English 421: Technical Writing

 Hey guys, attached is my contributions memo for the semester.  1st is individual, 2nd part is group.

- Pat Connaughton

 http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/810000/801585/p78-neal.pdf?key1=801585&key2=6078027221&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=11911542&CFTOKEN=69915750

During this class period, we created a couple personas for potential people that we would have to explain our product to.  We ended up deciding on a project manager, who would be in charge of a few drivers of the busses, and the supervisor, who would be in charge of basically the whole company.  Once we got started, the process was relatively easy and we were done quickly.  However, for the first time then we were missing a group member.  Kevin wasn't in class, so we had to work a man down.  This wasn't an issue considering the amount of workload for the day, but it

http://www.coventry.ac.uk/ec/~pevery/106cr/docs/readweb2.pdf

 Here's our 2 memos for Flex Adventures and Drive-Through Marketing

- Group Cranky Curmudgeons

 Project Log- Cranky Curmudgeons Week 9

http://www.klariti.com/white-papers/White-Papers-Strategic-Advantage.shtml

http://www.tech-writer.net/resume_keys.html

This is a pretty brief article about some keys to remember when writing a resume.  While many of the pointers that it offers were ones that we have discussed in class, the style of the writing is somewhat unique.  The numbered format makes this seem like a checklist of things to do as you're doing the resume.  When it seems like there's 8 million things to do and not to do, having them ordered into list format is definitely helpful.

 http://www.klariti.com/technical-writing/What-is-Technical-Document.shtml

This article gives a definition of what a "technical document" is.  This relates to the class in the simplest of ways- a technical document is what technical writers write.  While in the olden days this was putting a pen to paper and cranking a story out, today it's much more technology-driven.  With the internet, things like blogs, emails, and websites allow for technical writing to be virtually everywhere.  You can even find entire magazines (like Wired) online.  

 The pirate's ship activity that we are doing in class is an obvious analogy for the skills which are very crucial to the technical writing field.  While the ability to organize and classify information, like the step-by-step directions, are definitely important, there were some smaller lessons to be learned as well.  For example, we were pretty sure that we had most of the steps in the correct order, but weren't totally convinced.