English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Jason Flittner – Individual Activity Report

Jason Flittner – Individual Activity Report

This week Group 1 used our free Monday and Wednesday evenings to meet and work on our white paper. We decided to split the sections of the white paper and that each of us would write roughly 400 words in order to complete the needed size of the whitepaper as a whole. I was tasked with writing the SharePoint dedicated section, and the others were to write about the other competing technologies, which Justin completing our intro. I also finished up the white paper with a quick conclusion.

Ahh this week included more research!

Well as our team figured out we must locate more information on software and services that are similar to Microsoft's SharePoint. We did identify and dive into a couple of these, including GoogleApps and EMC Documentum. I found that Each of the technologies has its strengths and weaknesses. These features good and bad must be described in our whitepaper in order to accurately present the information we are attempting to portray.

Benefits vs Drawbacks of SharePoint, GoogleApps, EMC Documentum

This information could easily be integrated into a graphic to illustrate the benefits vs drawbacks of similar features among these technologies.

Increased collaboration:
All three of the technologies allow for increased collaboration, but each has its own “defining feature” that should be discussed.

GoogleApps for companies.....!
The completely mobile aspect of GoogleApps is a feature that separates it from SharePoint.

As discussed in my previous research blog, GoogleApps is gaining popularity, but with the unreliablity of current internet connectivity many companies won't rely on it completely. I decided to look into the technological aspects of Google Apps.

My initial research has been in regards to the technological aspects of Sharepoint and what a company would require to utilize it. I think followed that research with research on some of the possible alternatives and what they might require to utilize.

Attached! Thanks

JFlitt

“Every decision you make has an ethical dimension, whether it is apparent or not.” This quote from our reading this week really stood out in my mind. It makes since that even in these seemingly insignificant assignments we are making decisions that involve our own personal ethics. As the chapter also discusses with the technological advances of our times, many of the ethical answers of the past no longer apply to the situations of today.

This week went rather well for our group. We were able to identify that we need to refine our identification audience and have gone about identifying our specific audience type for our white paper. Via the responses from our instructor we were able to identify that we will need to research some alternate technologies along with the main technology we will be focusing on. I am happy that we were able to complete the Gantt chart and assign everyone portions of the work that needs to be completed, this will certainly help to keep things on track throughout the next couple of weeks.

Research for our white paper proposal was minimal, as we basically worked with knowledge that our group already contained. After posting and receiving feedback on our proposal I can see that we really need to identify a single intended audience. Our other most important aspect is researching and explaining in a non-biased fashion the competing technologies that compete with SharePoint.