English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I found this week’s assigned readings to be very useful, important, and relevant both independently and in regard to the white paper project. First off, chapter 5 of Technical Communication Today opens with a reference to the widespread (illegal) downloading of MP3s by Internet users everywhere. With this act, TCT calls into question the ethics of the situation, specifically, “is this ethical?” TCT simply responds that “the music industry says no,” but I think it’s safe to say no in any context.

This activity report summarizes the progress that I have made this week in regard to the white paper project.

The majority of the time that I haven’t spent working on this week’s work was dedicated to drafting deliverables. First, the Gantt chart was really a team effort. Jeff had compiled a rough draft and with input from all of us, I compiled the final draft. This chart outlines, with approximate deadlines, the preparation and progression schedule that we anticipate for this white paper project.

In concluding this week, it feels as though we’ve completed the second milestone of our project, and an important milestone it was. Having elected to propose both how and why the lack of collaboration negatively affects small organizations in the first milestone, much of the work this week was spent preparing how to tackle covering the topic.

After reviewing the instructor’s feedback regarding our white paper proposal, my team and I are confident that we have chosen a sound topic and now have a more precise heading to guide our research. Initially, we had planned to target organizations of all sizes with our white paper, regarding both problem and solution. However, as Nathaniel has suggested, we have tightened the focus of our paper to target a single group, small organizations that suffer from a lack of collaboration, which in turn affects performance in each business sector, as well as in the organization as a whole.

For our first week of creating our white paper we started with the basics. First we created a Google Group. This is an important step, especially for an online class since we do not have an actual class time to meet. Through our Google group and email, we exchanged information which included our email addresses, screen names, and phone numbers. We plan to use our Google group to its fullest capacity by adding blog posts on it so that any one of us can edit and add to it when we see fit or just posting announcements that will be sent out to all group members.

     According to Microsoft Corp., “collaboration is a key driver of business performance around the world.” A 2006 study conducted by Microsoft showed that collaboration has a significant impact on each of the gold standards of performance – profitability, profit growth, and sales growth, and that business performance is directly related to collaborative efforts. In response to the results of this study, we are proposing to outline the impact of collaboration on organizations of all sizes.

This activity report summarizes the progress that I have made this week in regard to the white paper project.

The concept of a white paper is unique, and pretty interesting, to me. For starters, how can such a specific title be so misunderstood by so many? End sarcasm. I don’t think the term ‘white paper’ is a fair name for these documents, as it offers no description or support as to how advantageous they can be. Throughout the past 3 years in Computer and Information Technology, and working in IT, I’ve read more white papers than I care to recollect.