Multiplexed, multimodal conferencing

• US 10,630,734 B2
• Filed: 08/06/2018
• Issued: 04/21/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Chinnapatlolla, Anjil R., DeCusatis, Casimer M., Krishnamurthy, Rajaram B., Sood, Ajay
• Primary Examiner(s): Vostal, Ondrej C
• Application Number:
  US16/055,924
• Publication Number:
  US 20180352011A1
• Time in Patent Office: 624 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/30 Distributed recognition, e.g. in client-server systems, for mobile phones or network applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/043 using or handling presence information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1083 In-session procedures
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1089 by adding media; by removing media
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1096 Supplementary features, e.g. call forwarding or call holding systems providing special services or facilities to telephony subscribers H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4015 where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services

Abstract

A method for managing multiple electronic conference sessions. The method includes a computer processor identifying a plurality of conference sessions that a user is attending, wherein the plurality of conference sessions includes a first session and a second session. The method further includes a computer processor identifying one or more triggers that indicate an occurrence of an event in at least one of the plurality of conference sessions. The method further includes a computer processor determining that the user is an active participant in at least the first session of the plurality of conference sessions that the user is attending. The method further includes a computer processor detecting at least one trigger of the one or more identified triggers, within the second session of the plurality of conference sessions that the user is attending.

Claims

1. A method for managing multiple electronic conference sessions, the method comprising:

identifying, by one or more computer processors, a plurality of conference sessions that a user is attending utilizing a computing device, wherein the plurality of conference sessions includes a first session and a second session;

identifying, by one or more computer processors, one or more predefined triggers of the user, respectively associated with the conferences sessions that the user is attending;

generating, by one or more computer processors, through a real-time analysis of a presentation corresponding to a conference session that the user is attending, a streaming text transcript based on content spoken during the conference session and at least one element of interpreted content that occurs during the conference session;

determining, by one or more computer processors, that an interface corresponding to the conference session includes a first graphical control element associated with presenting the conference session and a second graphical control element associated with a streaming text transcript corresponding to the conference session; and

detecting, by one or more computer processors, an occurrence of at least one trigger of the one or more predefined identified triggers, within the generated streaming text transcript corresponding to the second session of the plurality of conference sessions that the user is attending.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

(i) at a least a portion of the first session and the second session occur during the same time, (ii) the second session is a conference session different from the first session, (iii) and the user is attending the second session as an observer.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

displaying, by one or more computer processors, a first graphical control element corresponding to the first session and a second graphical control element corresponding the second session; and

displaying, by one or more computer processors, at least a portion of the streaming text transcript corresponding to the second session within a respective proximity of the first graphical control element corresponding to the second session.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting the at least one trigger of the identified one or more predefined triggers, within the second session of the plurality of conference sessions that the user is attending, further comprises:

in response to detecting the at least one trigger of the one or more obtained triggers within the streaming text transcript corresponding to the second session, applying, by one or more computer processors, a visual indication to the second graphical control element associated with the second conference session and a portion of the streaming text transcript corresponding to the second conference session that includes the detected at least one trigger.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the streaming text transcript based on content spoken during the conference session and at least one element of interpreted content that occurs during the conference session further comprises:

identifying, by one or more computer processors, a visual element through real-time analysis of the presentation corresponding to the conference session that the user is attending;

in response to identifying the visual element, determining, by one or more computer processors, through one or more real-time analyses, a text description related to the identified visual element corresponding to the conference session; and

embedding, by one or more computer processors, the determined text description related to the identified visual element within the generated streaming text transcript corresponding to the conference session.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein embedding the determined text description related to the identified visual element within the generated streaming text transcript corresponding to the conference session further comprises:

including, by one or more computer processors, within the determined text description related to the identified visual element, a hyperlink to an information resource associated with the identified visual element.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying, by one or more computer processors, one or more visual elements within the presentation corresponding to the conference session that the user is attending through real-time analysis of the presentation;

determining, by one or more computer processors, based on a cognitive analysis, whether a visual element of the identified one or more visual elements corresponding to the conference session relates to one or more predefined triggers respectively associated with the conference session; and

in response to determining that the cognitive analysis of the visual element corresponding to the conference session relates to trigger of the one or more predefined triggers respectively associated with the conference session, determining, by one or more computer processors, that a trigger of the one or more predefined triggers respectively associated with the conference session is detected.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, by one or more computer processors, that the user selects the interface corresponding to the second session; and

in response to determining that the user selects the interface corresponding to the second session, increasing, by one or more computer processors, a size associated with the first graphical control element that displays a presentation corresponding to the second session to the user; and

modifying, by one or more computer processors, a connection of the user to the second session, wherein modifying the connection enables the user to attend the second session as an active participant.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

modifying, by one or more computer processors, a connection of the user to the first session, wherein modifying the connection enables the user to attend the first session as an observer.

10. The method of claim 5, wherein determining a text description related to the identified visual element corresponding to the conference session based on the one or more real-time analyses is selected from the group consisting of a cognitive analysis, image recognition, image processing, gesture recognition, and contextual analysis.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein an automated cognitive analysis utilizes information derived from one or more analyses selected from the group consisting of image recognition, image processing, gesture recognition, and contextual analysis.

12. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

modifying, by one or more computer processors, the visual indication applied to the second graphical control element associated with the second conference session is modified based on a number of unique triggers that are detected.

13. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

modifying, by one or more computer processors, the visual indication applied to the second graphical control element associated with the second conference session is modified based on the frequency of occurrence of a detected trigger.

14. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

modifying, by one or more computer processors, the visual indication applied to the second graphical control element associated with the second conference session is modified based on an analysis of a detected trigger.