grad c: yu the date 's written in there , . and actually if everyone could cross out the r - nine next to " session " , and write mr eleven . grad c: and let 's remember also to make that one 's gets marked as unread , unused . grad c: there 's lots of clicking i ' m as i ' m trying to get this to work correctly . grad c: i wanna talk a little bit about getting how we 're gon na to get people to edit bleeps , parts of the meeting that they do n't want to include . what i ' ve done so far , and i wanna get some opinions on , how to finish it up . postdoc f: i wanna ask about , some aud audio monitoring on some of the equipment . in particular , the , that 's just what i wanna ask . postdoc f: ba - based on some of the tran i in listening to some of these meetings that have already been recorded there are sometimes big spikes on particular things , and in pact this one i ' m talking on is one of the ones that showed up in one of the meetings , grad c: , it could be a number of things . it could be touching and fiddling , and the other thing is that it could the fact that it 's on a wired mike is suspicious . it might be a connector . postdoc f: , ok . maybe then we do n't really have to talk about that as an phd b: you could try an experiment and say " ok , i ' m about to test for spikes " , phd b: and then wiggle the thing there , and then go and when they go to transcribe it , it could , ask them to come and get you . professor e: , were this a professional audio recording , what we would do what you would do is in testing it is , you would actually do all this wiggling and make that things are not giving that performance . and if they are , then they ca n't be used . let 's see . i would like to have a discussion about where we are on , recording , transcription , where we are on the corpus . professor e: and then , the other thing which i would like to talk about which is a real meta - quest , deal is , agendas . so maybe i 'll start with that actually . , . andreas brought up the fact that he would kinda like to know , if possible , what we were gon na be talking about because he 's peripherally involved to this point , and if there 's gon na be a topic about discussion about something that he strongly cares about then he would come and and part of his motivation with this is that he 's trying to help us out , in the because of the fact that the meetings are tending to become reasonably large now on days when everybody shows up and so , he figures he could help that out by not showing professor e: and i ' m help out his own time . by not showing up if it 's a meeting that he 's so , in order i 'd that this is a wish on his part . it 's actually gon na be hard because it seems like a lot of times things come up that are unanticipated and but , we could try anyway , do another try at coming up with the agenda , at some point before the meeting , say the day before . grad c: maybe it would be a good idea for one of us to like on wednesday , or tuesday send out a reminder for people to send in agenda items . professor e: you you wanna volunteer to do that ? alright so we 'll send out agenda request . professor e: , i have to tell you for the admin meeting that we have , lila does that every time before an admin meeting . and , she ends up getting the agenda requests , ten minutes before the meeting . but but but . but we can try . maybe it 'll work . postdoc f: i ' m wondering if he were to just , specify particular topics , maybe we 'd be able to meet that request of his a little more . phd b: i would also that as we get more into processing the data and things like that there 'll be more things of interest to him . professor e: actually it this this maybe brings up another topic which is so we 're done with that topic . the other topic i was thinking of was the sta status on microphones and channels , and all that . grad c: ok . , the new microphones , the two new ones are in . and they are being assembled as we speak , i hope . and i did n't bring my car today so i ' m gon na pick them up tomorrow . , and then the other question i was thinking about is , a couple things . first of all , if the other headsets are a lot more comfortable , we should probably just go ahead and get them . so we 'll have to evaluate that when they come in , and get people 's opinions on what they think of them . , then the other question i had is maybe we should get another wireless . another wireless setup . it 's expensive , but it does seem to be better than the wired . grad c: , i ' m pretty that you can daisy - chain them together so what we would do is replace the wired mikes with wireless . so we currently have one base station with six wireless mike , possibility of six wireless receivers , and you can chain those together . and so we could replace our wired mikes with wireless if we bought another base station and more wireless mikes . grad c: and we have five , we 're getting one more . and it 's , about nine hundred dollars for the base station , and then eight hundred per channel . professor e: so so the only beyond the mike the cost of the mikes the only thing is the base station that 's nine hundred dollars . , we should do it . grad c: ok , so i 'll look into how you daisy - chain them and then just go ahead and order them . phd b: i do n't quite understand how that works , . if so we 're not increasing the number of channels . ok . grad c: no , we 're just replacing the wired the two wired that are still working , grad c: along with a couple of the wired that are n't working , one of the wired that 's not working , with a wireless . professor e: but we ' ve had more problems with that . and that bypasses the whole jimbox thing and all that . and so , we seem to have , a reliable way of getting the data in , which is through the ra sony radio mikes , as long as we 're conscious about the batteries . that seems to be the key issue . professor e: , that 's the only thing with them . but the quality seems really good i heard from uw that they 're very close to getting their , setup purchased . they 're they 're buying something that you can just buy off the shelf . grad c: we should talk to them about it because i know that sri is also in the process of looking at , and so , what we should try to keep everyone on the same page with that . grad c: they got sa apparent , maybe this needs to be bleeped out ? i have no clue . professor e: probably we should n't probably we should n't talk about funding . but anyway there 's , other activities that are going on there and nist and uw . but but i thin that at least the message we can tell other people is that our experience is quite positive with the sony , radio - mikes . now the one thing that you have said that actually concerns me a little is you 're talking about changing the headsets meaning changing the connector , which means some hand - soldering , right ? grad c: so it 's so hand - soldering it , but i ' m not doing it . so , they charge grad c: you ' ve never seen my hand - soldering . but , a as i said they 're coming in . professor e: , we 'll see what it 's like . that tha that can be quite good . th - this , ok . good . so let 's go with that . professor e: , so , , dave is n't here but he was going to start working on some things with the digits . , so he 'll be interested in what 's going on with that . i was the decision last time was that the transcribers were going to be doing with the digits as ? has that started , or is that ? postdoc f: , it would be to use his interface and i was going to meet with him today about that . grad c: right , so , the decision was that jane did not want the transcribers to be doing any of the paperwork . so i did the all that last week . so all the forms are now on the computer . and , then i have a bunch of scripts that we 'll read those and let the transcribers use different tools . and want to talk to jane about how we transition to using those . postdoc f: so he has a set up that they it w it will be efficient for them to do that . professor e: so anyway we have at least one , user for the digits once they get done , which will be dave . grad c: so if he wanted to , just have a few to start with , he could . , and i also have a bunch of scripts that will , like , generate p - files and run recognition on them also . professor e: , he might be asking right . , is dave i if dave is on the list , if he 's invited to these meetings , if he knows . grad c: , we do n't have a active one but i 'll make he 's on the list . professor e: so , that 's why we 're not seeing him . , transcriptions , beyond the digits , where we are , and so on . and the and the recordings also , just where we are . postdoc f: , so , should we do n't wan wanna do the recording status first , or ? grad c: , we have about thirty - two hours as of , i a week and a half ago , so we probably now have about thirty - five hours . professor e: and and that 's how much of that is digits ? it 's that 's including digits , grad c: that 's including digits . i have n't separated it out so i have no clue how much of that is digits . professor e: so anyway there 's at least probably thirty hours , of there 's got to be more than thirty hour postdoc f: ok , and the transcribers h i , do n't have the exact numbers , but it would come to about eleven hours that are finished , transcribing from them right now . the next step is to that i ' m working on is to insure that the data are clean first , and then channelized . what by clean is that they 're spell - checked , that the mark - up is consistent all the way throughout , and also that we now incorporate these additional conventions that , liz requested in terms of , in terms of having a s a systematic handling of numbers , and acronyms which i had n't been specific about . , i they 'll say " ninety - two " . and , so how you could postdoc f: e exactly . so if you just say " nine two " , the there are many s ways that could have been expressed . an - and had them , a certain number of them did put the words down , but now we have a convention which also involves having it followed by , a gloss th and things . phd b: , one suggestion and you may already be doing this , but i ' ve noticed in the past that when i ' ve gone through transcriptions and in order to build lexicons and things , if you , just take all the transcriptions and separate them into words and then alphabetize them , a lot of times just scanning down that list you 'll find a lot of inconsistencies and mis postdoc f: you 're talking about the type token frequency listings , and i use those too . y you mean just on each line there 's a one word right ? it 's one token from the corpus . postdoc f: , those are e extremely efficient and i agree that 's a very good use of it . postdoc f: that 's a way that 's , the spell - check does that but in addition yes , that 's exactly the strategy i wanna do in terms of locating these things which are colloquial spoken forms which are n't in the lexicon . phd b: i in alphabetized lists , they 'll appear next to each other and so it makes it easier . postdoc f: i agree . that 's a very good that 's a very good , suggestion . and that was that 's my strategy for handling a lot of these things , in terms of things that need to be glossed . i did n't get to that point but so there are numbers , then there are acronyms , and then , there 's a he she wants the , actually a an explicit marker of what type of comment this is , so i curly b inside the curly brackets i ' m gon na put either " voc " for vocalized , like cough or like laugh or whatever , nonvoc for door - slam , and " gloss " for things that have to do with if they said a s a spoken form with this m this pronunciation error . i already had that convention postdoc f: but i have n't been asking these people to do it systematically cuz it most ha most efficiently handled by a filter . that was what i was always planing on . so that , you get a whole long list exactly what you 're saying , you get a whole list of things that say " curly bracket laugh curly bracket " , then y it 's you you risk less error if you handle it by a filter , than if you have this transcriber ch laboriously typing in a voc space , so man so many ways that error prone . postdoc f: so , i ' m going to convert that via a filter , into these tagged , subcategorized comments , and same thing with , we see you get a subset when you do what you 're saying , you end up with a s with , you 're collapsing across a frequency you just have the tokens and you can , have a filter which more efficiently makes those changes . but the numbers and acronyms have to be handled by hand , because , jus postdoc f: now timit 's clear and plp is clear but there are things that are not so known , in or have variant u uses like the numbers you can say " nine two " or you can say " ninety - two " , grad c: how are you doing the , acronyms so if i say pzm what would it appear on the transcript ? postdoc f: it would be separate the letters would be separated in space and potentially they 'll have a curly bracket thing afterwards e but i ' m not if that 's necessary , clarifying what it is , so gloss of whatever . i if that 's really necessary to do that . maybe it 's a thing to do because of it then indicating this is , a step away from i indicating that it really is intentional that those spaces are there , and indicating why they 're there to indicate that it 's the , enumerated , or i it 's not a good way of saying but it 's the specific way of stating these letters . postdoc f: and so anyway , the clean those are those things and then channelized is to then , get it into this multichannel format . and at that point then it 's ready for use by liz and don . but that 's been my top priority beyond getting it tanel channelized , the next step is to work on tightening up the boundaries of the time bins . and , thilo had a e a breakthrough with this last week in terms of getting the channel - based s speech - nonspeech segmentation , up and running and i have n't been able to use that yet cuz i ' m working s re this is my top priority get the data clean , and channelized . postdoc f: you see that 's part of the cleaning process . i spent actually i have a segment of ten minutes that was transcribed by two of our transcribers , postdoc f: and i went through it last night , it 's almost spooky how similar these are , word for word . and there are some differences in commas cuz commas i left them discretion at commas . and so because it 's not part of our st of our ne needed conventions . postdoc f: and , and so they 'll be a difference in commas , but it 's word - by - word the same , in huge patches of the data . and i have t ten minute stretch where show that . and and sometimes it turns out that one of these transcribers has a better ear for technical jargon , and the other one has a better ear for colloquial speech . so , the one i the colloquial speech person picked up " gobbledy - gook " . and the other one did n't . and on this side , this one 's picking up things like " neural nets " and the one that 's good on the sp o on th the vocabulary on the colloquial did n't . phd b: when for the person who missed " gobbledy - gook " what did they put ? postdoc f: it was an interesting approximation , put in parentheses , cuz i have this convention that , i if they 're not what it was , they put it in parentheses . so they tried to approximate it , but it was postdoc f: more of an attempt to it was very clear to her that these the a this was a sound these are the sounds , postdoc f: but she knew that she did n't know it . maybe it was a technical ter exactly . but she even though her technical perception is just really you know i ' ve i ' m tempted to ask her if she 's taken any courses in this area or if she 's taken cognitive science courses then cuz " neural nets " and she has some things that are " downsampled " , she got that right . and some of these are rather unexpected . postdoc f: but ch ten solid m ch s chunk of ten solid minutes where they both coded the same data . professor e: so let 's say roughly ten hours or so of it 's probably more than that but with of non - digits . postdoc f: it 'd be more than that because i my recollection is the minutes that da digits do n't take more than half a minute . per person . but the total set that i gave them is twelve hours of tape , postdoc f: but they have n't gotten to the end of that yet . so they 're still working some of them are two of them are still working on completing that . postdoc f: . they are . - . they 're very efficient . there 're some who have more hours that they devote to it than others . phd a: the channel u thing ? , it 's just , i ran the recognizer , the speech - nonspeech detector on different channels and , it 's just in this new multi - channel format and output , and gave one meeting to liz who wanted to try it for the recognizer as , the recognizer had problems with those long chunks of speech , which took too much memory or whatever , and so she will try that and i ' m working on it . so , i hope phd a: no . , i mmm , use some different features but not the basic thing is this hmm base . professor e: what are some of the other features ? besides the energy ? you said you 're trying some different features , . phd a: mmm , use our loudness - based things now as they before there were they were some in the log domain and i changed this to the phd a: to no , i changed this to the loudness thingy with the how do you call it ? i ' m not . with the , phd a: i ' m not about the term . , i 'll look it up . and say it to you . phd a: , ok , and that 's that 's the thing . , and i tried t to normalize the features , there 's loudness and modified loudness , within one channel , because they 're , to be able to distinguish between foreground and background speech . and it works quite . but , not always . professor e: , let 's see . the were were you done with the transcription part ? so i the next thing is this bleep editing . grad c: so the the idea is that we need to have we need to provide the transcripts to every participant of every meeting to give them an opportunity to bleep out sections they do n't want . so i ' ve written a bunch of tools that will generate web pages , with the transcription in it so that they can click on them and piece pieces and they can scroll through and read them , and then they can check on each one if they want it excluded . and then , it 's a form , html form , so they can submit it and it will end up sending me email with the times that they want excluded . and so , some of the questions on this is what do we do about the privacy issue . and so about this a little bit and the best way to do it is every participant will have a password , a single password . each person will have a single password , user name and password . and then each meeting , we 'll only allow the participants who were at that meeting to look at it . and that way each person only has to remember one password . professor e: i ca n't help but wonder if this is maybe a little more elaborate than is needed . if people have , for me i would actually want to have some pieces of paper that had the transcription and i would flip through it . and then if it was ok , i 'd say " it 's ok " . and , i it depends how this really ends up working out , but i my thought was that the occasion of somebody wondering whether something was ok or not and needing to listen to it was gon na be extremely rare . grad c: right , so th the fact that you could listen to it over the web is a minor thing that i had already done for other reasons . and so that 's a minor part of it , wanted some web interface so that people you did n't actually have to send everyone the text . so m what my intention to do is that as the transcripts become ready , i would take them , and generate the web pages and send email to every participant or contact them using the contact method they wanted , and just , tell them , " here 's the web page " , " you need a password " . so th question number one is how do we distribute the passwords , and question number two is how else do we wanna provide this information if they want it . professor e: that 's what i was saying is that if you just say " here is a here is " this maybe it sounds paleolithic but thought if you handed them some sheets of paper , that said , " here 's what was said in this transcription is it ok with you ? and if it is , here 's this other sheet of paper that you sign that says that it 's ok " . grad c: that there are a subset of people who will want printouts that we can certainly provide . grad c: but certainly i would n't want a printout . these are big , and i would much rather be ha be able to just sit and leaf through it . grad c: i certainly read books by hand . but for something like this , it 's easier to do it on the web . grad c: cuz you 're gon na get , if i ' m in a bunch of meetings and i do n't wanna get a stack of these . i wanna just be able to go to the web site and visit it as i want . professor e: going to a web site is easy , but flipping through a hundred pounds a hundred pages of is not easy on the web . grad c: , i do n't think it 's that much harder than , paper . so . postdoc f: i have one question . so are you thinking that the person would have a transcript and go strictly from the transcript ? because i do think that there 's a benefit to being able to hear the tone of voice and the professor e: so here 's the way i was imagining it , and maybe i ' m wrong , but the way i imagined it was that , the largest set of people is gon na go " , i did n't say anything funny in that meeting just go ahead , where 's the release ? " and then there 'll be a subset of people , ok there 's think of who it is we ' ve been recording mostly . ok there 'll be a subset of people , who , will say " , i really would like to see that . " and for them , the easiest way to flip through , if it 's a really large document , unless you 're searching . searching , should be electronic , but if you 're not so if you provide some search mechanism you go to every place they said something like that , but see then we 're getting more elaborate with this thing . if you do n't have search mechanisms you just have this really , really long document , whenever i ' ve had a really , really long document that it was sitting on the web , i ' ve always ended up printing it out . , so it 's , you 're not necessarily gon na be sitting at the desk all the time , you wanna figure you have a train ride , and there 's all these situations where i , this is how i was imagining it , anyway . and then i figured , that out of that group , there would be a subset who would go " i ' m really not about this section here , " and then that group would need it s it seems like i if i ' m right in that , it seems like you 're setting it up for the most infrequent case , rather than for the most frequent case . so that , now we have to worry about privacy , grad c: for the most frequent case they just say " it 's ok " and then they 're done . and almost everyone would rather do that by email than any other method . grad c: , cuz you do n't have to visit the web page if you do n't want to . professor e: , i we do n't need their signature . i an email ok is alright . grad c: that was another thing i had assumed that we did n't need their signature , that it that an email approval was sufficient . but i do n't actually know . phd b: are are people going to be allowed to bleep out sections of a meeting where they were n't speaking ? grad c: yes . if someone feels strongly enough about it , then i they should be allowed to do that . grad c: , the only other choice is that the person would say " no , do n't distribute this meeting " , and i would rather they were able to edit out other people then just say " do n't distribute it " . professor e: but th what they signed in the consent form , was something that said you can use my voice . grad c: , but if someone is having a conversation , and you only bleep out one side of it , that 's not sufficient . grad c: if i say " we were having a conversation , and i consider that conversation private , " and i consider that your side of it is enough for other people to infer , i wanna be able to bleep out your side . postdoc f: the i agree that the consent forms were , i cons agree with what adam 's saying , that , the consent form did leave open this possibility that they could edit things which they found offensive whe whether they said them or did n't say them . postdoc f: and the other thing is from the standpoint of the l i ' m not a law lawyer , but it strikes me that , we would n't want someone to say " yes , i was a little concerned about it but it was too hard to access " . so it 's to have this facility to listen to it . now in terms of like editing it by hand , it 's i some people would find that easier to specify the bleep part by having a document they edited . but but it seems to me that sometimes , i if a person had a bad day , and they had a tone in their voice that they did n't really like , it 's to be able to listen to it and be that was ok . professor e: it 's also a mixture of people , some people are r do their work primarily by sitting at the computer , flipping around the web , and others do not . others would consider it this a set of skills that they would have to gain . ? professor e: in the meetings so far , . but we 're trying to expand this , so i actually think that paper is the more universal thing . grad c: and that , but if they want to print it out that 's alright . everyone in the meeting can access the web . professor e: no , we have to be able to print it out . it 's not just if they want to print it out . grad c: ok , so does that mean that i ca n't use email ? or what ? grad c: i do n't think we can send the text through email because of the privacy issues . grad c: . so giving them , you think a web site to say , " if you wanna print it out here it is " , is not sufficient ? professor e: certainly for everybody who 's been in the meetings so far it would be sufficient . grad c: , i ' m just thinking for people that 's not sufficient for , what the only sufficient thing would be for me to walk up to them and hand it to them . phd a: just put the button on the web page which say " send me the scripts " . phd b: what when you display it on the web page , what are you showing them ? utterances , or ? and so can they bleep within an utterance ? grad c: and that was just convenience for my sake , that it 's , it would end up being fairly difficult to edit the transcripts if we would do it at the sub - utterance level . because this way just delete an entire line out of a transcript file rather than have to do it by hand . professor e: there 's another aspect to this which maybe is part of why this is bothering me . , you 're really trying very hard to make this as convenient as possible for people to do this . grad c: that 's why i did the web form , because for me that would be my most convenient . professor e: that 's the bad idea . see because you 're gon you 're really . you 're gon na end up with all these little patchy things , whereas really what we want to do is have the bias towards letting it go . because nob you know it there was a one or twi once or twice , in the re in the meetings we ' ve heard , where somebody said something that they might be embarrassed by , but overall people are talking about technical topics . nobody 's gon na get hurt . nobody 's being l libeled . , this is this we 're covering we 're playing the lawyer 's game , and we 're playing we 're looking for the extreme case . if we really orient it towards that extreme case , make it really easy , we 're gon na end up encouraging a headache . that that 's i ' m psyching myself out here , i ' m trying to grad c: i do n't see having a few phrases here and there in a meeting being that mu much of a headache , bleeped out . phd b: what morgan 's saying is the easier it is , the more is gon na be bleeped . professor e: but i and and it really depends on what research you 're doing . some researchers who are gon na be working with this corpus years from now are really gon na be cursing the fact that there 's a bunch of in there that 's missing from the dialogue . , it depends on the research they 're doing , but it might be , it might be really a pain . and , where it 's really gon na hurt somebody , in some way the one who said it or someone who is being spoken about , we definitely want to allow the option of it being bleeped out . but i really think we wanna make it the rare incidence . and and , i am just a little worried about making it so easy for people to do , and so much fun ! that they 're gon na go through and bleep out . professor e: and they can bleep out they do n't like too , right from somebody else , as you say , so " i did n't like what he said . " grad c: i do n't see any way of avoiding that . , we have to provi we have promised that we would provide them the transcript and that they can remove parts that they do n't like . so that the professor e: you - you ' ve talked me into that , but think that we should make it harder to do . grad c: the problem is if it 's harder for them it 's also harder for me . whereas this web interface , get email , it 's all formatted , it 's all ready to go and just insert it . professor e: so maybe you do n't give them access to the web interface unless they really need it . so so professor e: i ' m so so maybe this is a s a way out of it . you ' ve provided something that 's useful for you to do handle , and useful for someone else if they need it . but the issue of privacy and ease and should be that , they get access to this if they really need it . phd b: so you 're saying the sequence would be more like first adam goes to the contact lists , contacts them via whatever their preferred method is , to see if they want to review the meeting . and then if they do n't , you 're done . if they do , then he provides them access to the web site . grad c: , to some extent i have to do that anyway because as i said we have to distribute passwords . professor e: y but you do n't necessarily have to distribute passwords is what i ' m saying . grad c: what i ' m saying is that i ca n't just email them the password because that 's not secure . so they have to call me and ask . professor e: no , no . but you are n't necessarily giving them but we do n't even necessarily need to end up distributing passwords . grad c: , we do because of privacy . we ca n't just make it openly available on the web . professor e: you 're missing the point . we 're trying i we 're trying to make it less of an obvious just l fall off a log , to do this . professor e: so th so what i would see , is that first you contact them and ask them if they would like to review it for to check for the not just for fun , ok ? but to check this for things that they 're worried about having said or if they 're willing to just send an approval of it , at from their memory . and , and we should think carefully actually we should review go through how that 's worded , then , if someone wants to review it , and i know you do n't like this , but i ' m offering this as a suggestion , is that we then give them a print out . and then if they say that " i have a potential problem with these things , " then , you say " ok you might wanna hear this in context to s think if you need that , " you issue them a password , i in the grad c: but the problem with what you 're suggesting is it 's not just inconvenient for them , it 's inconvenient for me . because that means multiple contacts every time for every single meeting every time anyone wants anything . i would much prefer to have all be automatic , they visit the web site if they want to . they do n't have to . grad c: so you 're thinking people are going to arbitrarily start bleeping and do n't think that 's gon na happen . postdoc f: i ' m also concerned about the spirit of the informed consent thing . cuz if they feel that , it 's i th , if it turns out that something gets published in this corpus that someone really should have eliminated and did n't detect , then it could have been because of their own negligence that they did n't pursue that next level and get the password and do that , but they might be able to argue " it was cumbersome , and i was busy and it was gon na take me too much time to trace it down " . so it could that the burden would come back onto us . so i ' m a little bit worried about , making it harder for them , from the legal standpoint . professor e: you can go too far in that direction , and you need to find somewhere between , grad c: it seems to me that sending them email , saying " if you have an o - ok reply to this email and say ok , grad c: if you have a problem with it contact me and i 'll give you a password " , seems like is a perfectly , reasonable compromise . and if they want a printout they can print it out themselves . postdoc f: or we could print it up for them , we could offer that but there 's , another aspect to that and that is that in the informed consent form , my impression is that they that we offered them at the very least that they definitely would have access to the transcript . and and i ha i that there 's a chance of really skipping that stage . that you were maybe i misinterpreted what you said but it 's professor e: . , i do n't wanna fool them , meant that e every ev any time you say anything to anyone there is a bias that is presented , grad c: if you agree to participate you 'll have the opportunity to have anything ex anything excised , which you would prefer not to have included in the data set . grad c: once a transcript is available we will ask your permission to include the data in the corpus for the r larger research community . bmr014edialogueact1027 224867 224884 e professor b -1 0 yeah . bmr014cdialogueact1029 225429 225805 c grad s +1 3 there again you will be allowed to indicate any sections that you 'd prefer to have excised from the database , bmr014cdialogueact1030 225837 226124 c grad s +1 3 and they will m be removed both from the transcript and the recording . grad c: , it the one question is definitely clear with anything as opposed to just what you said . postdoc f: tha - that 's true . that 's more severe , but the next one says the transcript will be around . postdoc f: and it does n't really say we 'll send it to you , or wi it 'll be available for you on the web , or anything . postdoc f: at least it more often . it means also we do n't have to g to give it to them . like morgan was saying they professor e: , ok , so . wh i have an idea that may be sat may satisfy both you and me in this which is , it 's a it we just go over carefully how these notes to people are worded . so want it to be worded in such a way where it gives the strong impre it gives very , nothing hidden , v very strongly the bias that we would really like to use all of these data . that that we really would rather it was n't a patchwork of things tossed out , that it would be better for , our , field if that is the case . but if you really think something is gon na and i do n't think there 's anything in the legal aspects that is hurt by our expressing that bias . professor e: and then my concern about which you might be right , it may be it was just paranoia on my part , but people just see i ' m @ worried about this interface so much fun that people start bleeping out just as just because they can . grad c: it 's just a check box next to the text , it 's not any fun . grad c: , but they wo n't get that feedback . all no because it does n't automatically bleep it at the time . grad c: and then at some point i 'll incorporate them all and put bleeps . i do n't wanna have t ha do that yet until we actually release the data because , then we have to have two copies of every meeting and we 're already short on disk space . so i wanna keep the times until we actually wanna release the data and then we bleep it . professor e: alright , so if we have if i again let 's , circulate the wording on each of these things and get it right , grad c: since you seem to feel heart , strongest about it , would you like to do the first pass ? postdoc f: al - also it ther there is this other question , the legal question that adam 's raised , about whether we need a concrete signature , or email c i suffices or whatever and i how that works . i there 's something down there about " if you agree to " grad c: because thi th they 're signing here that they 're agreeing to the paragraph which says " you 'll be given an opportunity . " and so i do n't think they need another signature . professor e: and and furthermore i it 's now fairly routine in a lot of arrangements that i do with people on contracts and that if it 's that thing where you 're saying " ok i agree , we want eighty hours of this person at such - and - such amount , and i agree that 's ok , " if it 's a follow up to some other agreement where there was a signature it 's often done in email now so it 's ok . grad c: so i probably should at the minimum , think about how to present it in a printed form . i ' m not really what 's best with that . the problem is a lot of them are really short , and so i do n't necessarily wanna do one per line . but i how else to do it . postdoc f: i s i also have this it 's you have it , viewab her hearable on the web for those who might wonder about , the non nonverbal side , i agree that our bias should be as expressed here , and but it 's that a person could check . cuz sometimes you the words on a on the page , come out soun sounding different in terms of the social dynamics if they hear it . and i realize we should n't emphasize that people , should n't borrow trouble . what it comes down to but grad c: actually my opinion probably is that the only time someone will need to listen to it is if the transcript is not good . , if there are lots of mumbles and parentheses and things like that . postdoc f: , or what if there was an error in the transcript that did n't get detected and there was a whole i segment a against some personal i th postdoc f: or or even there was a line about how " - mmm bill gates duh - duh . " but it was all the words were all visible , but they did n't end up i some there was a slip in the transcript . grad c: they 're gon na hate this meeting . actually liz will like it . , but . postdoc f: so i . , i we 're assuming that the transcript is a close enough approximation and that my double checking will be so close to perfect that it that nothing will slip by . professor e: but it the some something might sometime , and they if it 's something that they said , they might i , you might be very accurate in putting down what they actually said , but , when they hear it , themselves , they may hear something different because they meant . professor e: no , i ' m serious . so the so i the so we might get some feedback from people that such - and - such was , not really what i said . grad c: just for corrections . so , in terms of password distribution , phone is really the only way to do it , phone and in person . or mail , physical mail . grad c: any sub - wor , ok . you could do it with pgp or things like that but it 's too complex . postdoc f: realized something , which is of e th this question about the possible mismatch of i , and actually also the lawyer saying that , we should n't really have them have the people believing that they will be cleared by our checks . ? . so it 's like i in a way it 's to have the responsibility still on them to listen to the tape and hear the transcript , to have that be the professor e: , but you ca n't dep , most people will not wanna take the time to do that , though . postdoc f: , ok , fair enough . and they 're s they 're absorbing the responsibility themselves . professor e: but if you were at a meeting , and you do n't think , at least , that you said anything funny and the meeting was about , some funny thing about semantics , or postdoc f: it is true that tec that the content is technical , i and so i and we 're not having these discussions which , when i listen to these things , i do n't find things that are questionable , in other people 's speech or in my own . professor e: done . actually , i was gon na di - did you have anything n that 's going on , or grad d: not really . no . , my project is going along but , i ' m really just here to fill the project the overall progress . i do n't really have anything specific to talk about . professor e: that 's fine . did n't wanna go by you , if you had something . professor e: nah . transcribers , he was rattling the b marbles in his brain back and forth just then this grad c: , we should count out how many more digits to forms do we have back there ? grad c: that 's what . i f i was going through them all and i found actually a lot filed in with them , that were blanks , that no one had actually read . and so we still have more than we did . so , we have a few more digits before we 're done .
the berkeley meeting recorder group discussed recording equipment issues , including the purchase of two additional headsets and the prospect of getting a new base station and a set of wireless microphones to replace those wired microphones currently in use. speaker fe008 presented the current status on transcriptions , and explained procedures for cleaning up transcripts and ensuring they conform with set conventions. speaker mn014 briefly described his efforts to normalize loudness levels across speech channels to distinguish between foreground and background speech. finally , the group discussed legal and procedural issues concerning the provision of transcripts to meeting participants for 'bleeping out' any sections of speech they want excluded from the meeting recorder database. the consent form issued to subjects prior to meetings will be revised to make more explicit details concerning access to transcripts and the ability of subjects to mark sections of meetings for exclusion from the database. the group decided to replace wired microphones with a wireless setup , i.e . a new base station and set of wireless microphones. efforts will be made to ensure that recording conventions are consistent across icsi , the university of washington , and sri. some of the meeting recordings contain spikes. it was surmised that such disturbances are probably due to the connectors attached to a set of wired microphones in use. with respect to editing bleeps , should participants be allowed to edit out others' speech? it was suggested that making transcripts available to all of the subjects involved might make it too easy for them to edit out sections of meetings , whereas the bias should be to ensure that editing bleeps occur only rarely in the database. two additional wireless headsets will soon be made available. approximately 32-35 hours of meeting data have been recorded , roughly 30 hours of which comprise non-digits recordings. the transcribers have begun performing digit extraction ( see abstract for bmr013 ) and should be finished within a few days. approximately 11 hours of speech have been transcribed. efforts by speaker fe008 are in progress to ensure that transcripts are clean ( i.e . spell checked ) , channelized , and conform to set conventions regarding the coding of numbers , acronyms , and explicit comments ( e.g . door slams , coughs , and laughter ). subsequent efforts by speaker fe008 will be to tighten up boundaries on the time bins. inter-annotator agreement was reported to be very good. speaker mn014's multi-channel speech/non-speech segmenter is in use. the sri recognizer will be fed with pre-segmented output to eliminate difficulties with processing overly long speech segments. efforts by speaker mn014 to normalize loudness and distinguish between foreground and background speech have been largely successful. the group discussed procedural issues concerning the provision of transcripts to meeting participants for 'bleeping out' any sections of speech they want excluded from the meeting recorder database.
###dialogue: grad c: yu the date 's written in there , . and actually if everyone could cross out the r - nine next to " session " , and write mr eleven . grad c: and let 's remember also to make that one 's gets marked as unread , unused . grad c: there 's lots of clicking i ' m as i ' m trying to get this to work correctly . grad c: i wanna talk a little bit about getting how we 're gon na to get people to edit bleeps , parts of the meeting that they do n't want to include . what i ' ve done so far , and i wanna get some opinions on , how to finish it up . postdoc f: i wanna ask about , some aud audio monitoring on some of the equipment . in particular , the , that 's just what i wanna ask . postdoc f: ba - based on some of the tran i in listening to some of these meetings that have already been recorded there are sometimes big spikes on particular things , and in pact this one i ' m talking on is one of the ones that showed up in one of the meetings , grad c: , it could be a number of things . it could be touching and fiddling , and the other thing is that it could the fact that it 's on a wired mike is suspicious . it might be a connector . postdoc f: , ok . maybe then we do n't really have to talk about that as an phd b: you could try an experiment and say " ok , i ' m about to test for spikes " , phd b: and then wiggle the thing there , and then go and when they go to transcribe it , it could , ask them to come and get you . professor e: , were this a professional audio recording , what we would do what you would do is in testing it is , you would actually do all this wiggling and make that things are not giving that performance . and if they are , then they ca n't be used . let 's see . i would like to have a discussion about where we are on , recording , transcription , where we are on the corpus . professor e: and then , the other thing which i would like to talk about which is a real meta - quest , deal is , agendas . so maybe i 'll start with that actually . , . andreas brought up the fact that he would kinda like to know , if possible , what we were gon na be talking about because he 's peripherally involved to this point , and if there 's gon na be a topic about discussion about something that he strongly cares about then he would come and and part of his motivation with this is that he 's trying to help us out , in the because of the fact that the meetings are tending to become reasonably large now on days when everybody shows up and so , he figures he could help that out by not showing professor e: and i ' m help out his own time . by not showing up if it 's a meeting that he 's so , in order i 'd that this is a wish on his part . it 's actually gon na be hard because it seems like a lot of times things come up that are unanticipated and but , we could try anyway , do another try at coming up with the agenda , at some point before the meeting , say the day before . grad c: maybe it would be a good idea for one of us to like on wednesday , or tuesday send out a reminder for people to send in agenda items . professor e: you you wanna volunteer to do that ? alright so we 'll send out agenda request . professor e: , i have to tell you for the admin meeting that we have , lila does that every time before an admin meeting . and , she ends up getting the agenda requests , ten minutes before the meeting . but but but . but we can try . maybe it 'll work . postdoc f: i ' m wondering if he were to just , specify particular topics , maybe we 'd be able to meet that request of his a little more . phd b: i would also that as we get more into processing the data and things like that there 'll be more things of interest to him . professor e: actually it this this maybe brings up another topic which is so we 're done with that topic . the other topic i was thinking of was the sta status on microphones and channels , and all that . grad c: ok . , the new microphones , the two new ones are in . and they are being assembled as we speak , i hope . and i did n't bring my car today so i ' m gon na pick them up tomorrow . , and then the other question i was thinking about is , a couple things . first of all , if the other headsets are a lot more comfortable , we should probably just go ahead and get them . so we 'll have to evaluate that when they come in , and get people 's opinions on what they think of them . , then the other question i had is maybe we should get another wireless . another wireless setup . it 's expensive , but it does seem to be better than the wired . grad c: , i ' m pretty that you can daisy - chain them together so what we would do is replace the wired mikes with wireless . so we currently have one base station with six wireless mike , possibility of six wireless receivers , and you can chain those together . and so we could replace our wired mikes with wireless if we bought another base station and more wireless mikes . grad c: and we have five , we 're getting one more . and it 's , about nine hundred dollars for the base station , and then eight hundred per channel . professor e: so so the only beyond the mike the cost of the mikes the only thing is the base station that 's nine hundred dollars . , we should do it . grad c: ok , so i 'll look into how you daisy - chain them and then just go ahead and order them . phd b: i do n't quite understand how that works , . if so we 're not increasing the number of channels . ok . grad c: no , we 're just replacing the wired the two wired that are still working , grad c: along with a couple of the wired that are n't working , one of the wired that 's not working , with a wireless . professor e: but we ' ve had more problems with that . and that bypasses the whole jimbox thing and all that . and so , we seem to have , a reliable way of getting the data in , which is through the ra sony radio mikes , as long as we 're conscious about the batteries . that seems to be the key issue . professor e: , that 's the only thing with them . but the quality seems really good i heard from uw that they 're very close to getting their , setup purchased . they 're they 're buying something that you can just buy off the shelf . grad c: we should talk to them about it because i know that sri is also in the process of looking at , and so , what we should try to keep everyone on the same page with that . grad c: they got sa apparent , maybe this needs to be bleeped out ? i have no clue . professor e: probably we should n't probably we should n't talk about funding . but anyway there 's , other activities that are going on there and nist and uw . but but i thin that at least the message we can tell other people is that our experience is quite positive with the sony , radio - mikes . now the one thing that you have said that actually concerns me a little is you 're talking about changing the headsets meaning changing the connector , which means some hand - soldering , right ? grad c: so it 's so hand - soldering it , but i ' m not doing it . so , they charge grad c: you ' ve never seen my hand - soldering . but , a as i said they 're coming in . professor e: , we 'll see what it 's like . that tha that can be quite good . th - this , ok . good . so let 's go with that . professor e: , so , , dave is n't here but he was going to start working on some things with the digits . , so he 'll be interested in what 's going on with that . i was the decision last time was that the transcribers were going to be doing with the digits as ? has that started , or is that ? postdoc f: , it would be to use his interface and i was going to meet with him today about that . grad c: right , so , the decision was that jane did not want the transcribers to be doing any of the paperwork . so i did the all that last week . so all the forms are now on the computer . and , then i have a bunch of scripts that we 'll read those and let the transcribers use different tools . and want to talk to jane about how we transition to using those . postdoc f: so he has a set up that they it w it will be efficient for them to do that . professor e: so anyway we have at least one , user for the digits once they get done , which will be dave . grad c: so if he wanted to , just have a few to start with , he could . , and i also have a bunch of scripts that will , like , generate p - files and run recognition on them also . professor e: , he might be asking right . , is dave i if dave is on the list , if he 's invited to these meetings , if he knows . grad c: , we do n't have a active one but i 'll make he 's on the list . professor e: so , that 's why we 're not seeing him . , transcriptions , beyond the digits , where we are , and so on . and the and the recordings also , just where we are . postdoc f: , so , should we do n't wan wanna do the recording status first , or ? grad c: , we have about thirty - two hours as of , i a week and a half ago , so we probably now have about thirty - five hours . professor e: and and that 's how much of that is digits ? it 's that 's including digits , grad c: that 's including digits . i have n't separated it out so i have no clue how much of that is digits . professor e: so anyway there 's at least probably thirty hours , of there 's got to be more than thirty hour postdoc f: ok , and the transcribers h i , do n't have the exact numbers , but it would come to about eleven hours that are finished , transcribing from them right now . the next step is to that i ' m working on is to insure that the data are clean first , and then channelized . what by clean is that they 're spell - checked , that the mark - up is consistent all the way throughout , and also that we now incorporate these additional conventions that , liz requested in terms of , in terms of having a s a systematic handling of numbers , and acronyms which i had n't been specific about . , i they 'll say " ninety - two " . and , so how you could postdoc f: e exactly . so if you just say " nine two " , the there are many s ways that could have been expressed . an - and had them , a certain number of them did put the words down , but now we have a convention which also involves having it followed by , a gloss th and things . phd b: , one suggestion and you may already be doing this , but i ' ve noticed in the past that when i ' ve gone through transcriptions and in order to build lexicons and things , if you , just take all the transcriptions and separate them into words and then alphabetize them , a lot of times just scanning down that list you 'll find a lot of inconsistencies and mis postdoc f: you 're talking about the type token frequency listings , and i use those too . y you mean just on each line there 's a one word right ? it 's one token from the corpus . postdoc f: , those are e extremely efficient and i agree that 's a very good use of it . postdoc f: that 's a way that 's , the spell - check does that but in addition yes , that 's exactly the strategy i wanna do in terms of locating these things which are colloquial spoken forms which are n't in the lexicon . phd b: i in alphabetized lists , they 'll appear next to each other and so it makes it easier . postdoc f: i agree . that 's a very good that 's a very good , suggestion . and that was that 's my strategy for handling a lot of these things , in terms of things that need to be glossed . i did n't get to that point but so there are numbers , then there are acronyms , and then , there 's a he she wants the , actually a an explicit marker of what type of comment this is , so i curly b inside the curly brackets i ' m gon na put either " voc " for vocalized , like cough or like laugh or whatever , nonvoc for door - slam , and " gloss " for things that have to do with if they said a s a spoken form with this m this pronunciation error . i already had that convention postdoc f: but i have n't been asking these people to do it systematically cuz it most ha most efficiently handled by a filter . that was what i was always planing on . so that , you get a whole long list exactly what you 're saying , you get a whole list of things that say " curly bracket laugh curly bracket " , then y it 's you you risk less error if you handle it by a filter , than if you have this transcriber ch laboriously typing in a voc space , so man so many ways that error prone . postdoc f: so , i ' m going to convert that via a filter , into these tagged , subcategorized comments , and same thing with , we see you get a subset when you do what you 're saying , you end up with a s with , you 're collapsing across a frequency you just have the tokens and you can , have a filter which more efficiently makes those changes . but the numbers and acronyms have to be handled by hand , because , jus postdoc f: now timit 's clear and plp is clear but there are things that are not so known , in or have variant u uses like the numbers you can say " nine two " or you can say " ninety - two " , grad c: how are you doing the , acronyms so if i say pzm what would it appear on the transcript ? postdoc f: it would be separate the letters would be separated in space and potentially they 'll have a curly bracket thing afterwards e but i ' m not if that 's necessary , clarifying what it is , so gloss of whatever . i if that 's really necessary to do that . maybe it 's a thing to do because of it then indicating this is , a step away from i indicating that it really is intentional that those spaces are there , and indicating why they 're there to indicate that it 's the , enumerated , or i it 's not a good way of saying but it 's the specific way of stating these letters . postdoc f: and so anyway , the clean those are those things and then channelized is to then , get it into this multichannel format . and at that point then it 's ready for use by liz and don . but that 's been my top priority beyond getting it tanel channelized , the next step is to work on tightening up the boundaries of the time bins . and , thilo had a e a breakthrough with this last week in terms of getting the channel - based s speech - nonspeech segmentation , up and running and i have n't been able to use that yet cuz i ' m working s re this is my top priority get the data clean , and channelized . postdoc f: you see that 's part of the cleaning process . i spent actually i have a segment of ten minutes that was transcribed by two of our transcribers , postdoc f: and i went through it last night , it 's almost spooky how similar these are , word for word . and there are some differences in commas cuz commas i left them discretion at commas . and so because it 's not part of our st of our ne needed conventions . postdoc f: and , and so they 'll be a difference in commas , but it 's word - by - word the same , in huge patches of the data . and i have t ten minute stretch where show that . and and sometimes it turns out that one of these transcribers has a better ear for technical jargon , and the other one has a better ear for colloquial speech . so , the one i the colloquial speech person picked up " gobbledy - gook " . and the other one did n't . and on this side , this one 's picking up things like " neural nets " and the one that 's good on the sp o on th the vocabulary on the colloquial did n't . phd b: when for the person who missed " gobbledy - gook " what did they put ? postdoc f: it was an interesting approximation , put in parentheses , cuz i have this convention that , i if they 're not what it was , they put it in parentheses . so they tried to approximate it , but it was postdoc f: more of an attempt to it was very clear to her that these the a this was a sound these are the sounds , postdoc f: but she knew that she did n't know it . maybe it was a technical ter exactly . but she even though her technical perception is just really you know i ' ve i ' m tempted to ask her if she 's taken any courses in this area or if she 's taken cognitive science courses then cuz " neural nets " and she has some things that are " downsampled " , she got that right . and some of these are rather unexpected . postdoc f: but ch ten solid m ch s chunk of ten solid minutes where they both coded the same data . professor e: so let 's say roughly ten hours or so of it 's probably more than that but with of non - digits . postdoc f: it 'd be more than that because i my recollection is the minutes that da digits do n't take more than half a minute . per person . but the total set that i gave them is twelve hours of tape , postdoc f: but they have n't gotten to the end of that yet . so they 're still working some of them are two of them are still working on completing that . postdoc f: . they are . - . they 're very efficient . there 're some who have more hours that they devote to it than others . phd a: the channel u thing ? , it 's just , i ran the recognizer , the speech - nonspeech detector on different channels and , it 's just in this new multi - channel format and output , and gave one meeting to liz who wanted to try it for the recognizer as , the recognizer had problems with those long chunks of speech , which took too much memory or whatever , and so she will try that and i ' m working on it . so , i hope phd a: no . , i mmm , use some different features but not the basic thing is this hmm base . professor e: what are some of the other features ? besides the energy ? you said you 're trying some different features , . phd a: mmm , use our loudness - based things now as they before there were they were some in the log domain and i changed this to the phd a: to no , i changed this to the loudness thingy with the how do you call it ? i ' m not . with the , phd a: i ' m not about the term . , i 'll look it up . and say it to you . phd a: , ok , and that 's that 's the thing . , and i tried t to normalize the features , there 's loudness and modified loudness , within one channel , because they 're , to be able to distinguish between foreground and background speech . and it works quite . but , not always . professor e: , let 's see . the were were you done with the transcription part ? so i the next thing is this bleep editing . grad c: so the the idea is that we need to have we need to provide the transcripts to every participant of every meeting to give them an opportunity to bleep out sections they do n't want . so i ' ve written a bunch of tools that will generate web pages , with the transcription in it so that they can click on them and piece pieces and they can scroll through and read them , and then they can check on each one if they want it excluded . and then , it 's a form , html form , so they can submit it and it will end up sending me email with the times that they want excluded . and so , some of the questions on this is what do we do about the privacy issue . and so about this a little bit and the best way to do it is every participant will have a password , a single password . each person will have a single password , user name and password . and then each meeting , we 'll only allow the participants who were at that meeting to look at it . and that way each person only has to remember one password . professor e: i ca n't help but wonder if this is maybe a little more elaborate than is needed . if people have , for me i would actually want to have some pieces of paper that had the transcription and i would flip through it . and then if it was ok , i 'd say " it 's ok " . and , i it depends how this really ends up working out , but i my thought was that the occasion of somebody wondering whether something was ok or not and needing to listen to it was gon na be extremely rare . grad c: right , so th the fact that you could listen to it over the web is a minor thing that i had already done for other reasons . and so that 's a minor part of it , wanted some web interface so that people you did n't actually have to send everyone the text . so m what my intention to do is that as the transcripts become ready , i would take them , and generate the web pages and send email to every participant or contact them using the contact method they wanted , and just , tell them , " here 's the web page " , " you need a password " . so th question number one is how do we distribute the passwords , and question number two is how else do we wanna provide this information if they want it . professor e: that 's what i was saying is that if you just say " here is a here is " this maybe it sounds paleolithic but thought if you handed them some sheets of paper , that said , " here 's what was said in this transcription is it ok with you ? and if it is , here 's this other sheet of paper that you sign that says that it 's ok " . grad c: that there are a subset of people who will want printouts that we can certainly provide . grad c: but certainly i would n't want a printout . these are big , and i would much rather be ha be able to just sit and leaf through it . grad c: i certainly read books by hand . but for something like this , it 's easier to do it on the web . grad c: cuz you 're gon na get , if i ' m in a bunch of meetings and i do n't wanna get a stack of these . i wanna just be able to go to the web site and visit it as i want . professor e: going to a web site is easy , but flipping through a hundred pounds a hundred pages of is not easy on the web . grad c: , i do n't think it 's that much harder than , paper . so . postdoc f: i have one question . so are you thinking that the person would have a transcript and go strictly from the transcript ? because i do think that there 's a benefit to being able to hear the tone of voice and the professor e: so here 's the way i was imagining it , and maybe i ' m wrong , but the way i imagined it was that , the largest set of people is gon na go " , i did n't say anything funny in that meeting just go ahead , where 's the release ? " and then there 'll be a subset of people , ok there 's think of who it is we ' ve been recording mostly . ok there 'll be a subset of people , who , will say " , i really would like to see that . " and for them , the easiest way to flip through , if it 's a really large document , unless you 're searching . searching , should be electronic , but if you 're not so if you provide some search mechanism you go to every place they said something like that , but see then we 're getting more elaborate with this thing . if you do n't have search mechanisms you just have this really , really long document , whenever i ' ve had a really , really long document that it was sitting on the web , i ' ve always ended up printing it out . , so it 's , you 're not necessarily gon na be sitting at the desk all the time , you wanna figure you have a train ride , and there 's all these situations where i , this is how i was imagining it , anyway . and then i figured , that out of that group , there would be a subset who would go " i ' m really not about this section here , " and then that group would need it s it seems like i if i ' m right in that , it seems like you 're setting it up for the most infrequent case , rather than for the most frequent case . so that , now we have to worry about privacy , grad c: for the most frequent case they just say " it 's ok " and then they 're done . and almost everyone would rather do that by email than any other method . grad c: , cuz you do n't have to visit the web page if you do n't want to . professor e: , i we do n't need their signature . i an email ok is alright . grad c: that was another thing i had assumed that we did n't need their signature , that it that an email approval was sufficient . but i do n't actually know . phd b: are are people going to be allowed to bleep out sections of a meeting where they were n't speaking ? grad c: yes . if someone feels strongly enough about it , then i they should be allowed to do that . grad c: , the only other choice is that the person would say " no , do n't distribute this meeting " , and i would rather they were able to edit out other people then just say " do n't distribute it " . professor e: but th what they signed in the consent form , was something that said you can use my voice . grad c: , but if someone is having a conversation , and you only bleep out one side of it , that 's not sufficient . grad c: if i say " we were having a conversation , and i consider that conversation private , " and i consider that your side of it is enough for other people to infer , i wanna be able to bleep out your side . postdoc f: the i agree that the consent forms were , i cons agree with what adam 's saying , that , the consent form did leave open this possibility that they could edit things which they found offensive whe whether they said them or did n't say them . postdoc f: and the other thing is from the standpoint of the l i ' m not a law lawyer , but it strikes me that , we would n't want someone to say " yes , i was a little concerned about it but it was too hard to access " . so it 's to have this facility to listen to it . now in terms of like editing it by hand , it 's i some people would find that easier to specify the bleep part by having a document they edited . but but it seems to me that sometimes , i if a person had a bad day , and they had a tone in their voice that they did n't really like , it 's to be able to listen to it and be that was ok . professor e: it 's also a mixture of people , some people are r do their work primarily by sitting at the computer , flipping around the web , and others do not . others would consider it this a set of skills that they would have to gain . ? professor e: in the meetings so far , . but we 're trying to expand this , so i actually think that paper is the more universal thing . grad c: and that , but if they want to print it out that 's alright . everyone in the meeting can access the web . professor e: no , we have to be able to print it out . it 's not just if they want to print it out . grad c: ok , so does that mean that i ca n't use email ? or what ? grad c: i do n't think we can send the text through email because of the privacy issues . grad c: . so giving them , you think a web site to say , " if you wanna print it out here it is " , is not sufficient ? professor e: certainly for everybody who 's been in the meetings so far it would be sufficient . grad c: , i ' m just thinking for people that 's not sufficient for , what the only sufficient thing would be for me to walk up to them and hand it to them . phd a: just put the button on the web page which say " send me the scripts " . phd b: what when you display it on the web page , what are you showing them ? utterances , or ? and so can they bleep within an utterance ? grad c: and that was just convenience for my sake , that it 's , it would end up being fairly difficult to edit the transcripts if we would do it at the sub - utterance level . because this way just delete an entire line out of a transcript file rather than have to do it by hand . professor e: there 's another aspect to this which maybe is part of why this is bothering me . , you 're really trying very hard to make this as convenient as possible for people to do this . grad c: that 's why i did the web form , because for me that would be my most convenient . professor e: that 's the bad idea . see because you 're gon you 're really . you 're gon na end up with all these little patchy things , whereas really what we want to do is have the bias towards letting it go . because nob you know it there was a one or twi once or twice , in the re in the meetings we ' ve heard , where somebody said something that they might be embarrassed by , but overall people are talking about technical topics . nobody 's gon na get hurt . nobody 's being l libeled . , this is this we 're covering we 're playing the lawyer 's game , and we 're playing we 're looking for the extreme case . if we really orient it towards that extreme case , make it really easy , we 're gon na end up encouraging a headache . that that 's i ' m psyching myself out here , i ' m trying to grad c: i do n't see having a few phrases here and there in a meeting being that mu much of a headache , bleeped out . phd b: what morgan 's saying is the easier it is , the more is gon na be bleeped . professor e: but i and and it really depends on what research you 're doing . some researchers who are gon na be working with this corpus years from now are really gon na be cursing the fact that there 's a bunch of in there that 's missing from the dialogue . , it depends on the research they 're doing , but it might be , it might be really a pain . and , where it 's really gon na hurt somebody , in some way the one who said it or someone who is being spoken about , we definitely want to allow the option of it being bleeped out . but i really think we wanna make it the rare incidence . and and , i am just a little worried about making it so easy for people to do , and so much fun ! that they 're gon na go through and bleep out . professor e: and they can bleep out they do n't like too , right from somebody else , as you say , so " i did n't like what he said . " grad c: i do n't see any way of avoiding that . , we have to provi we have promised that we would provide them the transcript and that they can remove parts that they do n't like . so that the professor e: you - you ' ve talked me into that , but think that we should make it harder to do . grad c: the problem is if it 's harder for them it 's also harder for me . whereas this web interface , get email , it 's all formatted , it 's all ready to go and just insert it . professor e: so maybe you do n't give them access to the web interface unless they really need it . so so professor e: i ' m so so maybe this is a s a way out of it . you ' ve provided something that 's useful for you to do handle , and useful for someone else if they need it . but the issue of privacy and ease and should be that , they get access to this if they really need it . phd b: so you 're saying the sequence would be more like first adam goes to the contact lists , contacts them via whatever their preferred method is , to see if they want to review the meeting . and then if they do n't , you 're done . if they do , then he provides them access to the web site . grad c: , to some extent i have to do that anyway because as i said we have to distribute passwords . professor e: y but you do n't necessarily have to distribute passwords is what i ' m saying . grad c: what i ' m saying is that i ca n't just email them the password because that 's not secure . so they have to call me and ask . professor e: no , no . but you are n't necessarily giving them but we do n't even necessarily need to end up distributing passwords . grad c: , we do because of privacy . we ca n't just make it openly available on the web . professor e: you 're missing the point . we 're trying i we 're trying to make it less of an obvious just l fall off a log , to do this . professor e: so th so what i would see , is that first you contact them and ask them if they would like to review it for to check for the not just for fun , ok ? but to check this for things that they 're worried about having said or if they 're willing to just send an approval of it , at from their memory . and , and we should think carefully actually we should review go through how that 's worded , then , if someone wants to review it , and i know you do n't like this , but i ' m offering this as a suggestion , is that we then give them a print out . and then if they say that " i have a potential problem with these things , " then , you say " ok you might wanna hear this in context to s think if you need that , " you issue them a password , i in the grad c: but the problem with what you 're suggesting is it 's not just inconvenient for them , it 's inconvenient for me . because that means multiple contacts every time for every single meeting every time anyone wants anything . i would much prefer to have all be automatic , they visit the web site if they want to . they do n't have to . grad c: so you 're thinking people are going to arbitrarily start bleeping and do n't think that 's gon na happen . postdoc f: i ' m also concerned about the spirit of the informed consent thing . cuz if they feel that , it 's i th , if it turns out that something gets published in this corpus that someone really should have eliminated and did n't detect , then it could have been because of their own negligence that they did n't pursue that next level and get the password and do that , but they might be able to argue " it was cumbersome , and i was busy and it was gon na take me too much time to trace it down " . so it could that the burden would come back onto us . so i ' m a little bit worried about , making it harder for them , from the legal standpoint . professor e: you can go too far in that direction , and you need to find somewhere between , grad c: it seems to me that sending them email , saying " if you have an o - ok reply to this email and say ok , grad c: if you have a problem with it contact me and i 'll give you a password " , seems like is a perfectly , reasonable compromise . and if they want a printout they can print it out themselves . postdoc f: or we could print it up for them , we could offer that but there 's , another aspect to that and that is that in the informed consent form , my impression is that they that we offered them at the very least that they definitely would have access to the transcript . and and i ha i that there 's a chance of really skipping that stage . that you were maybe i misinterpreted what you said but it 's professor e: . , i do n't wanna fool them , meant that e every ev any time you say anything to anyone there is a bias that is presented , grad c: if you agree to participate you 'll have the opportunity to have anything ex anything excised , which you would prefer not to have included in the data set . grad c: once a transcript is available we will ask your permission to include the data in the corpus for the r larger research community . bmr014edialogueact1027 224867 224884 e professor b -1 0 yeah . bmr014cdialogueact1029 225429 225805 c grad s +1 3 there again you will be allowed to indicate any sections that you 'd prefer to have excised from the database , bmr014cdialogueact1030 225837 226124 c grad s +1 3 and they will m be removed both from the transcript and the recording . grad c: , it the one question is definitely clear with anything as opposed to just what you said . postdoc f: tha - that 's true . that 's more severe , but the next one says the transcript will be around . postdoc f: and it does n't really say we 'll send it to you , or wi it 'll be available for you on the web , or anything . postdoc f: at least it more often . it means also we do n't have to g to give it to them . like morgan was saying they professor e: , ok , so . wh i have an idea that may be sat may satisfy both you and me in this which is , it 's a it we just go over carefully how these notes to people are worded . so want it to be worded in such a way where it gives the strong impre it gives very , nothing hidden , v very strongly the bias that we would really like to use all of these data . that that we really would rather it was n't a patchwork of things tossed out , that it would be better for , our , field if that is the case . but if you really think something is gon na and i do n't think there 's anything in the legal aspects that is hurt by our expressing that bias . professor e: and then my concern about which you might be right , it may be it was just paranoia on my part , but people just see i ' m @ worried about this interface so much fun that people start bleeping out just as just because they can . grad c: it 's just a check box next to the text , it 's not any fun . grad c: , but they wo n't get that feedback . all no because it does n't automatically bleep it at the time . grad c: and then at some point i 'll incorporate them all and put bleeps . i do n't wanna have t ha do that yet until we actually release the data because , then we have to have two copies of every meeting and we 're already short on disk space . so i wanna keep the times until we actually wanna release the data and then we bleep it . professor e: alright , so if we have if i again let 's , circulate the wording on each of these things and get it right , grad c: since you seem to feel heart , strongest about it , would you like to do the first pass ? postdoc f: al - also it ther there is this other question , the legal question that adam 's raised , about whether we need a concrete signature , or email c i suffices or whatever and i how that works . i there 's something down there about " if you agree to " grad c: because thi th they 're signing here that they 're agreeing to the paragraph which says " you 'll be given an opportunity . " and so i do n't think they need another signature . professor e: and and furthermore i it 's now fairly routine in a lot of arrangements that i do with people on contracts and that if it 's that thing where you 're saying " ok i agree , we want eighty hours of this person at such - and - such amount , and i agree that 's ok , " if it 's a follow up to some other agreement where there was a signature it 's often done in email now so it 's ok . grad c: so i probably should at the minimum , think about how to present it in a printed form . i ' m not really what 's best with that . the problem is a lot of them are really short , and so i do n't necessarily wanna do one per line . but i how else to do it . postdoc f: i s i also have this it 's you have it , viewab her hearable on the web for those who might wonder about , the non nonverbal side , i agree that our bias should be as expressed here , and but it 's that a person could check . cuz sometimes you the words on a on the page , come out soun sounding different in terms of the social dynamics if they hear it . and i realize we should n't emphasize that people , should n't borrow trouble . what it comes down to but grad c: actually my opinion probably is that the only time someone will need to listen to it is if the transcript is not good . , if there are lots of mumbles and parentheses and things like that . postdoc f: , or what if there was an error in the transcript that did n't get detected and there was a whole i segment a against some personal i th postdoc f: or or even there was a line about how " - mmm bill gates duh - duh . " but it was all the words were all visible , but they did n't end up i some there was a slip in the transcript . grad c: they 're gon na hate this meeting . actually liz will like it . , but . postdoc f: so i . , i we 're assuming that the transcript is a close enough approximation and that my double checking will be so close to perfect that it that nothing will slip by . professor e: but it the some something might sometime , and they if it 's something that they said , they might i , you might be very accurate in putting down what they actually said , but , when they hear it , themselves , they may hear something different because they meant . professor e: no , i ' m serious . so the so i the so we might get some feedback from people that such - and - such was , not really what i said . grad c: just for corrections . so , in terms of password distribution , phone is really the only way to do it , phone and in person . or mail , physical mail . grad c: any sub - wor , ok . you could do it with pgp or things like that but it 's too complex . postdoc f: realized something , which is of e th this question about the possible mismatch of i , and actually also the lawyer saying that , we should n't really have them have the people believing that they will be cleared by our checks . ? . so it 's like i in a way it 's to have the responsibility still on them to listen to the tape and hear the transcript , to have that be the professor e: , but you ca n't dep , most people will not wanna take the time to do that , though . postdoc f: , ok , fair enough . and they 're s they 're absorbing the responsibility themselves . professor e: but if you were at a meeting , and you do n't think , at least , that you said anything funny and the meeting was about , some funny thing about semantics , or postdoc f: it is true that tec that the content is technical , i and so i and we 're not having these discussions which , when i listen to these things , i do n't find things that are questionable , in other people 's speech or in my own . professor e: done . actually , i was gon na di - did you have anything n that 's going on , or grad d: not really . no . , my project is going along but , i ' m really just here to fill the project the overall progress . i do n't really have anything specific to talk about . professor e: that 's fine . did n't wanna go by you , if you had something . professor e: nah . transcribers , he was rattling the b marbles in his brain back and forth just then this grad c: , we should count out how many more digits to forms do we have back there ? grad c: that 's what . i f i was going through them all and i found actually a lot filed in with them , that were blanks , that no one had actually read . and so we still have more than we did . so , we have a few more digits before we 're done .
###summary: the berkeley meeting recorder group discussed recording equipment issues , including the purchase of two additional headsets and the prospect of getting a new base station and a set of wireless microphones to replace those wired microphones currently in use. speaker fe008 presented the current status on transcriptions , and explained procedures for cleaning up transcripts and ensuring they conform with set conventions. speaker mn014 briefly described his efforts to normalize loudness levels across speech channels to distinguish between foreground and background speech. finally , the group discussed legal and procedural issues concerning the provision of transcripts to meeting participants for 'bleeping out' any sections of speech they want excluded from the meeting recorder database. the consent form issued to subjects prior to meetings will be revised to make more explicit details concerning access to transcripts and the ability of subjects to mark sections of meetings for exclusion from the database. the group decided to replace wired microphones with a wireless setup , i.e . a new base station and set of wireless microphones. efforts will be made to ensure that recording conventions are consistent across icsi , the university of washington , and sri. some of the meeting recordings contain spikes. it was surmised that such disturbances are probably due to the connectors attached to a set of wired microphones in use. with respect to editing bleeps , should participants be allowed to edit out others' speech? it was suggested that making transcripts available to all of the subjects involved might make it too easy for them to edit out sections of meetings , whereas the bias should be to ensure that editing bleeps occur only rarely in the database. two additional wireless headsets will soon be made available. approximately 32-35 hours of meeting data have been recorded , roughly 30 hours of which comprise non-digits recordings. the transcribers have begun performing digit extraction ( see abstract for bmr013 ) and should be finished within a few days. approximately 11 hours of speech have been transcribed. efforts by speaker fe008 are in progress to ensure that transcripts are clean ( i.e . spell checked ) , channelized , and conform to set conventions regarding the coding of numbers , acronyms , and explicit comments ( e.g . door slams , coughs , and laughter ). subsequent efforts by speaker fe008 will be to tighten up boundaries on the time bins. inter-annotator agreement was reported to be very good. speaker mn014's multi-channel speech/non-speech segmenter is in use. the sri recognizer will be fed with pre-segmented output to eliminate difficulties with processing overly long speech segments. efforts by speaker mn014 to normalize loudness and distinguish between foreground and background speech have been largely successful. the group discussed procedural issues concerning the provision of transcripts to meeting participants for 'bleeping out' any sections of speech they want excluded from the meeting recorder database.