Transcriptions (Re: Hearing and Speaking Problems for Non-Native Englishspeakingparticipants.)

Wed Jul 23 17:43:17 CEST 2003

Harald,
I really don't see the point to transcript type minutes.  They rarely add
anything of "real value" and sometimes an accurate record can come back to
"haunt" you!  Within ETSI we sometimes record important meetings and then
only use the tapes when there is a dispute about the accuracy of the
minutes.  This is much cheaper than systematic transcription.

- Alistair URIE

P.S. As far as accuracy of Jabber transciptions go I note that last
wednesday night my name was recorded as "Alex T" rather than Alistair
U.....

                      Harald Tveit Alvestrand                                                                                                      
                      <harald at alvestrand.no>               To:      Ted Lemon <mellon at nominum.com>, problem-statement at alvestrand.no                
                      Sent by:                             cc:                                                                                     
                      problem-statement-bounces at al         Subject: Transcriptions (Re: Hearing and Speaking Problems for Non-Native               
                      vestrand.no                          Englishspeakingparticipants.)                                                           

                      22/07/2003 17:40                                                                                                             

Background info only......

--On 17. juli 2003 11:30 +0200 Ted Lemon <mellon at nominum.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday 16 July 2003 21:30, spencer at mcsr-labs.org wrote:
>> This does point up the difference between scribe notes and WG minutes.
In
>> most cases I've been involved with, we've had the choice of "he said/she
>> said" notes with all the details, or summaries without all the details.
>> We have the possibility of publishing BOTH, and I think Jabber would
>> help us make this happen.
>>
>> And what do others think?
>
> I'm a bit puzzled as to why we don't just record the entire meeting from
> the  sound board, and do the minutes off of a complete transcript.   This
> would  provide a nice incentive for non-mike-talkers, and it's a lot more
> reliable  than relying on random scribes, particularly since the scribes
> in question  are usually active participants in the wg whose comments are
> lost when they  go up to the microphone.

In meeting rooms where we use microphones anyway, recording the sessions
wouldn't change the dynamics much. In smaller meetings (some still occur
:-), it would change the dynamics; the introduction of room mikes has been
one of the things that has made IETF meetings more formal (and sometimes
less fun?) over the last 10 years. I don't know how much knowing that a
meeting is recorded would impact people's style of participation.

Professional transcription services cost money (I have heard the number,
but don't remember - USD 250 occured somewhere, but I can't remember if
that was per hour or per 2 1/2 hour session - we do about 200 hours of
meetings at an IETF, so at 250/hour, it would be about 50.000 USD), and
would require expert review to get all the terms right (I remember an ICANN

session that consistently transcribed "DNSSEC" as "DNS Sex"). Just knowing
that the recordings were available (MP3 files?) would probably be good
enough for many people, and would allow scribes to focus on recording what
decisions were made - something that can be quite hard at times from "he
said, she said" style minutes!

(BTW, this is sometimes done. Someone once transcribed my commencement
speech from the Minneapolis plenary, I proofread/edited it, and published
it as an article in the ISOC newsletter. It was the only way I'd ever get
to know what I actually said - but I have no idea how much time it cost!)

                     Harald