've seen debates where B: Uh - huh .
A: Yeah , yeah , yeah .
F: Mm - hmm .
D: And you know it 's apparently engaging people .
D: Uh , it 's been going on for a while now .
A: Yeah , yeah .
D: Yeah .
A: Yeah , in many cultures it 's not bad manners to to speak on top of another one .
G: Yeah , I was thinking , if Transcriber were invented in Italy or something , <comment> it would have been handling multiple D: Sure .
D: Absolutely .
A: I it somehow D: Yeah .
D: Or in New York D: or in New York ,
G: in New York .
D: high involve high in high involvement style .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
G: Right .
B: Hmm .
A: I mean , could be reassuring ,
D: Yeah .
F: High involvement .
A: you know ?
F: That 's that 's a
A: Keep going ,
A: keep going .
D: Yeah .
F: good way of saying it .
D: That 's what it 's called .
D: Yeah .
F: So what do we do ?
A: Well , I mean ,
F: It seems like there 's a lot of overlap between our projects ,
A: I I belie I believe there is a lot of overlap
B: There i
B: yeah , indeed .
F: so it would be nice to work together .
A: and would be great to com to to basically take advantage of that to to make a synergy more than an overlap , and , you know , help each other .
F: Mm - hmm .
B: Hmm .
A: I I believe each group has , you know , depths in in different , uh , areas ,
E: We A: so .
A: I mean , we clearly c should collaborate for the best of everybody .
B: Hmm .
F: So is your intention to start collecting some meeting data ?
A: Uh ,
A: I , you know A: There are no final A: I mean , the official decisions I guess have to be made in terms of resources to that .
F: Mm - hmm .
A: My personal opinion , if you ask , is that we should
A: because the only way A: I mean , if I learn anything on speech in for the last , you know @ @ F: More data is better .
A: No , no , no .
A: Um , you need a task to really , you know , improve your system for that particular environment .
F: Oh .
F: Mm - hmm .
A: So right now we are focusing our research on doing evaluation type of , you know , in incremental you know , improvements .
A: So ,
A: Switchboard , for instance .
A: They have five is kind of A: OK , you have two people talking ,
A: it 's the closest thing .
A: But we really should move into the you know , data that reflects as much as possible , the real scenario .
B: Hmm .
A: And that that 's a way to improve .
F: Right .
H: Mm - hmm .
A: And then you do improvement on that particular database .
A: So even if we don't collect the data to train models , we should collect data at least to evaluate progress .
F: So what would be nice is if we could , uh , converge on on formats and conventions , and so on ,
A: Yeah .
G: Yeah .
B: Hmm .
A: Yeah .
G: And and software too .
B: I think that 's the op
F: and software .
G: I mean , things like rewriting this Transcriber tool
F: I mean , just A: Yeah .
B: Yeah .
G: and thi that That shouldn't be re redone .
F: Right .
A: Yeah .
H: Right .
A: Yeah .
B: Hmm .
G: And the transcription conventions F: I , uh uh It shouldn't be done .
E: You 'd mentioned there was some possibility that somewhere else is going to you might contract out to do the transcription ?
F: Yes .
F: We 're talking about that right now .
E: Can y
F: I 'm not sure how much I should say about it .
E: Yeah , that 's what I was wondering .
F: So that the ,
E: OK .
F: uh F: there 's some possibility that we 're gonna get a third c party company to do the transcription for us in exchange for the corpus .
A: Uh - huh ?
B: Is that in exchange for access to the c
F: Right ,
B: Right .
A: Yeah .
A: So , on one question .
F: and A: I mean , uh , this this thing is also for you , made on internal funding ?
A: Or I mean , I know you 're applying for some DARPA funding .
F: We have a little bit of DARPA .
A: Oh , you already got some .
F: Uh , under the communicator project .
A: OK .
A: OK .
F: So so that 's part of it .
F: And then , uh , part of it 's on the IRAM group .
A: OK .
F: IRAM group is paying for part of it .
F: And then part of it 's just ICSI general funds , is paying for it as well .
A: OK .
B: And you 're saying some of the infrastructure is , um , the A T - andT video conferencing .
F: The infrastructure , yeah , they th they were paid B: Yeah .
F: but they don't expect anything in return .
B: Right .
B: So pi
F: They 're just being very nice and good neighbors
B: A free gift .
B: Yeah .
F: and F: and so they they basically wanted stuff anyway .
A: OK .
F: And then they just sort of allowed us to direct the audio portion of it to what we needed .
B: Hmm .
A: Yeah .
B: Right .
F: So .
G: And then , uh , UW G: I don't know if you mentioned this at the beginning
G: but , the Mari 's group , Mari and Morgan I th I think what happened historically , um G: Oh , I don't know how much I 'm supposed to say if this is being recorded .
G: Well , anyway , uh .
B: Should we stop recording ?
A: You are on the line .
G: Mmm , huh .
G: Um .
A: This would never go away !
G: There 's funding , eh .
H: I I can pause if you wanna say something that that 's sensitive .
H: I mean G: It 's G: No , it 's OK .
H: OK .
G: Um , I 'll tell you later .
H: Yeah .
G: Sorry , listeners .
F: And to our listening audience .
B: That 's to the listeners .
A: Yeah .
G: Too bad you weren't here .
A: You know , maybe thousands of people are listening to us now
G: Well , it does sort of make you A: because it 's in the future ,
A: but , you know , sequentially maybe thousands .
H: Yeah .
B: That 's right .
B: It could be .
G: It 's G: it 's like you 're behind closed doors
B: This could be the most popular corpus .
G: but you have to B: Yeah .
H: That 's right .
H: It 's so funny , like we close the door and it 's G: Normally a note taker would know not to do that .
G: OK .
B: Ha !
H: Yeah .
D: What I can do is say , la - la - la - la - la - la - la - la - la .
B: But that 's only on one sp
H: Yeah .
G: Anyway , UW is getting some funding from DARPA on Communicator , uh , with D: I know ,
D: but we can blend it for the public .
D: Uh .
G: and that 's sorta how I got involved .
G: I mean , Morgan wanted me to sort of do something .
G: I guess , I My interest was sort of in the language and dialogue m modeling , and the turn overlaps , and how to apply you know , a language model , a dialogue act model to actually feed down to do better recognition .
G: So not just G: Because I think it will be really difficult to do just speech recognition and then try to get some kind of meaning out of it .
G: I think you have to have some kind of structure from the B: Hmm .
F: Feedback .
G: I mean G: Yeah .
G: And G: So knowing that an utterance is really short and low volume , you should be able to figure out it 's a backchannel and things like that .
G: Anyway ,
G: apparently , and you guys know more than I do , there was some talk that you were gonna build a portable version of this so that Mari 's group H: Mm - hmm .
G: I I mean , there 's not a huge amount of funding in the way , you know , Mari probably won't be able to do a ton of collection .
G: But I was thinking if there were sort of prototype collection devices or standards , then we could share data .
H: Mm - hmm .
B: Hmm .
H: Yeah .
H: Yeah .
G: And we would have like a monopoly on that .
G: Mar - I mean , once you get three sites collecting data and each site can demo it , and say it 's at the other two sites .
H: Yeah .
H: Yeah .
B: Hmm .
G: Which was would be really good for funding purposes .
F: Right .
G: But that I don't really know .
G: That 's what I heard from Morgan ,
H: Yeah , I know .
H: That that 's That 's that that that portable thing 's been mentioned .
G: so .