OK, we're on.

Yeah.

So, I think this is gonna be a pretty short meeting because I have four agenda items, three of them were requested by Jane who is not gonna be at the meeting today.  So. The uh first was transcription status. Does anyone besides Jane know what the transcription status is?

Um, sort of, I do, peripherally.

Is that English?

Um Well first of all with IBM I got a note from Brian yesterday saying that they finally made the tape for the thing that we sent them a week or week and a half ago

That's our system.

Ugh!

and that it's gone out to the transcribers and hopefully next week we'll have the transcription back from that.

C can I have a pen?

Um Jane seems to be um moving right along on the transcriptions from the ICSI side. She's assigned, I think probably five or six m more meetings.

Yeah, I think we're up to MR thirteen or something.

Mmm.

Yeah, so um, I guess she's hired some new transcribers

Speaking.

Which meetings is she transcribing?

and Um well we've we've run out of E D Us because a certain number of them are um, sort of awaiting to go to IBM.

OK.

For IBM, yeah.

Hmm.

OK.

and the rest are in process being transcribed uh here.

So does she have transcribers right now who are basically sitting idle because there's no data back from IBM

So we're doing some in parallel.

Yep.

No.

No, no.

Oh no no.

We haven't done that process.

no?

No. We're not waiting on them.

So. They' r they're doing the full transcription process.

Oh. Oh, OK.

So they're just doing their own thing until.

Yeah.

Because I I need to ask Jane whether it's it would be OK for her um, s some of her people to transcribe uh some of the initial data we got from the SmartKom data collection, which is these short like five or seven minute sessions.

We're doing it in parallel, yeah.

OK.

Yep.

Um and we want it You know, we need The Again, we we have a similar uh logistic set - up where we are supposed to send the data to Munich

Right.

and get it transcribed and get it back. But to get going we would like some of the data transcribed right away so we can get started.

Yep, sounds familiar.

And so um I wanted to ask Jane if if uh, you know, maybe one of their transcribers could could do I mean since these are very short, that should really be uh,

Mm - hmm.

um It's.

There's only two channels. So it's only Yeah.

Yeah.

As the synthesis doesn't have to be transcribed I think.

It's only two Right, s

So.

Yeah. So So it's basically one channel to transcribe. And it's One session is only uh like seven.

So that should have ma many fewer And it's also not uh a bunch of interruptions with people and all that,

Right. And some of it is read speech, so we could give them the the thing that they're reading

right? So. Yeah.

and they just may.

Make sure it's right.

Yep.

And so um, um, I guess since she's I was gonna ask her but since she's not around I maybe I'll.

Yeah, well it certainly seems.

Uh if if that's OK with you to to, you know, get that stuff uh to ask her for that, then I'll do that.

Yeah. Yeah, if we're held up on this other stuff a little bit in order to encompass that, that's OK because I I um, I mean I still have high hopes that the that the IBM pipeline'll work out for us, so it's.

Yeah. OK, yeah.

Yeah.

Alrighty.

Oh, yeah, and also related to the transcription stuff, so I've been trying to keep a web page uh up to date f showing what the current status is of the trans of all the things we've collected and what stage each meeting is in, in terms of whether it's.

Can you mail that out to the list?

Mm - hmm, yeah I will. I That's the thing that I sent out just to foo people saying can you update these pages

Oh, OK, OK.

and so that's where I'm putting it but I'll I'll send it out to the list telling people to look at it.

Yeah, I haven't done that. So. I have lots of stuff to add that's just in my own directory.

Yeah.

I'll try to get to that. OK. So Jane also wanted to talk about participant approval, but I don't really think there's much to talk about. I'm just gonna do it. And uh, if anyone objects too much then they can do it instead.

You are going to.

I'm gonna send out to the participants, uh, with links to web pages which contain the transcripts and allow them to suggest edits. And then bleep them out.

OK.

For the ones that we have. Um.

So but it's just transcripts, not the not the audio?

Nope, they'll have access to the audio also.

OK, yeah, yep. Ah.

I mean that's my intention. Because the transcripts might not be right.

Yeah.

So.

So you want people to be able to listen to them.

Yeah.

So, um the audio that they're gonna have access to, will that be the uncompressed version? Or will you have scripts that like uncompress the various pieces and.

Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah, it's it's probably going to have to be the uncompressed versions because, uh, uh, it takes too long to do random access decompression.

Hmm. Yeah, I was just wondering because we're uh running out of the un - backed - up disk space on

Well, that was the other point.

Oh, was that another one?

Yep, that's another agenda item.

OK. I'll wait.

So, uh But that is a good point so we'll get to that, too. Um, DARPA demo status, not much to say. The back - end stuff is working out fine. It's more or less ready to go. I've added some stuff that uh indes indexes by the meeting type MR, EDU, et cetera and also by the user ID. So that the front - end can then do filtering based on that as well. Uh The back - end is uh, going more slowly as I s I think I said before just cuz I'm not much of a Tcl - TK programmer. And uh Dave Gelbart says he's a little too busy. So I think Don and I are gonna work on that and and you and I can just talk about it off - line more.

Right.

But uh the back - end was pretty smooth.

Oh

So I think, we'll have something. It may not be as As pretty as we might like, but we'll have something.

I wondered whe when we would reach Dave's saturation point. He's sort of been been volunteering for everything

Yeah.

and and uh.

Mm - hmm.

O K. Finally said he was too busy. I guess we reached it.

Yeah, he he actually he volunteered but then he s then he retracted it. So. Oh well. Um.

And, also um, I was just showing Andreas, I got um an X Waves kind of display, and I don't know how much more we can do with it with like the prosodic stuff where we have like stylized pitches and signals and the transcripts on the bottom

Oh, cool.

so, right now it's just an X Waves and then you have three windows but I don't know, it looked pretty nice and I'm sure it think it has potential for a little something,

For a demo?

yeah, for a demo.

Yeah, sounds good.

So.

OK, so again, the issue is For July, the issue's gonna be what can we fit into a Windows machine, uh, and so on, but.

Oh. OK.

So it might just be slides.

Yeah, OK.

Well Yeah.

Well, we'll see, um.

I've been putting together uh Transcriber things for Windows so i And I installed it on Dave Gelbart's PC and it worked just fine. So hopefully that will work.

Really? So is that Because there's some people um It would be cool if we could uh get that to work uh at at SRI

Yeah. Yep.

because the um.

Well Transcriber is Tcl - TK, very generic with Snack,

we have m m We have more Windows machines to run the.

Yeah.

so basically anything you can get Snack to run on, it will work.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah but But the problem is the version Transcriber works with, the Snack version, is one point six whatever and that's not anymore supported. It's not on on the web page anymore. But I just wrote an email to to the author of to the Snack author and he sent me to one point six whatever library

Well I thought it was packaged with Transcriber?

and so it works. Yeah, but then you can't add our patches and then the the new version is is totally different

Oh.

a and in yeah, in terms of of the source code.

Ah.

You you can't find the Tcl files anymore. It's some whatever wrapped thing

Mmm.

and you can't you can't access that so you have to install First install Tcl then install Snack and then install the Transcriber thing and then do the patches.

Patch. Ugh!

I I wonder if if we should contribute our changes back to the authors so that they maintain those changes along.

Yeah. Yeah.

We have Yeah b it's just hasn't made it into the release yet.

We have? Oh. Oh, OK.

So did you um put the uh the NT version out on the uh Meeting Recorder page? Or.

No, I haven't done that yet. I'm oh Nope. But I definitely will do that.

So, can some of the stuff that Don's talking about somehow fit into this Uh, mean you just have a set of numbers that are associated with the.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, it's basically ASCII files or binary files, whatever representation. Just three different It's a waveform and just a stylized pitch vector basically so it's.

So So Well.

I mean we could do it in Matl -  I mean you could do it in a number of different places I'm sure.

But But it would be cool if the Transcriber interface had like another window for the you know, maybe above the waveform where it would show some arbitrary valued function that is that is you know time synchron ti ti time synchronous with the wavform.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, that'd be very cool.

It'd be easy enough to add that. Again it's it's It's more Tcl - T

Yeah.

So someone who's familiar with Tcl - TK has to do it,

Right.

but uh, it wouldn't be hard to do.

Right. But it would almost be like having another waveform displayed.

Yep.

Yep.

S

Mm - hmm.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe we could l look into that.

Yeah.

But it it seems to me that I c

And.

It doesn't seem like having that real time is that necessary. So yo It seems to me you could do images.

Um What do you mean by real time? Do you mean like.

Like being able to scroll through it and stuff for the demo.

OK.

Yeah, jus Yeah.

Is that what you mean?

It just seems to me jus

It would be cool to see it.

Yeah.

It would be cool like to see to hear it and see it,

And to hear it. Yeah. Yeah.

and see the pitch contours also.

Sure, but I don't think I You can do all that just statically in

Yeah.

I think it would lose Yeah, I mean y

Just record the audio clip and show an image and I think that's.

Right, right. I just thought if you meant slides I thought you meant like just like um view graphs or something.

You know, wh Yeah. So. Uh, no, we're talking about on the computer and and um, I think when we were talking about this before we had littl this little demo meeting,

Right.

we sort of set up a range of different degrees of liveness that you could have and, the more live, the better, but uh, given the crunch of time, we may have to retreat from it to some extent. So I think For a lot of reasons, I think it would be very nice to have this Transcriber interface be able to show some other interesting signal along with it

Mm - hmm.

so it'd be a good thing to get in there. But, um Anyway, jus just looking for ways that we could actually show what you're doing, uh, in to people.

Mm - hmm.

Cuz a lot of this stuff, particularly for Communicator, uh certainly a significant chunk of the things that we waved our arms about th originally had t had to do with prosodics It'd be nice to show that we can actually get them and see them.

Mmm.

Mm - hmm.

And the last i item on the agenda is disk issues yet again. So, we're doing OK on backed up. We're We're only about thirty percent on the second disk. So, uh, we have a little bit of time before that becomes critical, but we are like ninety five percent, ninety eight percent on the scratch disks for the expanded meetings.

Yeah.

And, my original intention was like we would just delete them as we needed more space, but unfortunately we're in the position where we have to deal with all the meeting data all at once, in a lot of different ways.

Yeah.

Oh there's a lot of transcribers, too.

Yeah, there're a lot of transcribers,

Yeah.

so all of those need to be expanded, and then people are doing chunking and I want to do uh, uh, uh, the permission forms,

Mm - hmm.

An

Right.

so I want those to be live, so there's a lot of data that has to be around. Um And Jane was gonna talk to, uh, Dave Johnson about it. One of the things I was thinking is we we just got these hundred alright, excuse me ten, uh SPARC - Blade SUN - Blades.

Did they come in?

SUN - Blades.

Yeah.

Yeah. They came in the other day.

They came in but they're not set up yet.

Oh.

And so it seems to me we could hang scratch disk on those because they'll be in the machine room, they'll be on the fast connection to the rest of the machines. And if we just need un - backed - up space, we could just hang disks off them.

Well, is there Why not just hang them off of Abbott, is there a.

Because there's no more room in the disk racks on Abbott.

Yeah.

Ah.

Weren't we gonna get.

Ah, I see.

Well, maybe it should get another rack.

But you still need to store the disks somehow.

Well, but the SUN - Blades have spare drive bays.

So.

Just put them in.

You can put two.

Oh you mean you put them inside the pizza boxes for the.

Sure.

Internal. Yeah.

Yeah. Cuz the SUN uh, these SUN - Blades take commodity hard drives.

Oh.

So you can just go out and buy a PC hard drive and stick it in.

Mmm.

But if Abbott is going to be our disk server it it file server  it seems like we would want to get it, uh, a second disk rack or something.

Plus we're talking about buying a second dis uh, file server.

Well, I mean there are lots of long term solutions. What I'm looking for is where do we s expand the next meeting?

Yep.

I see Oh, I see.

Well, for the next meeting you might be out of luck with those ten, mightn't you? Uh, you know Dave Johnson is gone for, like, ten days,

Oh, I didn't know he had left already.

Uh, well, tonight.

Oh, oh well.

You mean he won't set up the mmm.

I don't know.

How much space do you need for these?

I don't know what his schedule is.

You we need about a gig per meeting.

I'm just saying he's gone.

Yep.

I I thi

I have um I have an eighteen gig drive hanging off of my computer.

Alright! What's your computer's name?

So Uh, Samosa.

You had an eighteen gigabyte drive.

Yeah, I had. Well it's about I think there's about twelve gig left.

So it And you have an X drives installed? OK.

Yeah. So, I didn't realize it was so critical.

And you're o you're offering?

I mean I'm not doing anything on it right now until I get new meetings to transcri or that are new transcriptions coming in I really can't do anything.

OK.

Um not that I can't do anything, I jus

I I jus I just gave Thilo some about ten gigs, the last ten gigs of space that there was on on uh Abbott. Uh And uh So but that But.

Which one was that, X G? X G?

XG.

XG.

OK.

XG?

Yeah.

That's also where we store the The uh Hub - five training set waveforms,

Oops.

But that won't be getting any bigger,

right?

No.

will it?

I don't think that's on XG.

Right.

On XG is only Carmen and Du - and Stephane's disk.

It's Yeah.

But I've also been storing I've been storing the feature files there and I guess I can s start deleting some because we now know what the best features are

Well.

and we won't be using the old ones anymore.

I have a lot of space, though.

Yeah, I do I don't think it was on XG.

Uh Oh thats XA Oh that's X.

Isn't that XH?

I th

Not not for long.

I have a lot of space and it's not it's n There's very little uh Yeah not for long.

Maybe I'm confu

But I mean it's not going f

Oh no I'm sorry.

It's not being used often at all.

But I'm using XH H, too.

Yeah, it's probably Probably only about four gig is on X on your X drive,

So.

Oh OK.

but we'll definitely take it up if you.

I th

I think you're right. It's XH and D.

I think it's about four or five gig cuz I have four meetings on there,

The b I'm also using DG I got that confused.

three or four meetings.

OK.

Great.

So.

OK, so that will get us through the next couple days.

We need We need another gigaquad.

Yep. At least.

There should I d There should just be a b I should have a button.

The " more disk space " button?

Just press Press each meeting saying " we need more disk space " " this week ".

Yep.

Skip the rest of the conversation.

Well we've collected so far something like uh sixty - five meetings.

And And how much does each meeting take?

And it's about a gig uncompressed.

It's It's a little bit more as I usually don't do not uncompress the all of the PZM and the PDA things.

Is a little more?

So.

Right, yeah so if you uncompressed everything it's even more.

It's Yeah. One point five or something.

U Uh compressed how much are they? Like.

Half a gig. For all of them.

About half?

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

So we're definitely are storing you know, all of those. So there's what thirty some gig of just meetings so far?

So - so So maybe there's a hundred gig or something. Or I mean. Cuz we we have the uncompressed around also.

Mm - hmm. Right.

So it's like.

Yeah.

Right. Well we We haven't uncompressed all the meetings, but.

I would like to.

Yeah. Well I mean it's the they really are cheap. I mean it's just a question of figuring out where they should be and hanging them,

Yep.

Right.

but But uh, we could You know, if you want to get four disks, get four disks. I mean it's it's small I mean these things ar are just a few hundred dollars.

Yeah. Well I sent that message out to, I guess, you and Dave asking for if we could get some disk.

Yeah.

I s I sent this out a a day ago

And put it where?

Right.

but and Dave didn't respond so I don I don't know how the whole process works. I mean does he just go out and get them and if it's OK, and.

Yep.

So I was assuming he was gonna take over that. But he's probably too busy given that he's leaving.

Yeah, I think you need a direct conversation with him. And just say an - e just ask him that, you know, wha what should you do. And in my answer back was " are you sure you just want one? " So I mean I think that what you want to do is plan ahead a little bit and figure " well, here's what we pi figure on doing for the next few months ".

Yeah.

Wa - a I know what they want. The sysadmins would prefer to have one external drive per machine. So they don't want to stack up external drives.

Yeah.

Um And then they want everything else in the machine room.

Right.

So the question is where are you gonna hang them?

Mm - hmm. I don't know what the space situation is in the machine room.

Right.

So.

Right. So this is a question that's pretty hard to solve without talking to Dave,

Th - The.

I think part of the reason why Dave can't get the the new machines up is because he doesn't have room in the machine room right now.

cuz it.

One Mmm.

Yep.

One One On - One thing to in to um t to do when you need to conserve space is

So he has to re - arrange a bunch of stuff.

I bet there are still some old, uh, like, nine gig disks, uh, around and you can probably consolidate them onto larger disks and and you know recover the space.

Yep.

Yeah. No. I think Dave Dave knows all these things, of course. An - and so, he always has a a lot of plans of things that he's gonna do to make things better in many ways an and runs out of time.

Right. Mm - hmm.

But I I know that generally their first priority has been for backed up disk. And so I think what he's been concentrating on is uh the back the back up system, rather than on new disk.

Mmm. Mmm.

So. Which.

Well. So. But this this is a very specific question for me. Basically, we can easily get one to four disks, I mean you just go out and get four and we've got the money for it, it's no big deal. Uh, but the question is where they go, and I don't think we can solve that here, you just have to ask him.

Maybe we can put some disks in the in that back room there.

Yeah really.

Attach to.

Popcorn.

Yeah?

To the machine that collects the data. So then you could, at least temporarily, store stuff there.

Yeah, it's just It's not on the net, so it's a little awkward

The only.

Hmm.

What do you mean it's not on the net?

It's not.

It's not bad.

It's behind lots of fire walls that don't allow any services through except S S

Oh because it's because it's an ACIRI machine?

Yep.

Yeah.

Oh, oh oh.

And also on the list is to get it into the normal ICSI net, but Who knows when that will happen?

But that can't be that hard.

That might be a good short term solution, though.

I mean.

No, the the problem with that apparently is that they don't currently have a wire running to that back room that goes anywhere near one of the ICSI routers.

Oh,

So, they actually have to run a wire somewhere.

Yeah. Yeah, e again, you know, any one of these things is certainly not a big deal. If there was a person dedicated to doing it they would happen pretty easily but it's it's jus every ever everybody everybody has a has.

But Dave has to do all of them.

Well all of us have long lists of different things we're doing. But at any rate I think that there's a there's a longer term thing and there's immediate need and I think we need a a conversation with Uh, maybe maybe after after tea or something you and I can go down and and talk to him about it Just say " wha you know, what should we do right now? "

How long is David gonna be gone?

Uh, eleven days or something?

Oh my!

Yeah basically tomorrow and all of the week after.

And that's all I have.

Um Let's see. The only oth thing other thing I was gonna add was that um uh, I talked briefly to Mari and uh we had both been busy with other things so we haven't really connected that much since the last meeting we had here but we agreed that we would have a telephone meeting the Friday after next. And I I I wanted to make it, um after the next one of these meetings, so something that we wanna do next meeting is is uh to put together um, a kind of reasonable list for ourselves of what is it, um, that we've done. I mean just sort of bulletize I mean o e do do I can I can dream up text but this is basically gonna lead to the annual report. So Um If w

Mm - hmm.

This is the fifteenth? So just a week from tomorrow?

Um, that would

OK.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, we can This So that's an.

Is this gotta be in the morning?

Um.

Or Because you know I Fridays I have to leave uh like around uh two. So if it could be before that would be be

No, no but I I I don't need other folks for the meeting. I can do it. A A All I'm saying is that on.

Oh, OK, alright. Oh I'm sorry, I misunderstood.

Yeah so what I meant was on the me this meeting if I wa something I I I'm making a major thing in the agenda is I wanna help in getting together a list of what it is that we've done so I can tell her.

I thought you are OK. Alright. Mm - hmm.

I think I have a pretty good idea

OK.

but but um Uh, and then the next day uh, late in the day I'll be having that that discussion with her.

Mmm.

Um. So.

Um Uh One thing I mean we in past meetings we had um also a you know various variously talked about the um work that w uh was happening sort of on the on the recognition side

Mm - hmm.

um but isn't necessarily related to meetings uh specifically. So. Um. And I wondered whether we should maybe have um a separate meeting and between you know, whoever's interested in that because I feel that uh there's plenty of stuff to talk about but it would be sort of um maybe the wrong place to do it in this meeting if uh.

Think so?

Well, it's that It's just gonna be ver very boring for people who are not you know, sort of really interested in the details of the recognition system.

I'm interested.

Well, OK, so how many how many people here would not be interested in uh in a meeting about recognition?

Me too.

Jane may not be.

Jane, I think.

Yep.

Well I know Well, Jane an Well you mean in a separate meeting or ha ha talking about it in this.

No. If we talked about it in this meeting.

He's wondering how much overlap there will be.

Yeah, so you're su

OK.

So.

So, uh, uh, Liz and Jane probably.

OK, so we're gonna have a guy's meeting.

Uh. Uh, if you wanna put it that way.

Good thing Liz isn't here.

Real.

Watch a ball game?

Yeah, real real real men " Real men do decoding " or something like that.

Don't listen to this, Liz.

Right.

Uh.

I mean it it's sort of I mean when when the talk is about data collection stuff, sometimes I've you know, I I'm bored.

Yeah.

The Nod off?

So it's I c I can sympathize with them not wanting to i to to be uh you know If I cou you know this could.

It's cuz y you have a So you need a better developed feminine side.

I'm

There's probably gonna be a lot of " bleeps " in this meeting.

not sure I wanna.

Yeah, I would as  I would guess.

Uh. Um.

Yeah and.

I think it must be uh nearing the end of the week. Um. Yeah. I You know, I I've heard some comments about like this. That m could be.

Mm - hmm.

I mean the Um. U

And we don't have to do it every week.

Could we.

We could do it every other week or so. You know, whatev or whenever we feel like we.

Right, I was Why don't we alternate this meeting every other week?

Or just alternate the focus.

Tha - That's what I mean.

Yeah, so on even weeks have basic on data.

Yeah.

We could do that, yeah.

Yeah.

I I Personally I'd I'm not in favor of more meetings. Um. Because, uh.

Right.

I am.

You know.

Oh sor

But I do I don't I mean a lot of times lately it seems like we don't really have enough for a full meeting on Meeting Recorder.

Right.

Well, except that we keep going for our full time.

So if we did that.

Yep.

Well, cuz we get into these other topics.

Yeah.

We feel We feel obligated to collect more data.

Yeah.

Ugh.

Yeah.

I don't.

So if we could alternate the focus of the meeting.

Let's read digits and go.

Why don't we just start with that.

ummh.  ummh.  OK.

And then if we find, you know we're just not getting enough done, there's all these topics not coming up, then we can expand into another meeting.

Mm - hmm.

But I I think that's a great idea. Uh. So uh. Um. Let's chat about it with Liz and Jane when we get a chance, see what they think and.

Mm - hmm.

Yeah that would be good. I mean Andreas and I have various talks in the halls

Mm - hmm.

and there's lots of things, you know, details and stuff that would I think people'd be interested in and I'd you know, where do we go from here kind of things and So, it would be good.

Yeah, and you're you're attending the uh the front - end meeting as well as the others so you have you have probably one of the best you and I, I guess are the main ones who sort of see the bridge between the two.

Bridge.

Mm - hmm.

We are doing recognition in both of them. So.

Mm - hmm.

Right.

Uh.

OK?

So um. So so we could talk a little bit about that now if if there's some time.

No, no that would be for next week.

Um I jus So the latest result was that um um yot I tested the uh the sort of final version of the PLP configuration um on development test data for for this year's Hub - five test set.

Mm - hmm.

And the recognition performance was exactly, and I mean exactly up to the you know, the first decimal, same as with the uh Mel Cepstra front - end.

Mmm.

For both females and males?

Yes. Uh, well i there was a little bit of a.

Oh!

i overall. They They were The males I think were slightly better and the females were slightly worse but nothing really.

Mm - hmm.

Mm - hmm.

I mean definitely not significant.

Mm - hmm.

And then the really nice thing was that if if we combine the two systems we get a one and a half percent improvement.

Wow. Just with ROVER?

So. t With N - best ROVER, which is like our new and improved version of ROVER.

Mm - hmm.

Which u actually uses the whole N - best list from both systems to mmm, uh c combine that.

So except I mean the only key difference between the two really is the kind of smoothing at the end which is the auto - regressive versus the cepstral truncation.

Yeah.

OK.

And, the.

But a percent and a half?

Yeah, it's pretty impressive.

That's.

And And so uh after I told the my uh colleagues at SRI about that, you know, now they definitely want to, you know, uh, have a Next time we have an evaluation they want to do uh, you know, basically a at least the system combination. Um, and, you know, why not?

Sure, why not?

Uh. So.

We clearly gotta add a few more features, though.

Uh w what do you mean? More features in the sense of front - end features or in the sense of just bells and whistles?

No, uh front - end features. You know we did PLP and Mel Cepstra. Let's, you know, try RASTA and MSG, and.

Oh I mean Yeah. Well Right. So, we cou Yeah. That's the the the There's one thing uh I mean you don't want to overdo it because y every front - end You know, if you you know you basically multiply your effort by N, where N is a number of different systems

Oh.

Mm - hmm.

and Um. So. So one one compromise would be to only to have the everything up to the point where you generate lattices be basically one system and then after that you rescore your lattices with the multiple systems and combine the results and that's a fairly painless um thing.

Mmm. An

So.

Do you think we'd still get the one and a half uh.

I I think so. Yeah. Maybe a little less because at that point the error rates are lower and so if You know, maybe it's only one percent or something but that would still be worthwhile doing.

Mm - hmm.

So. Um Jus - You know, just wanted to let you know that that's working out very nicely.

Cool.

And then we had some results on digits, uh, with um We We So this was uh really  really sort of just to get Dave going with his um experiments.

Mm - hmm.

And so, uh. But as a result, um, you know, we were sort of wondering why is the Hub - five system doing so well on the digits.

Right.

And the reason is basically there's a whole bunch of read speech data in the Hub - five training set.

Right.

Including digits I gather, yeah.

And you c And Not all of No it's actually, digits is only a maybe a fifth of it.

A fifth of it is how much?

The rest is is read is read TIMIT data and uh ATIS data and Wall Street Journal and stuff like that.

Right. But a fi a fifth is how much?

A fifth would be maybe uh two hours something.

Yeah, so I mean that's actually not that different from the amount of training that there was.

Right.

So.

But it definitely helps to have the other read data in there

Oh yeah

because we're doing.

w

You know the error rate is half of what you do if you train only on ti uh TIMIT  uh not TIMIT uh TI - digits,

Mm - hmm.

which is only what two hours something?

Right.

I don't know.

So. Uh, more read speech data definitely helps. And you can leave out all the conversational data with no performance penalty.

Yeah that was the interesting thing.

That's e

Because because uh, it was apparent if you put in a bunch more data it would be better,

That was e Right, right.

but but uh.

Right.

Well is there even more read speech data around?

Oh, yeah. So we only for the Hub - five training, we're only using uh a fairly small subset of the Macrophone database.

Mm - hmm.

Um, so, you could beef that up and probably do even better.

I could also put in uh focus condition zero from Hub - four from Broadcast News, which is mostly prepared speech.

Mm - hmm.

It's not exactly read speech but it's pretty darn close.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, I mean that's plenty of read speech data. I mean, Wall Street Journal, uh, take one example.

Yeah. That's right.

But um. So, you know that might be useful for the people who train the the digit recognizers to to use uh something other than TI - digits.

Yeah.

Well they been using TIMIT.

OK.

That Uh. They they uh they experimented for a while with a bunch of different databases with French and Spanish and so forth cuz they're multilingual tests

Mm - hmm.

and and uh, um, and actually the best results they got wa were uh using TIMIT.

Hmm.

Uh But uh which So that's what they're they're using now.

Mmm.

But but yeah certainly if we, um If we knew what the structure of what we're doing there was. I mean there's still a bunch of messing around with different kinds of uh noise robustness algorithms.

Mm - hmm.

So we don't know exactly which combination we're gonna be going with.

Mm - hmm.

Once we know, then the trainable parts of it it'd be great to run lots of lots of stuff through.

Mm - hmm. Right. Well, that was that. And then I th guess Chuck and I had some discussions about how to proceed with the tandem uh system and You wanna You wanna see where that stands?

Well, I'm.

Yeah, so Andreas uh brought over the uh alignments that the SRI system uses. And so I'm in the process of um converting those alignments into uh label files that we can use to train uh a new net with. And uh so then I'll train the net. And.

An - And one side effect of that would be that it's um that the phone set would change. So the MLP would be trained on I think only forty - six or forty - eight.

Right. Eight.

forty - eight phones?

Mm - hmm.

Uh which is smaller than the um than the phone set that that we've been using so far.

Yeah.

And that that that will probably help, actually,

So it's a little different?

because um the fewer dimensions uh e the less trouble probably with the as far as just the um, um Just You know we want to try things like deltas on the tandem features. And so you h have to multiply everything by two or three. And so, you know, fewer dimensions in the phone set would be actually helpful just from a logistics point of view.

Sure. Although we I mean, it's not that many fewer and and and we take a KLT anyway so we could.

Right. Exactly.

Yeah.

So so that was the other thing. And then we wanted to s just limit it to maybe uh something on the same order of dimensions as we use in a standard um front - end. So that would mean just doing the top I don't know ten or twelve or something of the KLT dimensions.

Yeah, and I think and we sh again check we should check with Stephane. My impression was that when we did that before that had very little uh he didn't lose very much.

Right.

By just taking the top whatever?

Yep.

Yeah yeah.

But then And then something Once we have the new M L P trained up, uh one thing I wanted to try just for the fun of it was to actually run uh like a standard hybrid system that is based on you know, those features uh and uh retrain MLP and also the you know, the dictionary that we use for the Hub - five system.

And the b And the base u starting off with the base of the alignments that you got from i from a pretty decent system.

Exactly.

Right.

Yeah. So that would basically give us a, um, more hopefully a a better system

Yeah.

um because you know, compared to what Eric did a while ago, where he trained up, I think, a system based on Broadcast News and then uh tra retraining it on Switchboard or s uh and.

Yeah.

But he I think he d he didn't he probably didn't use all the training data that was available. And his dictionary probably wasn't as tuned to um conversational speech as as the as ours is.

That's That's certainly one thing, yeah.

So.

Uh. Yeah.

And the dictionary made a huge difference. Uh. We we made some improvements to the dictionary's uh to the dictionary about two years ago which resulted in a uh something like a four percent absolute error rate reduction on Switchboard, which.

Well the other thing is, dipping deep into history and into uh our resource management days, when we were collaborating with SRI before,

Mm - hmm. Mmm.

uh it was I think, it is was a really key uh starting point for us that we actually got our alignment.

Mm - hmm.

When we were working together we got our initial alignments from Decipher, uh at the time.

Mm - hmm. Yeah.

Uh. And. Later we got away from it because because once we had decent systems going then it was it was typically better to use our own systems

Yeah.

Mm - hmm.

cuz they were self consistent but but certainly to start off when we were trying to recover from our initial hundred and forty percent error uh rate. Uh. But that was a that was a good good good way to start.

Yeah.

And we're not quite that bad with our our Switchboard systems but it was they certainly aren't as good as SRI's,

OK. Yeah.

so.

Right.

W What is the performance on s the best Switchboard system that we've done? Roughly?

Well, the hybrid system we never got better than about fifty percent error. And uh it was I think there's just a whole lot of things that uh no one ever had time for. We never did really fix up the dictionary. Uh we always had a list of a half dozen things that we were gonna do and and a lot of them were pretty simple and we never did.

Yeah. Mmm.

Uh, we never did an never did any adaptation

But that w Even that that number.

uh, we never did any.

Right. And And that number I think was on Switchboard - one data, right? Where the error rate now is in the twenties.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, um.

So we were Yeah. We were probably at least a factor or two off.

That's yet s Right.

Yeah.

So it would be So it would be good t to sort of r re uh.

Yeah.

just at least to give us an idea of how well the hybrid system would do.

Yeah. But I think again it's Yeah. It's the conver it's the s conversational speech bit. Because our our Broadcast News system is actually pretty good.

Mm - hmm.

He knows.

Right. And the other thing that that would help us to evaluate is to see how well the M L P is trained up. Right? Because it's a pretty good um indicator of that.

Mm - hmm.

So it's sort of a sanity check of the M L P outputs before we go ahead and train up the uh you know, use them as a basis for the tandem system.

Mm - hmm.

Yeah. It'll still probably be worse. I mean, it's it'd be context independent and so on.

No. Sure. Not.

Should we Should we bother with um using the net before doing uh embedded training?

But.

But.

I mean should should we even use that?

Oh oh that's a good question.

Or should I just go straight to.

Yeah, we we weren't sure whether it's worth to just use the alignments um from the S R I recognizer or whether to actually go through one or more iterations of embedded training where you realign.

Try it. You run it? Keep keep both versions? See which one's better?

Uh, yeah. I mean. I think I agree with Ad I mean basically you would then You proceed with the embedded training.

Mm - hmm.

It's gonna take you a while to train at this net anyway.

Mm - hmm. Right.

And while it's training you may as well test the one you have and see how it did.

OK. Alright.

Mmm.

I could make arguments either way. You know, it's.

But But so I.

Sort of given up guessing.

Well but i But in your experience I mean uh have you seen big improvements in s on some tasks with embedded training? Or was it sort of small - ish uh improvements that you got

Uh well. It depended on the task. I mean I think in this one I would sort of expect it to be important

Right.

because we're coming from uh, alignments that were achieved with an extremely different system.

That are from another Right.

Although, I mean we've done it with When we were combining with the Cambridge recurrent neural net, embedded training made it worse.

Right.

Uh.

Which I've never figured out.

Right. But I mean i

I think it's a bug.

So you you started training with outputs from a with alignments that were generated by the Cambridge uh system?

Yep.

And then Uh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm. Well, that might probably just Hmm. That was probably because your initial system I mean your system was ba worse than Cambridge's. And you Um.

Was it? I don't think it was.

No they were they were comparable.

It wasn't?

No.

They were very close.

Really?

Yeah.

That's weird.

Excuse me?

That's That's weird.

That's what I said.

Oh!

No I mean it's weird that it did I'm sorry. It's w It's weird that it got worse.

That's ambiguous.

Um. No. Uh. Tha - u we we've see I mean and wi with the numbers OGI numbers task we've seen a number of times people doing embedded trainings and things not getting better.

Oh actually it's not that weird because we have seen We have seen cases where acoustic retraining the acoustic models after some other change made matters worse rather than better.

Yeah. It just.

Yeah.

But I But I would I would suspect that something that that had um a very different Um feature set, for instance I mean they were using pretty diff similar feature sets to us.

Yep.

I I would expect that something that had a different feature set would would uh benefit from.

Mm - hmm.

What about uh hidden unit size on this.

Oh, wait a minute, and the other thing uh,

Oh.

sorry, it was the other thing is that what was in common  to the Cambridge system and our system is they both were training posteriors.

Right. Ah yeah.

So I mean, uh, that's another pretty big difference

That's another big difference.

and uh, one bac at least Back at.

You mean with soft targets? Or? Sorry, I'm sor I missed What What's the key issue here?

Oh, that uh both the Cambridge system and our system were were training posteriors. And if we're we're coming from alignments coming from the SRI system, it's a likelihood - based system. So so that's another difference.

Yeah.

I mean. You know, there's diffe different front - end different different uh, um, training criterion Uh, I would think that in a that an embedded uh embedded uh training would have at least a good shot of improving it some more.

Mm - hmm.

But we don't know.

OK.

You gonna say something?

Yeah. I was wondering uh you know what size net I should Anybody have any intuitions or suggestions?

Uh, how much training data?

Well, I was gonna start off with the small train set.

And how How many hours is that?

That's why I was I I'm not sure how much that is.

Uh, I think that has about Well i you'd would be gender - dependent training, right? So So I think it's uh that's about mmm, something like thirty hours.

Gender - dependent, yeah.

Thirty hours per gender.

Thirty hours.

I'm not sure what this'll mean.

In the small training set?

Hello?

I I think so. I'll.

Excuse me?

It's definitely less than a hundred.

Alright.

You know, it's more like like thirty forty hours something like that.

Wrong number.

They called to tell us that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um. So. Uh. after run

I mean, I didn't want to do too big,

Right. So

just.

At least a couple thousand hidden units. I mean. It's it's th the thing I'll I'll think about it a little more

Mm - hmm.

but it it'd be toss up between two thousand and four thousand.

Mmm.

You definitely wouldn't want the eight thousand. It's m It's more than.

And a thousand is too small?

Oh let me think about it, but I think that that uh th at some point there's diminishing returns. I mean it doesn't actually get worse, typically,

Mm - hmm.

Mm - hmm.

but it but but there is diminishing returns and you're doubling the amount of time.

Remember you'll have a smaller output layer so there's gonna be fewer parameters there.

But not by a lot.

Not by much.

And then.

Fifty s Fifty four to forty eight?

Vast majority is from the input unit.

Yeah.

OK. Yeah.

Yeah. It'll have a very tiny effect.

Right, because you used the context windows and so the input to hidden is much, much larger.

Yeah.

Oh I see, I see, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's negligible, OK.

Yeah, so it's it'd be way, way less than ten percent of the difference.

Uh - huh.

Uh. There's uh How bi how big Let's see. What am I trying to think of?

The The net that that we did use already uh was eight thousand hidden units and that's the one that Eric trained up.

Right. And that was trained up on uh like a hundred and forty hours of of speech.

Was that gender - dependent or independent?

Gender - dependent.

Oh. So that would be like trained on s sixty or seventy hours.

Mm - hmm.

So, uh, yeah definitely not the one thousand uh two thousand fr I mean the four thousand will be better and the two thousand will be almost will be faster and almost as good.

It'll be faster.

So.

Yeah.

Mm - hmm.

Maybe I'll start off with two thousand just to see.

Yeah.

OK.

OK.

Yeah, thirty hours is like a hundred and ten thousand uh seconds. Uh, so that's like eleven eleven million frames. And a two thousand hidden unit net is uh I guess about seven, eight hundred thousand parameters. So that's probably That's probably fine. I mean a four thousand is well within the range that you could benefit from but the two thousand'd be faster so.

Right. I actually have to go.

Alright.

So.

Uncle Bernie's rule is ten to one. Bernie Woodrow's Rule of yeah Uncle Bernie yeah.

We're just waiting for you to leave.

Yes sir.

Anything else?

Nah.

OK.

Since we have nothing to talk about we only talked for an hour.

If.

So.

yeah that's right.

Yeah.

Uh, well, we started late.

Transcript

de - ba - de. de - ba - de That's all folks!

Question: What did the participants conclude at the end of the meeting?

Response: The participants agreed to alternate the focus of the recurring meetings between data and recognition topics every other week, in order to avoid having too many meetings.

Question: Was there any final decision regarding the transcription of the meetings?

Response: The participant will be sending out links to the participants to provide edits to the transcripts of meetings, including the audio transcript. The audio transcript will only include uncompressed versions of the audio due to issues with random access decompression.

Question: Was there any further discussion or conclusion regarding the issue of disk space potrebné for the storage of meeting data?

Response: The participants discussed the issue of disk space for storing the meeting data. They considered the option of installing external drives on individual machines, but the system administrators prefer to have one external drive per machine to avoid stacking external drives. The main issue was where to place additional drives as there is limited space in the machine room, although there are still some old 9-gig disks which could potentially be replaced with larger disks to recover space.

Question: What did Professor B say about the transcription status?

Response: Professor B did not say anything about the transcription status.

Question: What did Professor B say about the recognition performance?

Response: Professor B did not say anything about the recognition performance.

Question: What other details did Professor B give about the recognition system combination?

Response: Professor B did not give any other details about the recognition system combination.

Question: What benefits were mentioned of combining the PLP and Mel Cepstra front-ends for recognition?

Response:
Combining the PLP and Mel Cepstra front-ends for recognition was mentioned to have the following benefits:
* The recognition performance of the combined system was 1.5% higher than the individual systems.
* The improvement was achieved by using N-best ROVER.
* This system combination approach would only require rescoring the lattices generated from both systems, which is a relatively simple process.

Question: Did the participants agree to add a few more features to the models to improve the recognition performance further?

Response: Yes, the participants decided to add more features to improve the recognition performance further, encompassing front-end features as RASTA and MSG.

Question: Can you identify any questions that were raised during the meeting that did not reach a resolution?

Response:
* One question that didn't reach a resolution was where to place additional disk drives to store the meeting data, as there is limited space in the machine room.
* Another question that remained unresolved was whether to use alignments from the SRI recognizer or to go through embedded training iterations to realign the data.

Question: What did Professor B say regarding the tandem system in the meeting?

Response:
In the meeting, Professor B commented on the tandem system:
* They agreed to use alignments from the SRI recognizer as a starting point for the hybrid system, as they are based on a good system.
* They mentioned that they would also train a new MLP and retrain the dictionary using the new alignments.
* Professor B expressed that the hybrid system might perform worse than their systems due to using context-independent modeling and pointed out that their Broadcast News system performs well.
* They suggested evaluating the hybrid system to assess the quality of the MLP outputs and the overall performance.


I dunno. Throwing away my toothpick.

Hi there.

Yo. Ow.

'Kay.

Uh.

Nice user interface.

Yeah. What the Uh.

Yeah well, ja well let's just start.

'Kay.

I've uh made a presentation uh but uh I'll open it on the Smartboard, so we can all see it.

Right let's see it.

So it's in the project documents because that's what we can find here. Well..

Very nice. Well this is called the the the kick-off meeting. So uh I'm the Project Manager, so I had to fill it in,

'Kay.

and uh hmm. Oh sorry. And an uh a nice agenda. Uh we'll do the opening and then uh we'll meet each other, what uh we already do, so, that's not uh very much trouble. I'll I'll show you the the tools we have here, so that we can all use them. Then uh we'll look at the project plan from uh Real Reaction.

We'll discuss about our first ideas about the project, and then uh we'll close the meeting, and then we can uh individually uh do our things and then uh we'll get back here. So this the opening we'll uh We have to uh design a new television remote control. You have heard that uh already I think, so.

Mm-hmm.

Um we want it to be original, so a nice uh a nice new design. Uh trendy, it's also for young people, and we have to just uh make it uh modern. And uh friendly, so size does matter. And uh Well it has to be a have the the right uh the right buttons on the right place, that kin those kind of things.

Mm-hmm.

Other uh There happen to be uh three stages. functional, conceptual, and d detailed design. Um so every time we we'll do some individual work, get meeting, talk about it, uh and then go into the next phase. That's just it. Um We have uh these two Smartboards. Um well as I just showed, there's a project management folder, a project document folder on the desktop. It just works exactly the same as a computer. You just uh click on the on the folder and you open the everything you you put in it with your laptop. So you can uh make uh Words Excel, everything. Um and the w the r uh the rest uh also works the same so uh when you open a notepad you uh you just get your uh things, you can uh draw. This is a uh well a drawing board. you have a these different uh functions on the board. You can see them there. So you have a a nice pen, and it's works just like a bal ball pen. This is just a. I want to uh Oh yeah. Of course w doesn't work any more..

Maybe you should try to write on the on the big white uh.

Yes I will.

Does it? Yeah. It works.

eraser so.

Wonderful.

It's fantas fantastic. We can uh uh well you can save a file. So if uh we draw we have to save everything. Don't throw anything away.

Mm-hmm.

Uh just we can start a new one, and we just go on, and don't throw anything away.

Just uh let them all uh stand here. We can delete, but we don't do that. Um you can here select a pen, you can draw anything you want. It's a bit uh childish you have to write. It's not as fast as you w you know it, but it does work sometimes.

Well it's just like a normal uh paint.

So it's gone.

Alright, yep.

Well we are designers, so we have to have a a more uh a Smartboard. So that's fantastic. Um well this uh speaks for itself. We going to try it. So um we all uh are going to uh draw a nice animal on this board,

not my idea..

Alright, your favourite animal?.

Yes our your favourite. So um I'm to going to have to draw a kangaroo,

but I'm going d I'm not going to. I'm just uh going to uh well draw a nice uh beast

Grizzly bear..

w I dunno what I'm going to design.

Oh um doesn't oh.

I hope this was part of the assignment and not uh your uh.

Yeah,'kay. Hmm?

I hope this was part of the assignment and not uh your personal uh enjoyment.

I just said it's not my idea

Yeah.

but I am the Project Manager,

and officially this is my idea. So.

I I I I understand. Alright.

We're kinda losing time, though.

what?

We're losing time, but.

Ah the first the first meeting is just a bit uh loose, loosen up, a bit uh meeting each other

so start.

Alright.

well uh uh nice yeah. Sh

Yep yes.

I hope our Industrial Designer does this better because uh this is uh.

Don't uh count on it.

No so a a few legs.

Do we have to guess?

Yes yes

A hippo?.

guess. Well I should make it an hippo now..

I think it's a mouse or a rat.

Yeah.

No I don't think so.

Oh. Oh I know it.

Well what is it, huh?

It's a hedgehog.

I don't know how to call it.

Yeah

A hedgehog?.

difficult English word. I didn't knew it myself..

Well I'm amazed uh about your uh drawing skills..

Our characteristics sum it up. Well it's uh very uh painful

those kind of thing. So we can uh just uh.

Yeah.

We're going back and now uh our Industrial Designer can uh draw its uh most favourite animal.

I am the Industrial Designer.

Alright. Thank you.

Huh.

Chief, I am the Industrial Designer.

Oh uh but this uh marketing designer.

Yeah.

I think It's pr it resembles the animal drawn by.

It's..

what kind of animal is that then?.

I think can I say it?

Yeah sure.

Uh it..

It's a rabbit. Well Looks very nice, right?

Yeah.

It looks amazing.

No no no. What are you going to do?.

We want to erase it..

No no.

No no save it and start a new uh save it and start a new black uh doc a blank document.

These are very impor.

Yes.

These are very important documents, of course, uh these drawings, uh.

Yeah well we have to save everything

Yes uh right.

so now um the next one uh and then save it and start an blank document.

Thanks.

You go man.

Yeah. There's also different colours and different uh well pen widths uh the line the the thickness thickness.

Alright.

So um well you should uh try it but uh.

I should have made mine a white rabbit..

Well y y y you could have but uh.

And he deliberately draws a animal we don't know the English word for.

It speaks for itself.

What the.

It looks like an uh.

uh just a duck..

It looks like that beast from Sesame Street.

Nice..

Yeah.

Big bird..

Is it a duck?

You're standing in front of it,

It's it's uh.

Is it a plane?.

I can't see it. Alright, thank you. Yeah it's a bird, but what kind of bird?

It doesn't draw uh circles uh that easy uh.

Do we have to uh.

You have to push harder.

Yeah just a bit a bit childish,

Mm.

a bit.

But we have uh do we have to name the specific species of the bird?

Release your anger.

Uh no I don't.

No?

It's just a bird.

Well uh save the document

Well wonderful.

and then uh.

And then a a new blank document for. uh will uh choose a new colour and a new pen width so w we can all see it.

Here you go.

Why do I have to do the difficult tasks?

No well first

Uh pen.

yeah.

yeah that's.

And then you go to format I think, and current colour.

Uh current colour.

you choose a new colour. And a new pen width uh also format.

I like uh.

Mm.

oh they don't have pink. Oh b oh think this is uh.

It's not like in paint. Line width.

Uh? Uh.

And you can choose a nice one.

Line width.

Width width.

Width.

With each other.

Uh fifteen.

Hmm.

And I can draw?

Yeah. So. Just a wa that's the way we do.

Uh.

it's quite easy.

Hmm..

Mm-hmm..

It's a pussy cat.

It's a cat..

Oh Pussy..

Oh the line width is too thick, but oh well.

Well then you change it. And erase things.

Uh.

What?.

It's a pig..

It smiles nicely.

Super pig..

Now I have to change the line width. Uh one.

So Yeah yeah yeah

These are whiskers, you know.

we know..

Right.

Uh well I think it's obvious right now.

Yes alright. It's a cat..

No it looks great.

Miaow.

Well if this isn't obvious.

Well well um.

Just save it..

Yeah save it and start a new blank document.

I'll save it alright uh save. Uh yeah uh blank.

Yep. So that's uh what we're going to use when we uh need it.

Well I feel comfortable now.

Oh great.

Well it's terrific, eh?.

Thanks for this exercise. I feel totally at ease.

It's good for group spirit..

Yeah that's it..

It certainly is..

We're one big happy family now..

Yeah something like that.

Well then uh the serious uh stuff. We're we want to sell it at twenty five Euros internationally um so um but we dunno what exactly th i it is in dollars, but uh twenty five Euros. Our profit aim is, worldwide, fifty million Euros. So I didn't uh exactly uh calculate how much we have to sell.

So.

we want to keep it our costs at twelve and a half Euros so, keep uh that in mind when we uh talk about our uh materials an f and stuff, and uh marketing uh research.

Alright.

Right.

Now then we all uh we can uh sit down and discuss uh what do we think about our current remote controls, first about design uh about uh aim in the market etcetera?

Right.

Well uh we c we can sit down uh because uh presentation can wait. We can uh take notes and uh Well who has uh some uh remarks about the current uh remote controls? Please?.

Well I I didn't have to prepare anything about uh.

No uh I did..

it's not, it's it's not my task to uh talk about uh experience with current remote controls, but uh.

Well uh just w we're uh four uh if we if we would just have one then.

I think it's im it's important to uh look at uh the remote controls of our competitors.

Yeah.

Get the good points uh try to merge them into one universal remote control.

Yeah yeah.

On our corporate site I saw uh a new D_V_D_ player uh we're gonna produce.

Yep. That's alright.

Maybe it's important to make it compatible with the D_V_D_ player

That would be a nice idea, yes.

so you can uh use your television and your D_V_D_ player with the same uh remote control.

Yep yep yep.

Furthermore it's important to make it uh acceptable for the whole world, for different cultures, maybe, because we want to we want to well fifty million?

Yes fifty million is our aim to a profit, so.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah yeah

so a lot of people have to be able to use it.

No but uh the b the buttons have to uh have to have uh international recognisable buttons and uh

So.

Easy to learn.

Yeah. Yeah that's right.

Yes.

Yeah.

and numbers and uh that every culture in uh, yeah, people in every country can recognise.

Yeah.

I'll make uh notes and then uh maybe uh well I'll put it in the project uh folder when I'm done uh just now.

Mm-hmm.

I also think we should not add too many buttons.

Alright.

Right.

No that's right.

Modern day uh remotes have too much buttons I think.

Y y you don't use uh the half of them that's that's.

Precisely.

culture uh international.

Maybe we could make one button to switch between D_V_D_ player and T_V_

Yeah.

and make the other buttons uh multi-functional or something.

Yes.

Yeah indeed.

Yeah so it doesn't uh become too complicated with too much buttons and uh.

Yeah right.

Yep, and maybe we do uh we even have uh more than just a D_V_D_ player. Don't we have uh other uh ou

Yeah we should make it compatible perhaps with everything we use, we uh we make?

Uh.

And stereo uh s uh audio installations.

We also uh just uh released a T_F_T_ uh thing I saw.

Yeah so but th that's kind kind of standard T_ television so it also works on that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

And I think the people who who will buy our uh remote already have some experience with remotes. So we can keep that in mind.

Most people do, yeah.

Well yeah.

It doesn't.

It doesn't have to be, but we can.

it doesn't have to be.

W well it's a n it's a new remote and you don't buy a remote if you don't have anything to uh to control with it.

Well except if we deliver it together with our D_V_D_.

Yeah but.

Yeah.

Yeah alright, but.

We need to to keep it consistent with other d uh.

Yeah because we look at competitors

Well.

and w if we pick up the good things about that and give it a nice design.

Hmm.

Yeah but it's it has to be useable.

It has to be different and familiar at the same time.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah

Yeah.

we could use another form or shape or colour, that kind of things.

Yep.

yeah the shape will will have to be recognised. I thought about uh like most uh remote controls uh are uh a long box shaped thing.

Yeah.

you can make it uh triangle shaped,

Well we we could make more more oval or something, and and.

but that's not uh very recognisable.

No.

Oo

Oval?

N we can use uh it as a as a game pad.

Yeah or so

I.

So one hand has the beer, so the other hand uh.

Well yeah it's new..

Mm..

. Not with two hands..

Yeah yeah yeah, right.

but young people want something different

No.

and it is.

Well i we already uh.

Yeah but it's quite important that it fits.

one of our aims is that it has to be original and trendy so.

Yeah.

Oh but it ha it has to be m

Yeah.

yeah. But you still have to know it's a remote and not another.

Well there has been done a lot of researches about remotes uh we have to we can imagine uh

Yeah alright.

because it's a long time uh on the market. So the the form will have been uh tested out so.

Yeah. Yeah so the long box uh shaped thing must be uh, yeah, useful

Yes. Well.

or else uh they would have been ano another shape.

for me personally I have a a lot of remotes uh at home but those ones that have a a round ending and uh well uh just an uh square uh middle I don't like to use them. I have uh have to it has to fit my hands.

Yeah.

When it falls over it and I just have and then the button that I use most has to be here.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah

It shouldn't be boxy.

a lo the long box shape yeah. You have to use one hand.

It f it fits your hands and then you just push the button that you use most with thumb.

Nah I don't agree with the long box uh shape.

Why not?

it it has to be custom made for the hand.

Yeah it doesn't fit.

Tho tho those new D_V_D_ players on the market do have those.

Yeah.

But it does fit in the hand if you hold it like this, and you can make it another shape,

Yeah but if you shape it.

but then you have.

No if y if you look at new Phillips uh D_V_D_ with their uh remotes pl players they they are the new remotes aren't box shaped.

If.

D_V_D_ players. Yes..

W no w what else?

No that's ol old fashioned.

I di

Well Yeah.

Yeah well but uh what what what do you suggest then?

Yes uh.

I can imagine that us

Well most of of them are are somewhat thicker at the end, and get um yeah thinner towards the uh the other end.

Yeah right. It fits in your palms.

Hmm. Well.

Mm.

but it's still then uh the the long box, uh but then with some uh round uh round forms in it to fit your hand,

Yeah it.

Well.

Hmm?

A it h it has it it has a that's tha th th shape that it fits your hand.

Um.

but it's it's still Yeah yeah al alright

That's.

but but it's still it's still sort of box, yeah.

Yeah yea

It it has round forms

Well.

but it in the end it's still the box, so that's what I mean.

Yeah but it has it has to fit your hand.

Yeah yeah I understand, but no no I don't mean an entire box like completely square

It shouldn't be too boxy, you know.

Hmm.

It's.

No no no.

but a also with round edges of course,

but in in in at the end it's still this long box shape with convenient uh round uh shapes uh to fit.

Yeah.

Right maybe something like this

Yeah yes.

and then a button here to switch between different systems like D_V_D_ player

I thought about something like that. Yeah.

and so you can I've.

A big recognisable button on top or something.

Yeah right, and I do think we have to keep this kind of idea with the with the numbers and.

Yeah.

We have five minutes left.

The buttons should uh also be not too small, not too big, of course,

Right.

Yes

and uh n uh uh not too close uh together.

uh that's yep.

But it should be possible to to um make it ap apparent that there are two functions for every button.

Yep.

Uh-huh.

So there has to be some space between the buttons.

Yeah of course uh to uh to uh to have icons to explain the different functions.

Yeah. Yeah right right,

Yeah.

and maybe we should use colours.

Yeah maybe we can um just like on cell phones those um well you can you can put on on them,

Colours, yeah.

Yeah.

Ha.

and so you can customise your uh your own remote with different colours or or special paint jobs.

That's kinda trendy. Yeah right.

Sound nice. Yes.

I dunno but.

I think we have to talk also about uh the the materials for um.

Well it's just uh about our first ideas now

Well.

so I think individually we'll have to uh come up with ideas for the next meeting about these materials and markets etcetera.

Right. But.

Yes?

Already thought about something tha.

I think it's uh it's important to uh notate all the the decisions that we make,

Yes.

so we.

Well thirty minutes we have. So um.

Mm-hmm.

This is about uh what we are going to uh do uh. You'll get specific instructions when you're back in your room so uh it's uh logical uh. I think.

Yeah.

No problem.

Oh and uh that's uh that's all. So we'll just get a notice that the the meeting is uh over.

Yeah now we can still talk about the material,

Yeah yes say.

Mm.

we have some some minutes left uh I w wrote down uh that the case should be plastic of course, hard plastic, the buttons should be uh rubbery I think uh.

Yeah. Yeah it shouldn't be too heavy.

Well I have had remotes that um they had uh the function of the buttons was about uh uh a layer over the buttons

No n n

and when I've had use it much it was gone. So it has to be made in the buttons I think.

Yeah that's bad, yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah.

It has to uh not be loose.

Yeah that's important.

Mm. Alright. And of course there are several electrical cables in it to uh to connect things uh to each other.

Yeah. Is there an a universal uh universal way of um transmitting from the remote to the television so it's all about uh.

I think so.

Yeah it's univ yeah yeah yeah.

It's a a common stan standard way.

It's not that in China it's different?

Yep.

infrared beams an infrared beam I think.

Yeah. But y you can have uh of course different between D_V_D_s and televisions and between.

And you can use.

It it's a we we make an a universal remote so it ha has to work with uh all kinds of brands and things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. But our T_V_s are mostly made in China and that sort of country, so.

Probably yes.

China rules..

And have well yeah I've wrote something down about how it works. The user presses a button and with an infrared beam it signals the television set accordingly,

But are.

but that's pretty obvious, I think..

Are we going w uh with the front uh fronts uh idea?

Well I think uh w we can look into that in the in the next uh thirty minutes.

I think we should make it universal

Yeah.

and you can always use a front front on it, you know? You can use it just plain

Yes.

but you can To make it more trendy.

Well j just y you get a n a normal front with it, but you can change them uh when you buy the.

Yeah.

Right.

Yes. Yes.

Right.

And we should uh dispatch those kind of fronts fronts a a around the world so uh.

Mm.

Yeah.

Well you can make profit with them, and it's a way to make them trendy.

Well th those fifty million don't uh don't se sells itself so we have to uh make uh some extra effort like fronts uh.

Well but th but the standard front will be uh just grey or something

Yeah alright.

Yeah right.

Yeah normal.

uh b a simple colour not not very flashy.

Yes. Yeah well it has to it h it has to fit the the te television and D_V_D_ set we are going to sell,

No a colour everyone accepts.

so if they are uh black and black black and silver we'll make them black and silver so.

Mm.

Pink television sets pink remote,.

Mm.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Yeah. standard.

But people of often don't like bright colours or something.

We have to make it grey or s or black.

Well young people s li

Yeah but then you can use a a front.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

Alright.

Yeah.

I must not forget my pen the next time..

Well if if you yeah..

If you have a a a television room for little children and you make a if if you buy a a pink front they'll they'll love it. I think.

Yeah.

Yeah that's right.

But that's uh marketing uh research you can uh you can ask uh..

Yeah or a t Teletubby front. Yeah yeah yeah. I will investigate.

Yes. Well our user interface you can uh maybe uh I don't know what your specific instructions will be, but uh probably about uh the precision of the buttons and and those kind of things and what buttons will have to be on the uh remote. And you will look into the technical design and um form, I think.

Mm yeah also the the look and feel uh of the the remote's also my task, yeah.

Or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

What's the uh url or the website'cause I didn't get.

Right.

Yeah I uh w was wondering that too.

Euro?

Y you went to the company website.

It's Yeah yeah yeah just if you start up your Internet Explorer.

Well it it it's.

Yeah.

if you uh.

It's the the the start uh starting page uh.

Oh oh right oh well I didn't uh use it.

Yeah.

Finish meeting now. Oh alright..

Well uh we're going to back uh back into our rooms so.

Yes.

Well that's great.

Next meeting is in.

In thirty minutes, but uh I think it will be you will be warned uh through your laptop uh to get over here.

Thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes.

Yeah alright it's it's handy to know.

I'll have to restore my uh my desktop uh

Very handy to know.

It's totally broken..

because uh it's it's the half of the normal size..

Right see you in half an hour then.

Oh right, oh.

Oh. Goodbye..

Ma.

W

Oh.

S

W that was a nice meeting.

Right uh see you in thirty minutes then..

Yeah, see you..

Question: Why did the Marketing speaker suggest to focus on a universal remote control?

Response: In the meeting, the Marketing speaker suggested focusing on a universal remote control because they wanted to create a product that was compatible with different devices, such as televisions, DVD players, and other audio installations. They believed that this would make the remote control more appealing to consumers and increase sales.

Question: What was their reasoning behind the focus on compatibility with different devices?

Response:
* Their reasoning was that making the remote control compatible with different devices would:
  * Make it more appealing to consumers
  * Increase sales

Question: What were their reasons for believing it would increase sales?

Response:
* They believed that a universal remote control would be more convenient for consumers, as they would only need one remote to control multiple devices.
* They believed that a universal remote control would be more appealing to consumers who owned multiple devices from different brands, as it would eliminate the need to purchase multiple remote controls.
* They believed that a universal remote control would be more likely to be used by consumers, as it would be more convenient and easier to use than multiple remote controls.

Question: What innovative shapes or designs were suggested for the new remote control?

Response: In the meeting, there were no innovative shapes or designs suggested for the new remote control. The participants primarily focused on discussing the functionality, features, and target market for the product.

Question: Why was the decision made to not consider innovative shapes or designs for the remote control?

Response: The meeting participants primarily focused on discussing the functionality, features, and target market for the product, rather than innovative shapes or designs.

Question: What was their reasoning behind deciding to focus on the functionality, features, and target market rather than innovative shapes or designs for the product?

Response: The participants decided to focus on the functionality, features, and target market for the product, rather than innovative shapes or designs, because they wanted to ensure that the remote control met the needs and expectations of consumers. They believed that focusing on innovative shapes or designs might compromise the functionality or usability of the product.

Question: Did any of the meeting participants express disagreement with the Marketing speaker's suggestion to focus on a universal remote control?

Response: No, there was no disagreement expressed with the Marketing speaker's suggestion to focus on a universal remote control.

Question: What decisions were made regarding the materials for the remote control?

Response: In the meeting, there were no decisions made regarding the materials for the remote control. The participants primarily focused on discussing the functionality, features, and target market for the product.

Question: Why did the participants focus on the functionality, features, and target market of the product rather than innovative shapes or designs?

Response: The participants focused on the functionality, features, and target market of the product rather than innovative shapes or designs because they wanted to ensure that the remote control met the needs and expectations of consumers. They believed that focusing on innovative shapes or designs might compromise the functionality or usability of the product.

Question: What were the main tasks or responsibilities assigned to each team member for the next phase of the project?

Response: In the meeting, the responsibilities were not discussed.


So welcome. The first kick-off meeting. What shall we do? First the opening, then the rest. What are we going to do. We m have to make a new remote control.

It has to be original, trendy and user-friendly. So we will get back th on that. First we have to make a functional design. After that we have to make a conceptual design, and then after that a detailed design. So we'll discuss that later. First we have a look at. So first to we have to make a small painting. What have do we have to do. First you can save the documents. We have to do that every time we make something. You can print it. No. And we have to use the pen and the eraser. So Now. We all have to use this one.

You have to make your own favourite animal.

So I'll make an example.

Yep.

First don't touch that things.

You can use the pen. And then you can make um something.

Nice.

Um you can change some things.

Um format, line, and change it. And you can change the colour.

An elephant..

So that's it..

So So and after it you have to save it.

Now we can make a new one.

Okay.

You have to paint now. So you're next.

Oh..

'Kay.

Well we will try. Where it going?

Hmm. That's uh strange..

What is going on?

pop-ups.

What are you What?

Hmm.

What is this, Pictionary.

Uh.

Um.

Uh a bird.

Is a It is a It is a.

Bird.

A duck.

Mm.

So Now save?

Yes.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Now uh blank?

Blank, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay next one..

Okay. Let's try this. Uh.

Whoo.

Yeah, yeah.

Um. Mm-hmm. Mm.

Oh..

Oh not. Oh..

Okay. Okay. Yeah. No problem.

Shit happens..

I'm not getting anything uh on my screen now. Okay.

A parrot. Ish.

Wow. Oh.

He did it before.

Uh.

No, no. Yeah. Okay.

Nice.

Very good.

Oh.

Uh blank.

Thank you.

Okay. Very good. So um you can always go back. So.

That's it. So that was two. Now next. The budget. The b Uh we will sell the t at twenty five Euros. And we have only twenty of twelve and a half Euro to make it. So now we have to think about what we will make. First I wanna hear from you. Uh what are your experiences with remote controls. So.

Uh I will start.

F first.

Uh.

Big one, they are uh not easy to use. Um I have one set and uh a remote control, when I dropped it, uh it broke. So that won't be uh our goal, I think.

No.

And uh g big buttons, m uh that's easier to use than uh I think. Not all the small buttons, you don't know.

Is this positive or negative, that uh big buttons?

Big buttons, positive.

Positive.

All all small buttons like when you have uh like a hundred buttons on your remote control, you won't know what they're working for.

Okay. What are your experiences?

Uh well I think the the the goal of a remote control is that it's it it has an influence on the T_V_ set.

Mm.

And that it controls the channels and the the volume. And uh I I I think it's positive if there's a a LED uh uh a LED on the corner of the of the remote. So that you know it s it still has batteries on it in it. And that if you push the button the LED uh gives a light, and uh and you see that it's working. And uh yeah. Uh.

So and do they always have that?

Yeah, but No no no. But I my my experience is that it it it's convenient to have that.

It's easy to you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.'Kay.

Uh at home we have a T_V_, a video uh recorder, a D_V_D_ player, and a satellite receiver. We have uh four distinctive remote controls for that.

Thank you.

That's not really ea easy.

Help also. Thank you.

So it would be nice if we have one for all. And we also had a remote control for our radio set. But um i it it had a lot of buttons on it, and you didn't know which one was what. And it was uh uh v not easy to use. So we n barely used it.

Okay so they have too much. So next.

Hmm.

For our own remote control we have to think how do we make it. So what ideas do you have for it, for the new remote control? What what does it have to have?.

The weight. Not not too heavy.

Not too heavy. Yes.

Not much buttons.

Yeah.

Bust-free. That when you drop it, it won't break. Like uh some kind of rubber on it. Or hard uh hard plastic. Uh buttons not too small. Uh something like when you uh lose your uh remote control, sometimes it happen. Uh it between the couch and you can't find it.

Yes.

When you push a but a button on the T_V_, then you hear some uh some sort of bleep.

Like a phone.

And then you uh, hey there there's remote control.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

Next.

that's.

Yeah well that's that are good ideas. Uh Yeah well the LED on the corner, that that indicates that it's working. If you push a button. Um Yeah. And looking on the budget, not too expensive uh material. So probably plastic or something. Uh.

Okay.

Yeah I think it uh from a marketing point of view, it also has to look nice. Or you won't sell it.

Yes.

And um yeah uh on our website we can see what products we already have. And it should work with as many uh as possible of them.

Okay. This is It has to be compatible with other things.

Yes.

Okay.

I have one more idea. Just popped up.

Yes?

Uh it it won't take a lot of batteries. So you don't won't have to change the batteries uh once a week or uh once every two weeks.

No battery use. So more ideas?

Mm no.

No okay. It's only the first ideas. So uh what are we going to do now is Next meeting is in half an h hour. Uh Okay. Next meeting, half an hour. Um, what you have to do. Well look on your. And Next instructions you'll get in your email. So This is the first meeting. See you later in half an hour.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay.

Question: What was the main focus of the meeting?

Response: The meeting's focus was to discuss the development of a new remote control, It has to be compatible with a variety of devices, user-friendly, and visually appealing. The budget for the project is 12.5 euros.

Question: So, to sum things up, what were the main points covered in the meeting?

Response:
**Here are the main points of the meeting:**

* The participants discussed the budget for the new prototype, which was set at 12.5 euros.
* Participants expressed concerns about the number of devices that the remote control should be compatible with.
* There was a discussion about the design of the remote control, including its weight, material, and appearance.
* The participants suggested that the remote control should have a long battery life and include a feature that allows users to locate it easily if it is lost.

Question: Were there any questions brought up by attendees that remained unanswered by the meeting's end?

Response:
Yes, there were questions left unanswered at the end of the meeting.

* The participants asked about the specific features and functionalities that the remote control should have, but no concrete decisions were made.
* They also discussed the materials to be used for the remote control's construction, but no final decision was reached.
* The participants wanted to know more about the compatibility of the remote control with other devices, but this question remained unanswered.

Question: What recommendations did the Marketing representative make regarding the appearance of the new remote control?

Response: * The Marketing representative suggested that the remote control should have an appealing design to increase its marketability.

Question: Was there a consensus among the attendees that the remote control should be constructed using premium materials, such as metal or glass?

Response: There was no mention of specific materials, such as metal or glass, being considered for the construction of the remote control during the meeting.

Question: Can you summarize the comments made by the Industrial Designer regarding the features they believe the remote control should possess?

Response:
* The Industrial Designer emphasized the importance of the remote control being lightweight and durable.
* They suggested incorporating a feature that emits a sound when a button is pressed, aiding in locating the remote control if it is misplaced.
* The Industrial Designer highlighted the need for large, easy-to-use buttons to ensure user-friendliness.

Question: In what ways was the suggestion of incorporating a sound feature when a button is pressed considered to be beneficial?

Response:
The suggestion of incorporating a sound feature when a button is pressed was considered beneficial because:

* It would aid in locating the remote control if it is misplaced, as the user would be able to hear the sound it emits.
* It would provide users with auditory feedback, confirming that their button press has been registered.

Question: What prompted the Industrial Designer to suggest incorporating a feature that makes a sound when a button is pressed?

Response: The Industrial Designer suggested incorporating a feature that makes a sound when a button is pressed because they believed it would help users locate the remote control if it was misplaced.

Question: Can you provide a summary of the discussion regarding the remote control's compatibility with streaming services?

Response: The discussion about the remote control's compatibility with streaming services was not brought up during the meeting.

Question: Can you summarize the primary conclusions reached at the end of the meeting?

Response:
* The participants decided to meet again in half an hour to discuss the project further.
* They were instructed to check their email for the next set of instructions.