ITR/PE+SY:Mapping Meetings: Language Technology to make Sense of Human Interaction

International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Meetings are essential and ongoing processes in almost every enterprise. To record meetings is to provide a history of human interactions. However, two central challenges remain: (1) how to make sense of the group dynamics in those meetings and (2) how to search through a history of those interactions to find the information one may want. This research aims to develop automatic information processing systems based on the metaphor of a "meeting map", a structured representation that supports the presentation of multiple views of a meeting at different scales. The project will focus on two broad map categories: content maps, portraying topics discussed and decisions made; and interaction maps, identifying the roles and relationships of the participants and the level of concurrence. Building content and interaction maps will involve automatic classification of information from topic changes and salience to disagreement/consensus. These maps will be used for generating simple indicative summaries, and off-the-shelf visualization tools will be used for map presentation. The project will build on analyses of 100 hours of meetings. Evaluations will use objective recognition accuracies and expert assessments of automatic summaries. Meeting maps respect the diversity of information present in meeting scenarios, and provide effective support for human-to-human interactions.