Table of Contents
C3Lingo Feedback 38C3
General
- ❤️ rescheduled (+12)
- Put any issues / feature requests below please!
- Are our services promoted sufficiently?
- better understanding of “team voucher” situation (if there are going to be vouchers next year)
- Quite likely yes, but most people will still get a ticket via the angel voucher
- Big kudos from the content team (tomate, erdgeist) for the outstanding quality of the interpretations. A unique feature of Congress.
- I’ve also heard lots of praise from heralds and great applause from the audience for c3lingo
- Angel shirt design: I want my wings! (+1)
- I don’t really care about wings, I just would have liked getting it in the proper size
- I’d love a c3lingo shirt/hoodie :) (+3)
Methodology
- onboarding process: should we offer a mentor/mentee setup for those that would like it, for the first few talks, then newcomers can become full members?
- Like a buddy system maybe whereby newbies get assigned an experienced person? Sounds good, thought about the same.
- During Q&A, I prefer to translate the questions and answers as tandem. two distinctive voices make it easier for the listeners to distinguish the questions from the answers by the speaker as they tend to speed up towards the end of their slot. Further the translation allows for more dynamic in case a Q&A turns into a dialogue. Suggestion: Have 2 cards in each booth, one with a Q and one with an A, to remind translaters to coordinate this and allow for a simple, non-verbal communication method
- +6
- Would prefer it not be a rule per se but rather a clearly spelled out possibly to decide in the booth as a team?
- I find this gets confusing/stressful quickly (moderator interjecting, q & a talking over each other)
- Maybe it makes sense to not have an on stage translation for the angel meeting, but also do this simultaneously? Doing it sequentially takes a lot of time and at least on day 2 there where no questions in English.
Speakers / Heralds
- There were several cases of heralds being unsure (or confidently saying wrong things) about whether there were translations, or whether they were EN/DE or other languages (+4)
- See ReScheduled section for some ideas for solutions
- Can we ask presenters that if they really, really have to read out their talk at least they should not go too fast? + share the slides up front?
CCH / Booths
- Several people have said that the booths for Saal 1 should be the two closest to the stage, so the reverse of the current layout.
- not everyone agrees :) the booths further from the stage have a more confortable viewing angle imo – korfuri (+1)
- another thing I noticed tonight: audio from that gameshow in Saal 1 (“0, 1 oder 2 - Hackerei und Cyberbrei”) was pretty loud and somewhat distracting when doing the “remote job” for Hall Y at the same time. So, for the positioning of the local vs. the remote interpretation booths (for next year) one might also want to consider to have the “remote booths” in the position that’s less affected by the speakers/arrays producing the sound for the hall. If that makes any sense / is feasible? (cv)
- Wifi is a bit erratic (yes, not directly a c3lingo issue); not able to connect to secure Wifi (despite the setup) and insecure wifi is flaky, esp. in Saal 1(also affected: booths in Saal Zigzag)
- Ethernet access would be useful? (People in the c3lingo room mentioned they should have a port, but maybe in the wrong VLAN, needs checking)
- Real-time audio outside of the C3 network needed for extra people listening in - we can have extra headphones in the translation booth, but it does not help if nobody in the room can actually use that translation
- For interpreting booths H and Y in Saal 1 it would be cool to have blinds to block out the
videoview from Saal 1- not sure whether it makes any sense, technically: but if those “blinds” referred to in the previous point could be somewhat thicker pieces of stuff to improve the sound proofing of the booth at the same time (see my comment about the local hall audio of Saal 1 sometimes affecting the remote interpreting booths), that would be pretty brilliant I guess (cv)
- Just to clarify the motivation: In one of my talks in Y I saw videos from an art (I hope) talk with children tied with cable ties. Slightly disturbing, to say the least…
- Coffee in Saal 8 would be very nice to have, in case it can be arranged, just to save having to walk to Heaven (+4)
- Signage in the booths “Have you muted your DECT? R u sure? Tks!” (or something like this) (+1)
VOC / Rider
- would it be possible to have 2 screens - one for the screen stream and the other for the speakers (for Huff & Yell)? (+4)
- Since we have an increasing number of 3-person shifts, we need to ensure that a third person can listen to the original. In whatever way – plug some extra headphones in, demand 3 consoles, etc
- There is a secondary 3.5mm headphone jack on all the “normal” interpreter’s consoles. Maybe that wasn’t communicated well
- we were told not to plug stuff in to not mess with stuff. Is there something that does not depend on own self-brought headphones?
- The sound from the Signal Angel (during the Q&A) wasn’t great in G. It was echoing, with also the noise from the room, making it difficult to properly hear the question
- Clarify audio setup for having translations over the PA in the hall (technically, politically)
- We might want to have our consoles on a UPS, a fuse popped today, killing our consoles in Z for (around) half a talk
New Tech
Ideas/Plans for new tooling / functionality
- Stretch goal: Real-time subtitle generation in the booths? (Access to floor audio like on the c3lingo website → whisper on a big enough box for real-time processing → website with websockets pushing detected strings with confidence for color-coding?) Does not have to be perfect, just enough for catchup when speakers pacing enters lightspeed ;-;
- very problematic for political reasons (we don’t want to support “AI” companies)
- Look at galene.org, the server software behind audio.c3lingo.org, it’s already there
- media.ccc has experimental live-subtitling. can we use that?
audio.c3lingo.org
- the c3lingo audio page can’t play in the background on smartphones (it stops after around 10 seconds) so we need to keep our phone screens on all the time. it could probably be fixed.
Custom Consoles
- maybe flip the colours of the “loudness meter”, green for fine, red for clipping
- Red-Green-Red would be ideal, i think green currently means “loud enough” and is desired
- Also better separation between the light surfaces, there was a lot of light bleeding over
- maybe add some high and low pass filters to get rid of “bumping the mic” and similar (depending on feedback on audio quality)
- softer, bigger buttons for switching, to reduce switching related noises, bigger button to reach/push easier(UX: sometimes we have to switch quickly, )
- consider more open headphones (like in the other booths)
- low cut to remove noise when noone is talking
- Lock/hide/remove the mic sensitivity knob (+1)
- in case of redesign of the interface: space out the knobs a little bit, general design works for me (+1)
- Worked really well for me, I’d like to see more of them
- +3
- not a fan of the headphones, very tight and not good to wear with glasses (+1)
- would also prefer a rotating microphone arm like in the rented consoles
- The fact that the proprietary consoles cannot be on at the same time sucks donkey gonads
- +4, love the custom consoles for this alone already (+3)
ReScheduled:
- Allow splitting longer shifts (e.g. lightning talks) so that you have a first half to assign people to.
- For completeness even though this is talked about a lot already: APIs and integration
- API / Web view: An easy way for heralds to see what languages will be available
- The overview in “my assignements” was well structured. Maybe that can be done for available languages on THAT talk too?
- Fahrplan: Discoverability for users: See languages for talks and get linked to audio.c3l… automatically
- Engelsystem: Compare shift assignments, maybe even auto-sign-up
- Related: Provide Stage Managers some easy way to check rescheduled for the languages we are providing
- Related: Sometimes the translators have multiple common target languages, so explicitly setting one on the talk would help. Bonus points for auto setting when there is only one common language.
- Based on the target language and confirmed interpreters, generate the intro and outro.
- The emergence of a great tool finally boosting productivity+deliberation during shift assignments can only mean 1 thing: AI will send us into oblivion. Probably next year. Or the year after, 100%….
- [session does not link to fahrplan] also badly interacts with the fact that the “assignment” view doesn’t show the speaker’s name, which we’re supposed to read out in the intro :) that is to say, if the assignment view showed the speaker name, it wouldn’t be as bad that it’s harder to get to the fahrplan view, or vice versa :)
- other translators’ assignments are public, but only if you know / guess their URL (example); IMHO it would be nice to make this available somewhere, as it’s useful information (“my co-translator isn’t here yet, did they have a close previous shift?”) and Ctrl+F’ing it in the overview is more cumbersome
- The assignments overview now has Jumpmarkers at the top, so at least its easier to find.
- maybe add a floating window to show people with the fewest hours (to make assginments simpler and more fair) maybe sum of hours as hover?
- sum of hours could be one thing; OTOH, the number of assignments (show count for the current day, also show count for the whole event) could also be interesting values to display, again with the idea of making the assigner’s job easier
- Not so happy about people who jump the queue during assignment by adding themselves with special interest at the last minute just before a talk gets assigned. Could this be avoided - either by just talking about it or by technical means?
- is this a bad thing? Some people might only read over this rather late…
- In the vein of keeping things nice & cooperative, one technical method that would make sense to me (your mileage may vary) would be that last-minute special interest claims are only accepted if the other candidates approve of that action. I.e. once the meeting has officially started, if somebody enters a special interest, have the other candidates for that talk click a nice little checkmark beside the special interest string to say “yeah, fine with me”. Well, obviously, that’s kind of the same result one could achieve by simply talking about it in the meeting. But when things get a little crowded / chaotic / lack of time-ey – maybe a little checkmark to click might be a little more efficient than working things out vocally? Only really, actually one would need to discuss the matter when not every other candidate for the talk clicked on that approval thingy in good time? Then again, I know I love to over-engineer.
)) (cv) - maybe just indicate in a lighter color that the person “came late”? (+1)
- maybe also add the option to “upgrade” interest, so to add “special interest info” to a normal interest (sometimes it just doesn't seem needed because interest seems low, until right at the meeting)
- Instead of having “wanna be a candidate” and “have special interest”, could it make sense to have three levels to select? (+1)
- prio 3: have special interest + will enter respective string (like before)
- prio 2: want to be a candidate (and it would actually be nice to get the assignment)
- prio 1: I am available and would do it if all else fails, but please prefer others (could show candidate nick in braces to indicate this status) (Especially towards the middle and end of Congress, there’s an increasing number of talks where I’m like “yeah, could do them, but I’ve done quite a few hours already so if you would give it to others with less hours instead, would not exactly be a tragedy”. Would mark those with prio 1 then. (cv)) +1
- Maybe allow individuals to select whether they consider themselves a newbie (would prefer to sit in as no.3, with two others) or not? –> ease work of assigner in assignment process. (Maybe not call it the “newbie flag”, sounds slightly discriminatory. Use a nice rising star symbol or something.))) (cv) +1
- enhancements: show track of schedule, list of “my candidacies”
- Can you clarify what you mean by “track of schedule”?
- is it / will it be available as open source? :)
- Suggestion: Challenge Rating feature for Rescheduled where the estimated difficulty level of a talk could be easily displayed before applying for assignment. Cherry on top would be lingo topic anticipations that the speakers could provide in advance if they don’t share their slides.
Done / newly implemented in rescheduled
is a link possible to the engelsystem “book my shift”?- All the assignments now link to Engelsystem (the one from Fahrplan anyway)
- it’s inconvenient that you can’t easily get from the “assignment” view of a talk (example) to the “fahrplan” version (example)- Sessions now have a link to the Fahrplan, next to their title (Example)