B: It was .
A: which was " M MTG RCDR hyphen joint " .
B: Joint .
B: Yep .
A: But then I got some sort of funny mail saying that the moderator was going to B: It 's B: That 's because they set the one up at UW B: that 's not on our side , that 's on the U - dub <comment> side .
A: Oh .
B: And so U - UW set it up as a moderated list .
F: Yeah .
A: Oh , OK .
B: And , I have no idea whether it actually ever goes to anyone
B: so you might just wanna mail to Mari
A: No no , th I got I got , uh , little excited notes from Mari and Jeff and so on ,
B: and B: OK , good .
A: so it 's A: Yeah .
B: So the moderator actually did repost it .
A: Yeah .
B: Cuz I had sent one earlier B: Actually the same thing happened to me I had sent one earlier .
B: The message says , " You 'll be informed "
B: and then I was never informed
B: but I got replies from people indicating that they had gotten it ,
B: so .
A: Right .
B: It 's just to prevent spam .
A: I see .
A: Yeah so O OK . Well , anyway , I guess everybody here Are y are A: you are on that list ,
G: Mm - hmm .
A: right ?
A: So you got the note ?
G: Yeah .
A: Yeah ? OK .
A: Um ,
A: so this was , uh , a , uh , proposal that we put in
A: before on on more more higher level , uh , issues in meetings ,
A: from I guess higher level from my point of view .
A: Uh , and , uh , meeting mappings ,
A: and , uh A: so is i for it was a proposal for the ITR program ,
A: uh , Information Technology Research program 's part of National Science Foundation .
A: It 's the second year of their doing , uh , these grants .
A: They 're they 're A: a lot of them are A: some of them anyway , are larger larger grants than the usual , small NSF grants ,
A: and .
A: So , they 're very competitive ,
A: and they have a first phase where you put in pre - proposals ,
A: and we we , uh , got through that .
A: And so th the the next phase will be we 'll actually be doing a larger proposal .
A: And I 'm I I hope to be doing very little of it .
A: And A: uh , which was also true for the pre - proposal ,
A: so .
A: Uh , there 'll be bunch of people working on it .
A: So .
B: When 's when 's the full proposal due ?
A: Uh , I think April ninth , or something .
A: So it 's about a month .
E: p s
B: Yep .
A: Um B: And they said end of business day you could check on the reviewer forms ,
G: u
G: Tomorrow .
B: is that A: Tomorrow .
E: Tomorrow ?
A: March second , I said .
E: Yeah .
C: Tomorrow .
B: I 've been a day off all week .
B: I guess that 's a good thing
B: cuz that way I got my papers done early .
G: It would be interesting A: So that 's amazing you showed up at this meeting !
B: It is . It is actually quite amazing .
E: Yeah .
G: It 'll be interesting to see the reviewer 's comments .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
A: My favorite is was when when when one reviewer says , uh , " you know , this should be far more detailed " ,
A: and the nex the next reviewer says , " you know , there 's way too much detail " .
B: Yep .
B: Or " this is way too general " ,
B: and the other reviewer says , " this is way too specific " .
C: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
C: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
B: " This is way too hard " ,
B: " way too easy " .
A: We 'll see .
A: Maybe there 'll be something useful .
A: And and , uh B: Well it sounded like they they the first gate was pretty easy .
B: Is that right ?
B: That they didn't reject a lot of the pre - proposals ?
A: Do you know anything about the numbers ?
B: No .
G: It 's just from his message it sounded like that .
B: Just just th
E: Yeah . Yeah .
E: I said something , yeah .
G: Gary Strong 's G: there was a sentence at the end of one of his paragraphs
A: I
G: I E: Yeah .
A: I should go back and look .
A: I didn't I don't think that 's true .
B: Yeah , OK .
G: Mmm .
G: He said the next phase 'll be very , competitive
E: Very very ,
G: because we didn't want to weed out much in the first phase .
E: yeah .
E: Yeah .
B: Or something like that ,
A: Well we 'll have to see what the numbers are .
C: Mm - hmm .
B: so .
C: Hmm .
A: Yeah .
A: But they they have to weed out enough so that they have enough reviewers .
B: Right .
C: Yeah .
A: So , uh , you know , maybe they didn't r weed out as much as usual ,
A: but it 's it 's usually a pretty A: But it A: Yeah . It 's it 's certainly not I 'm sure that it 's not down to one in two or something
B: Right .
A: of what 's left .
A: I 'm sure it 's , you know B: How how many awards are there ,
B: do you know ?
A: Well there 's different numbers of w awards for different size A: They have three size grants .
A: This one there 's ,
A: um A: See the small ones are less than five hundred thousand total over three years
A: and that they have a fair number of them .
A: Um ,
A: and the large ones are ,
A: uh ,
A: boy , I forget ,
A: I think , more than ,
A: uh ,
A: more than a million and a half , more than two million or something like that .
A: And and we 're in the middle B: Mm - hmm .
A: middle category .
A: I think we 're ,
A: uh , uh ,
A: I forget what it was .
A: But , um A: Uh , I don't remember ,
A: but it 's pr probably along the li
A: I I could be wrong on this
A: yeah , but probably along the lines of fifteen or that they 'll fund , or twenty .
A: I mean when they Do you do you know how many they funded when they f in in Chuck 's ,
A: that he got last year ?
G: I don't I don't know .
A: Yeah .
B: I thought it was smaller ,
B: that it was like four or five ,
B: wasn't it ?
G: I I 'm A: Well they fund G: I don't remember .
A: they A: yeah .
B: Uh it doesn't matter ,
A: I mean B: we 'll find out one way or another .
A: Yeah .
A: I mean last time I think they just had two categories ,
A: small and big ,
B: Mm - hmm .
A: and this time they came up with a middle one ,
A: so it 'll there 'll be more of them that they fund than of the big .
G: If we end up getting this , um , what will it mean to ICSI in terms of , w wh where will the money go to ,
G: what would we be doing with it ?
A: Uh .
B: Exactly what we say in the proposal .
G: I I mean uh which part is ICSI though .
A: You know , it i
G: I mean A: None of it will go for those yachts that we 've talking about .
G: Dang !
A: Um , well ,
A: no , I mean it 's u
A: It G: It 's just for the research G: to continue the research on the Meeting Recorder stuff ?
A: It 's extending the research ,
A: right ?
G: Yeah .
A: Because the other B: Yeah it 's go higher level stuff than we 've been talking about for Meeting Recorder .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah the other things that we have , uh , been working on with , uh , the c with Communicator A: uh , especially with the newer things A: with the more acoustically - oriented things are are are are lower level .
A: And ,
A: this is dealing with , uh , mapping on the level of of , um , the conversation G: Mm - hmm .
A: of mapping the conversations
G: Right , right .
A: to different kind of planes .
A: So . Um . But , um .
A: So it 's all it 's all stuff that none none of us are doing right now ,
A: or none of us are funded for ,
A: so it 's so it 's it would be new .
G: So assuming everybody 's completely busy now , it means we 're gonna hafta , hire more students , or , something ?
A: Well there 's evenings , and there 's weekends ,
A: and Uh .
A: Yeah , there there would be there would be new hires ,
A: and and there there would be expansion ,
A: but ,
A: also , there 's always  for everybody there 's there 's always things that are dropping off ,
A: grants that are ending ,
A: or other things that are ending ,
G: Right .
A: so ,
C: Mm - hmm .
A: there 's there 's a continual need to to bring in new things .
G: Right .
B: Yep .
G: I see .
A: But but there definitely would be new new new , uh , students ,
A: and so forth , both at at UW and here .
B: Are there any students in your class who are expressing interest ?
A: Um , not clear yet .
B: Other than the one who 's already here .
A: Not clear yet .
A: I mean we got  we have A: yeah , two of them are two in the c There 're two in the class already here ,
A: and then A: and and , uh uh ,
A: then there 's a third who 's doing a project here ,
B: Mm - hmm .
A: who , uh But he he he won't be in the country that long ,
A: and ,
A: maybe another will end up .
B: Yep .
A: Actually there is one other guy who 's looking that that 's that
A: guy , uh ,
A: Jeremy ? <comment> I think .
C: Mm - hmm .
A: Anyway , yeah that 's that 's all I was gonna say is that that that 's you know , that 's nice
A: and we 're sorta preceding to the next step ,
A: and , it 'll mean some more work , uh , you know , in in March in getting the proposal out ,
A: and then , it 's , uh , you know We 'll see what happens .
A: Uh , the last one was that you had there , <comment> was about naming ?
B: Yep .
B: It just , uh we 've been cutting up sound files , in for ba both digits and for , uh , doing recognition .
B: And Liz had some suggestions on naming
B: and it just brought up the whole issue that hasn't really been resolved about naming .
B: So , uh , one thing she would like to have is for all the names to be the same length
B: so that sorting is easier .
C: Yeah .
B: Um ,
B: same number of characters
B: so that when you 're sorting filenames you can easily extract out bits and pieces that you want .
B: And that 's easy enough to do .
B: And I don't think we have so many meetings that that 's a big deal just to change the names .
B: So that means , uh , instead of calling it " MR one " , " MR two " , you 'd call it " MRM zero zero one " ,
B: " MRM zero zero two " , things like that .
B: Just so that they 're they 're all the same length .
F: But , you know , when you , do things like that you can always F: as long as you have F: uh , you can always search from the beginning or the end of the string .
F: You know , so " zero zero two " B: The problem is that they 're a lot of fields .
F: Yeah .
B: Alright ,
B: so we we have th we 're gonna have the speaker ID ,
B: the session ,
B: uh uh ,
F: Yeah , well , your example was really B: information on the microphones ,
F: i
C: Uh - huh .
B: information on the speak on the channels and all that .
F: OK .
B: And so if each one of those is a fixed length , the sorting becomes a lot easier .
D: She wanted to keep them the same lengths across different meetings also .
D: So like , the NSA meeting lengths , <comment> all filenames are gonna be the same length as the Meeting Recorder meeting names ?
B: Yep .
B: And as I said , the it 's we just don't have that many that that 's a big deal .
G: Cuz of digits .
B: And so , uh , um , at some point we have to sort of take a few days off ,
B: let the transcribers have a few days off ,
B: make sure no one 's touching the data
B: and reorganize the file structures .
B: And when we do that we can also rationalize some of the naming .
F: I I would think though that the transcribe the transcripts themselves wouldn't need to have such lengthy names .
F: So , I mean , you 're dealing with a different domain there , and with start and end times and all that ,
B: Right .
F: and channels and stuff ,
F: so , it 's a different set .
B: Right . So the only thing that would change with that is just the directory names ,
B: I would change them to match .
B: So instead of being MR one it would be MRM zero zero one .
B: But I don't think that 's a big deal .
F: Fine . Fine .
B: So for for m the meetings we were thinking about three letters and three numbers
B: for meeting I Ds .
B: Uh , for speakers , M or F and then three numbers ,
B: For , uh and , uh ,
B: that also brings up the point that we have to start assembling a speaker database so that we get those links back and forth
B: and keep it consistent .
B: Um ,
B: and then , uh , the microphone issues .
B: We want some way of specifying , more than looking in the " key " file , what channel and what mike . What channel , what mike , and what broadcaster .
B: Or I don't know how to s say it .
B: So I mean with this one it 's this particular headset with this particular transmitter w as a wireless .
C: Yeah .
E: Yep .
B: And you know that one is a different headset and different channel .
B: And so we just need some naming conventions on that .
C: Yeah .
B: And , uh ,
C: Uh - huh .
B: that 's gonna become especially important once we start changing the microphone set - up .
B: We have some new microphones that I 'd like to start trying out ,
B: um ,
B: once I test them .
B: And then we 'll we 'll need to specify that somewhere .
B: So I was just gonna do a fixed list of , uh , microphones and types .
C: Yeah .
E: OK .
B: So , as I said G: That sounds good .
C: Yeah .
A: Um ,  since we have such a short agenda list I guess I wi I will ask how how are the transcriptions going ?
A: Yeah .
F: The the news is that I 've I uh F: s So in s um F: So I 've switched to F: Start my new sentence .
F: I I switched to doing the channel - by - channel transcriptions to provide , uh , the uh , tighter time bins for partly for use in Thilo 's work
F: and also it 's of relevance to other people in the project .
F: And , um , I discovered in the process a couple of of interesting things ,
F: which , um ,
F: one of them is that , um , it seems that there are time lags involved in doing this ,
F: uh , uh ,
F: using an interface that has so much more complexity to it .
F: And I and I wanted to maybe ask , uh , Chuck to help me with some of the questions of efficiency .
F: Maybe I was thinking maybe the best way to do this in the long run may be to give them single channel parts
F: and then piece them together later .
F: And I I have a script ,
F: I can piece them together .
F: I mean , so it 's like , I I know that I can take them apart and put them together and I 'll end up with the representation
F: which is where the real power of that interface is .
F: And it may be that it 's faster to transcribe a channel at a time with only one , uh , sound file and one , uh , set of of , uh , utterances to check through .
A: Mm - hmm .
C: Yeah .
A: I 'm a little confused .
A: I thought that that one of the reason we thought we were so much faster than than , uh , the the other transcription , uh , thing was that that we were using the mixed file .
F: Oh , yes . OK .
F: But , um , with the mixed , when you have an overlap , you only have a a choice of one start and end time for that entire overlap ,
F: which means that you 're not tightly , uh , tuning the individual parts th of that overlap by different speakers .
A: Mm - hmm .
F: So someone may have only said two words in that entire big chunk of overlap .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
F: And for purposes of of , uh , things like F: well , so things like training the speech - nonspeech segmentation thing .
E: Yeah .
F: Th - it 's necessary to have it more tightly tuned than that .
A: OK .
F: And w and w and , you know , is a It would be wonderful if , uh , it 's possible then to use that algorithm to more tightly tie in all the channels after that
F: but , um , you know , I 've th the F: So ,
F: I I don't know exactly where that 's going at this point .
F: But m I was experimenting with doing this by hand
F: and
F: I really do think that it 's wise that we 've had them start the way we have
F: with , uh , m y working off the mixed signal ,
F: um ,
F: having the interface that doesn't require them to do the ti uh , the time bins for every single channel at a t uh , through the entire interaction .
A: Mm - hmm .
F: Um , I did discover a couple other things by doing this though ,
F: and one of them is that ,
F: um , um ,
F: once in a while a backchannel will be overlooked by the transcriber .
F: As you might expect ,
A: Mm - hmm .
F: because when it 's
A: Sure .
F: a b backchannel could well happen in a very densely populated overlap .
F: And if we 're gonna study types of overlaps ,
F: which is what I wanna do ,
F: an analysis of that ,
F: then that really does require listening <comment> to every single channel all the way through the entire <comment> length for all the different speakers .
F: Now , for only four speakers , that 's not gonna be too much time ,
F: but if it 's nine speakers , then that i that is more time .
F: So it 's li you know , kind of wondering F: And I think again it 's like this it 's really valuable that Thilo 's working on the speech - nonspeech segmentation
F: because maybe , um , we can close in on that wi without having to actually go to the time that it would take to listen to every single channel from start to finish through every single meeting .
E: Yeah , but those backchannels will always be a problem I think .
E: Uh especially if they 're really short
E: and they 're not very loud
E: and so it it can it it will always happen that also the automatic s detection system will miss some of them ,
E: so .
F: OK .
F: Well so then then , maybe the answer is to , uh , listen especially densely in places of overlap ,
F: just so that they 're they 're not being overlooked because of that ,
E: Yeah .
F: and count on accuracy during the sparser phases .
E: Yeah .
F: Cuz there are large s spaces of the F: That 's a good point .
F: There are large spaces where there 's no overlap at all .
F: Someone 's giving a presentation ,
E: Yeah .
F: or whatever .
F: That 's that 's a good that 's a good thought .
F: And , um , let 's see , there was one other thing I was gonna say .
F: I I think it 's really interesting data to work with ,
F: I have to say , it 's very enjoyable .
F: I really , not not a problem spending time with these data .
F: Really interesting .
F: And not just because I 'm in there .
F: No , it 's real interesting .
A: Uh , well I think it 's a short meeting .
A: Uh , you 're you 're you 're still in the midst of what you 're doing from what you described last time , I assume ,
C: Is true .
C: I haven't results , eh , yet
A: and C: but , eh ,
A: Yeah .
C: I I 'm continue working with the mixed signal now , <comment> after the the last experience .
A: Yeah . Yeah .
C: And and I 'm tried to to , uh , adjust the to to improve , eh , an harmonicity , eh , detector that , eh , I I implement .
A: Yeah .
C: But I have problem
C: because , eh , I get , eh ,
C: eh ,
C: very much harmonics now .
A: Yeah .
C: Um , harmonic possi possible harmonics ,
C: uh ,
C: eh , and now I 'm I 'm I 'm trying to to find , eh , some kind of a , um  of h of help , eh , using the energy to to distinguish between possible harmonics , and and other fre frequency peaks , that , eh , corres not harmonics .